“Drifting Too Far from the Shore” is a gospel song by Charles E. Moody (1891–1977), who wrote both words and music and dated it 1923. Moody, from north Georgia, had studied music in Dalton and in Asheville, North Carolina, while directing the music at a Methodist church in Tunnel Hill. After moving to Calhoun he sang with the Georgia Yellow Hammers, the string band that recorded for Victor in the late 1920s. He also wrote “Kneel at the Cross” (1924). In print, the earliest songbook that one hymnal researcher has found it in is Sunday School and Revival Songs No. 2 (Morris-Henson, Oklahoma City, 1933), followed by R. E. Winsett’s Vocal Gems (1935).
The words are a single image held through every verse. The singer addresses someone “out on the perilous deep,” where storms sweep and clouds overshadow the sky and death is hovering near, and urges them to turn back before it is too late. The chorus names the remedy plainly: “Come to Jesus today, let him show you the way.”
The earliest record known to discographers is by the Carolina Gospel Singers, a vocal group with piano, made for Gennett in Richmond, Indiana, on 27 September 1929. Charlie and Bill Monroe recorded it as the Monroe Brothers at the Hotel Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 17 February 1936, and Bluebird issued it that May on B-6363, backed with “What Is Home Without Love.” Roy Acuff and His Smoky Mountain Boys cut it at the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis on 6 July 1939 for Vocalion. Hank Williams sang it on his Mother’s Best Flour radio shows in 1951.
The Stanley Brothers sang it on the air at WCYB in Bristol in March 1956, and in 1963 recorded it again, with George Shuffler singing lead, for the gospel album issued under the name John’s Gospel Quartet. The Country Gentlemen recorded their arrangement, as “Drifting Too Far,” in Washington in March 1960 for Country Songs Old & New on Folkways, and Bill Monroe returned to it in Nashville on 16 May 1962 for I’ll Meet You in Church Sunday Morning, with Frank Buchanan singing lead. Emmylou Harris included it on Angel Band (1987).
