Musicians
“When They Ring Those Golden Bells,” also known as “There’s a Land Beyond the River” and “When They Ring the Golden Bells,” was written in 1887 by Daniel de Marbelle. He came to the United States from Europe, served in the Mexican War and the Civil War, and later led a circus. The copyright ended up with the John Church Company, and de Marbelle is said to have been cheated out of it and to have died penniless.
The hymn pictures heaven as a land on the far side of a river, a shore reached only by faith, where the singer hopes to meet Jesus face to face. The chorus calls on the listener to hear the bells ringing and the angels singing a jubilee. The final verse looks ahead to death as a peaceful sleep, when the spirit is set free and the faithful live together in peace with no more stormy weather.
Country singers were recording it by 1927, when Ralph Peer held his sessions for Victor in Bristol, Tennessee. Alfred Karnes, a Baptist preacher and gospel singer from Corbin, Kentucky, who played his own harp-guitar, recorded it there on 29 July 1927. Victor released it on 2 December 1927 on a record with Karnes’s “To the Work”.
Bluegrass musicians took it up in the 1960s. Mac Wiseman recorded it in Akron, Ohio, in April 1966 for the Rural Rhythm LP Sings Old Time Country Favorites (1967). The Country Gentlemen cut it on 16 March 1968 at Lloyd Studios in Riverdale, Maryland, and Rebel issued that recording in 1973 on Yesterday & Today, Vol. 1. Jim Eanes recorded it in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in August 1988 for Let Him Lead You (Rebel, 1989).
Emmylou Harris included it on Angel Band, an acoustic collection of gospel songs that Warner Bros. released on 7 July 1987, which she produced with Emory Gordy Jr. The album credits the arrangement to Gordy and Patty Loveless. Harris sang lead, with Vince Gill on tenor, Carl Jackson on baritone and Gordy on bass. In 2015 Dolly Parton sang it on Orthophonic Joy: The 1927 Bristol Sessions Revisited, an album that returns to the Bristol repertoire.
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