- Style
- Bluegrass
- Tradition
- American gospel song (1862)
- Form
- Song
- Key
- A
- Level
- 1
- Played on
- Voice
In the public domain. Source
Music
100bpm
Click any note to start from there
Chord chart
History
Jefferson Hascall wrote the words as a poem, "My Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast," and J. W. Dadmun set them to his own tune in The Melodeon in 1860. The tune sung today is William Batchelder Bradbury's, published in his Golden Shower of S.S. Melodies in 1862 under the title "The Land of Beulah."
The song spread through shape note books such as William Walker's Christian Harmony of 1866 and into oral tradition. The Stanley Brothers' recording made it a bluegrass standard, and it closes the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).