Musicians
- Mac Wiseman — Lead Vocals, Guitar
- Walter "Hank" Garland — Guitar
- Harold Bradley — Bass
- Joe Zinkan — Bass
- Ray Edenton
- Buddy Harman — drums
- Hargus "Pig" Robbins — piano
- Carl Garvin — trumpet
“In the Sweet By and By” was written in 1868 in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, with words by Sanford Fillmore Bennett and music by Joseph P. Webster. Bennett told the story himself: Webster, a man given to periods of depression, walked in one day, turned his back and said nothing, and when Bennett asked what was wrong he answered that it would be all right by and by. Bennett thought that would make a good hymn title and wrote the words at his desk. Webster read them, took his violin, played out the melody and wrote down the notes of the chorus. By Bennett’s count it was not thirty minutes from the time he took up his pen until two friends, Webster and he were singing it. The account was later printed in Ira D. Sankey’s My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns (1906), and the song itself came out as sheet music from Lyon & Healy in Chicago in 1868.
The lyric is a hymn of heaven reached by faith: a land brighter than daylight seen from afar, a Father waiting across the way to prepare a dwelling, and a meeting on a lovely far shore where there will be singing, no more sorrow, and praise. The chorus, which gives the song its title, repeats the promise of the sweet by and by.
The hymn has been used well beyond church services. In New Orleans jazz funerals it is a standard dirge. Charles Ives quoted it in several works, most notably the finale of his Orchestral Set No. 2 (written 1915–19), and Mark Twain poked fun at its popularity. In 1911 Joe Hill wrote “The Preacher and the Slave” to the same tune, the parody in which the phrase “pie in the sky” was coined.
Bluegrass and country musicians have recorded it under both titles. Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys included it on I Like the Old Time Way (Old Dominion, 1995), Dolly Parton on Little Sparrow (Sugar Hill, 2001), and the Grascals on their self-titled Rounder album (2005).
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