Af­ter mov­ing with his fam­i­ly to Cal­i­for­nia and be­ing con­vert­ed to Christ at age 18, Buf­fum felt a call to the min­is­try. He held min­is­ter­i­al cre­den­tials with the Church of the Nazarene, and was a ho­li­ness/Pen­te­cost­al evan­gel­ist. He was al­so a prolific song writ­er, with ma­ny songs in­spired by per­son­al ex­per­i­ence; he had 10,000 songs to his cred­it, 1,000 ac­tu­al­ly pub­lished. Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” claimed he once wrote 12 songs in an hour. Though a tal­ent­ed mu­si­cian, Buf­fum re­ceived no mu­sic­al train­ing. He sold most of his songs for five dollars or less. When he died, the Los Angeles Times called him “The King of Gos­pel Song Writ­ers.”

Hymns

1. He Abides
2. I’m Going Higher Some Day
3. I’m Going Through
4. Get a Smile from Jesus (© 1927)
5. In God’s Calendar of Days (© 1930)
6. In the City Where the Lamb Is the Light
7. Isn’t He Wonderful (© 1950)
8. Let’s Talk About Jesus
9. My Sheep Know My Voice
10. Old-fashioned Meeting, The (© 1922)
11. When I Take My Vaca­tion in Heaven
12. When You’re One Step from God