“The Old Rugged Cross” is a hymn written, words and music, by the Methodist evangelist George Bennard (1873–1958), a native of Youngstown, Ohio, who was raised in Iowa. He began it in Albion, Michigan, in the fall of 1912 and finished it during a revival at the Friends Church in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where he and his song leader, Ed Mieras, sang it as a duet on the last night of the meetings, 12 January 1913, with Pearl Berg at the organ. The hymn in its final form was sung at the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Pokagon, Michigan, later that year, and it was first published in 1915 in Heart and Life Songs, a collection Bennard edited with two colleagues.
The hymn became a staple of Billy Sunday’s evangelistic crusades, promoted by his chief musician Homer Rodeheaver, who eventually bought the rights to it. The text looks at the cross on a hill far away as an emblem of suffering and shame that the singer nonetheless loves, promises to cherish it until he lays down his trophies, and expects at last to trade it for a crown; it speaks of the one slain there for a world of lost sinners, of the shame and reproach the singer will gladly bear, and of a home far away where he will share His glory.
Country and gospel singers took it up in the mid-twentieth century: Ernest Tubb made it the title song of a 1952 gospel album. Don Reno, Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cutups recorded it on 8 April 1963 at King Studios in Cincinnati, with Red Smiley singing lead and Reno tenor, Ronnie Reno on mandolin, Mack Magaha on fiddle, John Palmer on bass, Steve Chapman on guitar and Ray Pennington on drums.
