“I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages” is a bluegrass gospel song associated with Larry Sparks, the revered Ohio-born singer and guitarist, who first recorded it in the 1970s.
The song is a deathbed scene rendered in plain, affecting detail. Its narrator stands at the bedside of a dying mother, who, in her last moments, describes the visions before her — the Rock of Ages, Jacob’s ladder let down, the crossing of the river Jordan. That intimate portrait of a peaceful, faithful death gave the song deep emotional power, heightened by Sparks’s famously soulful, mournful voice.
Sparks built much of his long career on bluegrass gospel, and “I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages” became one of the sacred songs most closely tied to him. It has since been taken up by younger musicians, including Billy Strings, who has carried a number of Sparks’s songs to new audiences.
