“A Voice from on High” is a bluegrass gospel song credited to Bill Monroe and Bessie Lee Mauldin. According to widely repeated accounts, Monroe gave the song to the Stanley Brothers in 1953 as a gesture marking their signing with Mercury Records, and it was the Stanleys who made the first recording, cutting it late that year and issuing it early in 1954.
Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys recorded their own version in 1954. The song is built on a familiar gospel assurance, the promise of a voice calling the believer home, and its quartet-style harmony made it a fixture of the sacred sets that bluegrass bands have long woven into their shows.
“A Voice from on High” passed into the standard gospel repertoire of the genre. Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder recorded it on the 1999 album Soldier of the Cross, a collection devoted to bluegrass gospel, underscoring the song’s lasting place among the music’s core sacred numbers.
