“I Am the Man, Thomas” is a bluegrass gospel song credited to Ralph Stanley and Larry Sparks, both giants of the music — Sparks had sung with Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys before leading his own band. Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys first recorded it in 1971.
The song retells a New Testament story: the risen Jesus appearing to the apostle Thomas, who had doubted the resurrection until invited to see and touch the wounds himself. Sung in the stark, close-harmony style that Stanley favored for sacred material, it became one of the better-known gospel numbers in his vast repertoire.
The song reached an unexpected new audience when Bob Dylan, a longtime admirer of the Stanley Brothers, took it up around the turn of the century, using it dozens of times as a concert opener. That endorsement helped carry “I Am the Man, Thomas” well beyond the bluegrass world.
