Sankey was a pioneer in the introduction of a musical style that influenced church services and evangelical campaigns for generations, and the hymns that he wrote or popularized continued to be sung well into the 21st century.

[4][5] As a young boy Ira displayed a love of music that was encouraged by his parents, who typically spent evenings with him at home, singing hymns.

[3][6] In 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, Sankey answered President Lincoln's call for volunteers and joined the Twelfth Pennsylvania Regiment.

Late in 1871, mission work was interrupted by the Great Chicago Fire, which destroyed 18,000 buildings, killed around 300 people, and left a third of the city's population homeless.

[6] The tour got off to a slow start; barely 50 people attended the first rally, held in York,[12] and this congregation was unused to the kind of gospel songs – "human hymns" – that Sankey introduced.

[3] To familiarise the congregations with the words of new hymns by Bliss, Fanny Crosby and others, Sankey published a short collection of the favorite numbers, under the title Sacred Songs and Solos.

[16] Moody and Sankey returned home in the summer of 1875, to considerable acclaim after their successful British tour, and quickly established themselves as the leading revivalists of their times.

[9] Beginning with a rally in Moody's hometown of Northfield, Massachusetts,[n 2] revival meetings were held during the following years in towns and cities the length and breadth of the United States, with excursions over the borders into Canada and Mexico.

[21] Towards the end of the tour Sankey's voice broke down and he was forced to return to the United States, where he and his family bought a house in Brooklyn, New York.

[9] In 1898, accompanied by family and friends, Sankey traveled to Egypt and Palestine on an extended trip which, on the return journey, included visits to Constantinople, Athens and Rome.

[26] The following year, after Moody's death, he embarked on his final visit to Britain and addressed a meeting of 20,000 in London,[27] but as the tour progressed his health failed him and he returned to his home in Brooklyn.

His funeral took place at the LaFayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, which he had joined in his final years,[5][n 3] and he was buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery.

"[5] Sankey lacked formal voice training; the only tuition that he received was likely during his attendance at a 12-week session run by George Frederick Root, Lowell Mason, and William Bradbury, which prepared potential music teachers and choirmasters for their work.

[6] His technique for communicating this feeling involved the clearest possible enunciation, with careful use of pauses for dramatic effect:[6] "You've got to make them hear every word and see every picture ... Then you'll get that silence of death, that quiet before God".

Sankey chose hymns with accessible tunes that were easy to learn and insisted that the accompanying music be played softly, to emphasize the message of the words.

Wilson, in his social history of the Victorian era, quotes a contemporary pamphlet from an anonymous "London Physician" which is dismissive of both Moody and Sankey.

Having characterized Moody as a ranter and "a third-rate star", the writer goes on: "As for Mr. Sankey ... his voice is decidedly bad, and, like all worn-out singers he endeavors to conceal this by startling alternations of high and low notes".

[7] The "1200" version of Sacred Songs and Solos includes nearly 200 of Sankey's settings of hymns by writers such as Horatius Bonar, Fanny Crosby, Elizabeth C. Clephane, Robert Lowry, John Greenleaf Whittier, Frances Ridley Havergal and many others.

[36] Sankey's settings are eminently recognizable, characteristic features being simple melodies combined with strong and vigorous rhythms that reflected the popular music of the time,[7] and which according to the British poet John Betjeman, invoked "that well-known principle of denying the devil all the best tunes".

[37] His compositional method was heavily dependent upon what he termed "inspiration"; he carried a notebook in which he would jot down snatches of melody that came to him during the day's activities, and would develop them later when time allowed.

[39] The publishing successes in Britain with Sacred Songs and Solos prompted Sankey to make a similar venture in the United States.

Rather, as Mel R. Wilhoit points out, its source is found "in the context of Northern, urban, white revivalism of the nineteenth century" in which Sankey was a principal figure.

The revivalist model that Moody and Sankey introduced established a paradigm for the conduct of rallies and services in evangelical churches for generations.