Musicians
- Carter Stanley — Lead Vocals, Guitar
- Bill Napier — Baritone Vocals, Guitar
- George Shuffler — Bass
- Ralph Stanley — Tenor Vocals
“Jacob’s Vision” is an old gospel song that the Stanley Brothers carried into the recorded tradition. They cut it for King Records in 1959, and they appear to have been the first to put the hymn on record.
The song came to the brothers out of the church world of their southwest Virginia home. Ralph Stanley recalled learning it from a Free Will Baptist preacher, and Carter Stanley introduced it on stage as an old camp-meeting tune — one of the sparely backed sacred songs rooted in the Primitive Baptist and revival singing of the mountains. Its text draws on the biblical patriarch Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching to heaven.
Though the Stanley Brothers rarely performed it in public, Ralph Stanley returned to it often in his later solo career.
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