Musicians
- Larry Sparks — Lead Vocals, Guitar
- Melvin Goins — Guitar
- Ralph Stanley — Banjo
- "Curly" Ray Cline — Fiddle
- George Shuffler — Bass
“Going Up Home to Live in Green Pastures,” often shortened to “Green Pastures,” is a gospel song. It appears as “Going to Live in Green Pastures,” words and music attributed to H. W. VanHoose, in Vict’ry Road, a songbook published and copyrighted by the Stamps Quartet Music Company in 1963.
The text is built from the shepherd passages of the Bible. In the verses the faithful “walk beside the still waters” with the Good Shepherd leading the way, an echo of the Twenty-Third Psalm. The master who “once gave his life for the sheep” searches the mountain for those who have strayed. The believers will not heed “the voice of the stranger,” as the sheep in the Gospel of John will not follow a stranger. The chorus looks ahead to going “up home to live in green pastures, where we shall live and die nevermore.”
Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys recorded it on 21 February 1968, at King Studios in Cincinnati, with Larry Sparks singing lead and Ralph singing tenor. Melvin Goins played second guitar, Curly Ray Cline fiddle and George Shuffler bass. King issued it on a single (45-6179) with “Over the Sunset Hill” and on the LP of that name. The single credited the arrangement to Ralph and A. Gearheart, and BMI lists the song as by Avril Gearheart and Ralph. The LP credits Ralph alone. Arvil Gearhart led the Southern Gospel Band, which made bluegrass-gospel LPs such as Father Hold My Hand (1966). Ralph also recorded one of his songs, “I Want a Clear Record,” for Over the Sunset Hill.
The song stayed in Ralph’s shows. He recorded it again for Rebel on 23 March 1973 for I Want to Preach the Gospel, with Roy Lee Centers singing lead, and once more on Saturday Night & Sunday Morning in 1992. Larry Sparks, by then leading his own Lonesome Ramblers, recorded it in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1973 for an Old Homestead album. In July 1979 Emmylou Harris recorded it for Roses in the Snow (Warner Bros., 1980), singing it as a duet with Ricky Skaggs, with Dolly Parton on harmony. Willie Nelson played gut-string guitar, Jerry Douglas dobro and Bryan Bowers autoharp. That record credited the song as “Traditional, arr. Brian Ahern,” and Rhino’s 2002 reissue restored VanHoose’s name. Harris kept singing it. A 1990 Nashville concert with the Nash Ramblers, issued in 2021 as Ramble in Music City, includes it. She sang it again on the 2001 Down from the Mountain concert album, with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
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