“River of Death” is a bluegrass gospel song written by Bill Monroe, the founding figure of bluegrass music. Monroe and his Blue Grass Quartet recorded it around 1950, during the years when sacred quartet singing was a central part of his band’s work.
The lyric works one of gospel music’s oldest images — death as a river the believer must cross, and faith as the assurance of reaching the far shore and a home in heaven. Monroe set it in the tight, often unaccompanied four-part harmony rooted in the church singing of his Kentucky youth.
The song stayed in the bluegrass gospel repertoire and was revived for a later generation by the Bluegrass Album Band, the all-star group whose recordings of traditional material reintroduced many such songs.
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