Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown was Ricky Skaggs’s third album for Epic, following Waitin’ for the Sun to Shine (1981) and Highways & Heartaches (1982), and was released in 1983. Skaggs produced it. Praguefrank’s discography places the main sessions in Nashville in June 1983, with Lou Reid on high harmony and banjo, Ray Flacke on guitar, Bruce Bouton on steel guitar, Bobby Hicks on fiddle, Jesse Chambers on bass, George Grantham on drums and Mickey Merritt on piano. “A Vision of Mother” and “Don’t Step Over an Old Love” were cut separately, around the same time, with Dolly Parton singing with Skaggs.
The title song was written by Ray Pennington and Roy Marcum. The Stanley Brothers recorded it for King in Cincinnati on 17 September 1963, the day they also recorded “Don’t Step Over an Old Love.” Skaggs had recorded “Don’t Cheat in Our Home Town” himself in June 1971 with Keith Whitley for the Rebel album Second Generation Bluegrass. The 1983 version was released as a single in November 1983, with “Children, Go Where I Send Thee” on the other side, and reached number one on Billboard’s country chart, his sixth. “A Vision of Mother” and “Keep a Memory” are credited to Carter Stanley, and “Uncle Pen” is Bill Monroe’s.
Before Epic, Skaggs had played in Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys alongside Whitley, the Country Gentlemen and J. D. Crowe’s New South, formed Boone Creek in 1976, and been a member of Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band.
Tracklist
- 1 Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown Source Recording 3:17
- 2 Honey (Open That Door) 3:32
- 3 A Wound Time Can't Erase 3:42
- 4 A Vision of Mother Source Recording 3:22
- 5 Uncle Pen alt version 2:23
- 6 Head Over Heels alt version 2:34
- 7 Don’t Step Over an Old Love alt version 3:37
- 8 She’s More to be Pitied alt version 2:51
- 9 Keep A Memory 2:39
- 10 Children, Go Where I Send Thee Source Recording 2:28
- 11 Head Over Heels alt version
