Johannes Alfred Hultman

Johannes Alfred Hultman was a Swedish-American preacher, singer, music teacher, composer, and publisher. Born in Hjärtlanda parish in Småland, Sweden, in 1861, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1869 and grew up in Iowa and Nebraska. He studied at the Chicago Athenaeum, served Swedish Mission congregations, and became one of the early figures associated with the Evangelical Mission Covenant movement. The Swedish Biographical Lexicon records later service as a music teacher at North Park College and as pastor of the Salem Square congregation in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Hultman became widely known as “Solskenssångaren,” the “Sunshine Singer,” because of his extensive evangelistic singing ministry in the United States and Sweden. From 1910 onward he issued installments of “Solskenssånger,” a large collection that eventually contained hundreds of songs. His concerts, publishing, and teaching made him an important link between Swedish revival song and Swedish-American church life.

He composed the tune TACK O GUD for Storm’s thanksgiving text. Sources differ slightly on its date: Norwegian hymnal commentary gives 1908, while Hymnary catalogs the tune as 1910. In either case, the melody was added well after Storm’s 1891 text and became the standard setting through Hultman’s publications and Covenant hymnals.