There’s a bit of a legend behind the Lee Roy Abernathy composition (or possible adaptation???), “Moving Up To Gloryland,” and the more you dig into it, the more interesting it gets, making it prime for discussion as an “oddity.”

First off, we need a quick music industry lesson for context…

When a song is released commercially for the first time (meaning no one else has released it as a commercial product yet), it requires approval from song’s publisher. Once a song has been released, however, anyone is allowed to release a cover version of the song. To avoid potential issues with these releases, artists/producers/labels will often put a “hold” on new songs, which is an informal request to the song’s publisher asking to be the first to release it. Publishers aren’t required to honor such a request (unless it’s written into a contract for some reason), but unless there’s a major reason behind it, it’s usually a good idea to accommodate these requests if you want to continue getting your songs recorded.

It’s somewhat common knowledge among SG historians that “Moving Up To Gloryland” was recorded by both Gold City and the Cathedrals around the same time. The Cathedrals had reportedly been staging the song in preparation for recording their Live in Atlanta album, while Gold City recorded a studio version as part of a specialty compilation album themed around the music of Lee Roy Abernathy. The story goes (including as told to me personally by Bill Traylor, producer on Live in Atlanta and head of RiverSong Records at the time) that Abernathy wanted Gold City’s version to be released first (whether he promised it to Gold City or he simply preferred their version is up for debate), and as such, would not grant the mechanical license to the Cathedrals for the release, so the song was dropped from the first pressing of Live in Atlanta, and Gold City was awarded the first commercial release of the song on the Command Performance: A Tribute to Lee Roy Abernathy compilation.

I’ve seen conflicting reports on what the specific restriction was for the Cathedrals’ version (one person noted a minimum of 90 days after Gold City’s version was made available), but regardless, the Cathedrals’ cut on “Moving Up To Gloryland” DID eventually make it onto later pressings of Live in Atlanta after the Command Performance album had been available for a while (and also after RiverSong had parted ways with CBS Records as a distributor). Some folks have noted hearing both Gold City’s studio version and the Cathedrals’ live version on radio around that time period.

(I couldn’t find the Live in Atlanta cut anywhere on YouTube, so here’s the reunion version…)

All of this sounds pretty straight-forward and not all that odd for a genre known for having the same song released by multiple artists around the same time. In fact, early Singing News charts were originally song-based, with multiple artists being credited to a song title. Even today, it’s not uncommon to find a song being recorded by more than one artist in short succession, although it’s less common for multiple artists to release the same song to radio as a single. I’m honestly not sure if either version of “Moving Up To Gloryland” was ever officially singled for radio, but southern gospel radio often utilizes album cuts, so just because a song was on radio doesn’t mean it was ever officially singled as such.

The oddities come into play with the recordings themselves (and their availability)..

For starters, the Gold City studio recording (which, in my opinion, sounds less like a southern gospel song and more like a marching band, but I digress) appears to have been recorded in late 1982 between the release of their Gold City Live album and their studio follow-up, I Think I’ll Read It Again (based on a photo in the Singing News from around that time of the group in the studio), yet to date, it has never been included on an official Gold City album (not even compilations!), which I chalk up at least in part to how different it is stylistically to anything else GC was doing at that time. Their live rendition evolved somewhat over time and was usually a significant crowd pleaser, but even then, it didn’t appear on a frontline release until 1990, when it appeared on both the group’s A 10 Year Celebration live album, as well as the multi-artist Indiana Live project. They DID record another studio version of the song in 1989, but it was pretty much buried on one of their “blue light special” budget tapes sold at concerts. That means for at least 7 years, Gold City was staging a song that fans couldn’t easily find on one of their own albums (and if you wanted a copy at all, you had to settle for a live VHS taped at PTL, which at the time, wasn’t cheap!).

Meanwhile, Live in Atlanta was the last album Kirk Talley made with the Cathedrals before leaving the group. While I don’t have specific dates, I do question whether Kirk was even still with the group by the time “Moving Up To Gloryland” was added to later pressings of the album. I have seen where some folks remember the Cathedrals staging the song with Kirk, but the earliest video I can find online of the Cathedrals singing the song live were after Danny Funderburk had joined on tenor. In fact, the only video evidence I’ve been able to find of Kirk singing the song with the Cathedrals is from the 1995 Reunion video above, despite Danny having the longer run of staging the song. To add to the oddity, Kirk recently commented on social media that the Cathedrals were indeed the first group to introduce the song in terms of who sang it first, despite Gold City having the first official recorded release of the song. I’m inclined to believe that the Cathedrals probably recorded Live in Atlanta before Gold City recorded their version, only for Abernathy to prevent its inclusion.

Increasingly odd is how the Cathedrals would add the song to later pressings of the album (especially if Kirk had already been gone by then) rather than just recut the song on a later album. Sure, they could’ve left the song on the album and just delayed its release by a few months, but given that RiverSong was working with CBS Records at the time, my guess is that they had a contracted release date in order to get distributed, and rather than miss that date, the decision was made to drop the song from the album initially. That relationship between RiverSong and CBS, however, was very short-lived, so maybe Bill Traylor figured if he had to switch distributors, he might as well put the song back on the album (speculation on my part, not officially confirmed). Did the Cathedrals (or Traylor) just love the song that much, or were there other aspects at play? And why not just wait and recut the song on a later album, unless it had to be a live version?

SIDE NOTE – I don’t know how many copies of Live In Atlanta were originally pressed when CBS was involved, but the copies I’ve seen that include “Moving Up to Gloryland” are missing a barcode, which seems to indicate that these later pressings were not made available in retail stores. If that’s indeed the case, then the first time the Cathedrals’ version was made available in stores was when Benson re-issued the album in the early 1990’s.

It seems that the question of which version is better depends on which group you prefer. The two versions are different enough in vocal style and performance that it’s not exacty an apples-to-apples comparison. At any rate, I think it’s fair to say that “Moving Up To Gloryland” has an unusual history.