John's Gospel Quartet: Songs of Mother and Home by The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys, released on King in 1965, collects sacred material in the quartet style that Carter and Ralph Stanley had always treated as central to their work rather than incidental to it. The Stanleys drew from the shape-note tradition and from old Baptist hymnody, and their gospel recordings carry a gravity and directness that distinguishes them from the more polished sacred recordings of many contemporaries. Carter's lead singing on this set is particularly affecting — deep, warm, and tinged with the fatalism that runs through mountain religious music. The album appeared near the end of Carter's life, lending it an unintentional retrospective quality.
Tracklist
- 1 Little old country church house 2:50
- 2 Nobody answered me 4:09
- 3 Shake my mother's hand for me 2:25
- 4 I heard my mother call my name in prayer 2:07
- 5 Mother’s Not Dead She’s Only Sleeping alt version
- 6 Shake hands with mother again 3:07
- 7 Hide ye' in the blood 2:10
- 8 Give me your hand 1:43
- 9 Where We’ll Never Grow Old alt version 2:35
- 10 Leaning on the Everlasting Arms alt version
- 11 Angel Band alt version 2:15
- 12 Are You Washed in the Blood alt version
- 13 Farther along, we'll know all about it 3:19
- 14 When I Lay My Burdens Down alt version
