CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Southern Gospel Music icon, West Virginia native, Squire Parsons died of a heart attack Monday. He was 77.
Parsons grew up in the Roane County community of Newton. He went to Spencer High School and then on to West Virginia Tech where he graduated with a degree in music in 1970.
Parsons taught school for a while at the same time beginning his ministry in Southern Gospel. He joined the West Virginia-based Calvarymen Quartet in 1969 and then became the baritone member of the Kingsmen Quartet in 1975.
Parsons left the Kingsmen in 1979 deciding to focus on a solo ministry and songwriting. He wrote and began performing his most famous song, “Sweet Beulah Land,” in the early 1980s.
He wrote more than 600 gospel songs in his decades long career.
According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, which quoted a 2016 newspaper article, “the inspiration for “Sweet Beulah Land” came from his childhood church in Newton. He remembered his father leading the congregation in singing “Is Not This the Land of Beulah?” He recalled, “One morning, years later, as I was driving to my high school teaching job, my mind drifted back to a service in our little church. As I drove along, I was humming the old song about ‘Beulah Land,’ which I had learned from the hymnal years earlier. As I topped one of the beautiful West Virginia mountains, I faced a brilliant sun in all of its glory. My thoughts continued to be about the singing in our little Newton church, but this time it was a different song—one that I had never heard or sung before.”
Health reasons were behind his decision to stop touring in 2019.
Friend Mike Collins said Parsons was multi-talented.
“He was a great baritone, a singer, a songwriter and nominated for the Dove Award in 1999,” Collins said during an appearance Tuesday on MetroNews “Midday.”
The competition in the publication Singing News voted Parsons Favorite Baritone two years, and Favorite Gospel Songwriter five years, the West Virginia Encyclopedia said.
Collins said “Sweet Beulah Land” is one of the top Southern Gospel songs in history.
“It’s gotta be in the Top 10. It’s just one of those iconic songs in Southern Gospel,” Collins said.