“I’ve Found a Hiding Place” is a gospel song by Albert E. Brumley, the songwriter and publisher born near Spiro, Oklahoma, in 1905, who wrote “I’ll Fly Away” and more than 800 other songs. It was on record by 1940: the Chuck Wagon Gang, the Carter family group of Dad Carter, his son Jim and his daughters Rose and Anna, cut it at the Burrus Sawmill studio in Saginaw, Texas, on 23 April 1940, and OKeh issued it coupled with “Getting Ready to Leave This World Behind” from the same session.
In the verses the singer has been on a lonesome road toward heaven for years, burdened with care, with lightning flashing and waves raging around him, until Jesus came and gave him a refuge he slips away to night and day. The chorus is built for a group: each line is answered by an echo of itself, and it ends with the singer finding his hiding place in the solid rock.
Carl Story recorded it on 14 September 1947 with a quartet from his Rambling Mountaineers, Clyde Johnson singing lead, Story tenor, Hack Johnson baritone and Claude Boone bass, and Mercury issued it that year (6068) with Story’s “He’s Waiting There” on the other side. Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys recorded it on 20 March 1958 at Bradley Film & Recording in Nashville for the gospel album I Saw the Light (Decca, August 1958). Monroe sang the verses and the tenor on the chorus, Edd Mayfield took the chorus lead and played guitar, Kenny Baker sang baritone and Culley Holt sang bass and played bass. Later recordings include the Lewis Family’s, made in 1963 and released on the Starday LP The First Family of Gospel Song (1965); the Johnson Mountain Boys’, recorded 1 February 1985 at Bias Recording in Springfield, Virginia, for We’ll Still Sing On (Rounder); and Charlie Daniels’s, with Rob and Ronnie McCoury and Jason Carter, on Songs From the Longleaf Pines (Koch, 2004).