“Where the Soul Never Dies,” sung just as often as “Where the Soul of Man Never Dies” and also titled “To Canaan’s Land I’m on My Way,” is a gospel song from the 1910s by William Matthew Golden. Golden was born in Mississippi in 1878 as William M. Golding; the surname changed later. Accounts of his life say he composed most of his gospel songs while serving an eight-year term in the state penitentiary at Parchman, though why he was imprisoned is not known. He went on to teach music: a 1931 profile in the Choctaw Plaindealer of Ackerman, Mississippi, written when he ran for local office in Choctaw County, called him a music teacher of many years and the editor of Love Light Songs. He was killed on 13 May 1934, when the truck he was riding in collided with a car near Eupora, Mississippi. His other songs include “A Beautiful Life.”
The song is a traveller’s hymn. The singer is bound for Canaan, where his darkest night will become day, and each verse adds something waiting for him there: a rose in bloom, an eternity to spend, a light shining across the water to guide him home. The refrain promises a country with no parting and no tears, where the soul goes on living.
The Blue Sky Boys, the brothers Bill and Earl Bolick, recorded it at their first session, held at the Hotel Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 16 June 1936. Bluebird issued it on B-6457, backed with “Sunny Side of Life.” Carl Story’s Rambling Mountaineers recorded it on 23 September 1952 with Ray Atkins singing lead, and Mercury issued it in 1954 (70407). Jim & Jesse cut it at Columbia’s Nashville studio on 20 April 1964 for their Epic album Old Country Church. The Stanley Brothers recorded it twice in 1965. On 5 June, in Wilmington, Delaware, Carter Stanley sang lead with Curley Lambert on tenor, for the Cabin Creek LP Bluegrass Gospel Favorites. On 8 December, in Concord, Arkansas, Carter sang lead and Ralph tenor, with Wayne Raney on harmonica, for the Rimrock album An Empty Mansion. Both were released in 1967. Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice recorded it as a duet, Rice on guitar and Skaggs on mandolin, at Arch Street Studios in Berkeley, California, for Skaggs & Rice (Sugar Hill, 1980).
