Songfacts®:

• Also known as "Gospel Boogie," this fast-paced, jazz-infused tune about the day of reckoning - when "the lord is a comin' from his throne on high" - was written by celebrated gospel songwriter Lee Roy Abernathy. He knew he had a hit when he wrote the song in 1947 for his Homeland Harmony Quartet, but some conservative clergymen equated the jazz beat with the dance of the devil and refused to allow the quartet to perform the number in their churches. A decade later, Pat Boone covered the song and landed at #4 on the pop chart.
• Boone associates "A Wonderful Time Up There" with the most embarrassing moment of his career: when he flubbed the lyrics on a Tonight Show performance. He recalled in a Splash Magazine interview: "Dave Letterman was filling in for Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. I was going to sing my big hit, 'A Wonderful Time Up There'… Because it was a big hit, I didn't put the words on the teleprompter. The words go by really fast and the thought entered my mind that it would be awful if I forgot the lyrics. Well, every performer knows that if you let that thought enter your mind, you're going to get messed up, and I did. I was singing the wrong words and finally stopped. The band is still playing, the singers are still singing and the producer, Freddy de Cordova, is signaling me to keep singing. I knew they were taping the show and sending it to New York and that it wouldn't be seen for a few hours so I thought we could start over. But, he kept signaling me to continue so I tried to get back in, but got lost again. It was in total shambles."
• This was covered by Johnny Cash and Johnny Mathis.