“Where We’ll Never Grow Old,” also called “In the Land Where We’ll Never Grow Old” or just “Never Grow Old,” was written by James C. Moore. Born in 1888 at Draketown in Paulding County, Georgia, he was a student at Mercer University in Macon in 1914 when he went home to preach at his church in Draketown, where his aging father had long led the singing. His father’s voice was failing, and Moore knew he would not hear him sing much longer. Back at school he wrote the hymn and dedicated it to his father and mother; the Florida Baptist Historical Society holds a copy dated 22 April 1914 and inscribed to them. Moore spent his life as a Baptist preacher in Georgia and Florida, and died in 1962.
The hymn’s three stanzas rest on Revelation 21:4. The song looks to a land on a faraway shore, a home for the soul built by Jesus, where no one dies and no one grows old. A later stanza imagines the day the believer’s work is done, troubles and trials are over, and voices blend with loved ones who have gone before. A refrain repeats the title phrase. Hymn Studies notes that the song apparently was not published until 1930.
The Stanley Brothers recorded it on 2 May 1962 at the King studio in Cincinnati, for the LP Good Old Camp Meeting Songs (King 805). Carter Stanley sang lead and Ralph Stanley the tenor, with Ralph Mayo and George Shuffler on the lower vocal parts. Carter played guitar, Ralph banjo, Shuffler lead guitar, Mayo fiddle and Chick Stripling bass.
