Carter’s Blues

Bluegrass musicians took it up both as a song and as an instrumental. Larry Sparks sang it, with Tommy Boyd on harmony, at Lemco Sound Studio in Lexington, Kentucky, on 16 March 1978. On 10 February 1961, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys recorded an instrumental called “False-Hearted Lover” in Nashville with Maybelle Carter on autoharp, credited to A.P. Carter, Flatt and Scruggs; it came out that August on the Columbia LP Songs of the Famous Carter Family, and SecondHandSongs lists it as a version of this song. Clarence White and Roger Bush recorded a guitar duet under the same title in 1962.

Under the title “Carter’s Blues,” Josh Graves recorded an instrumental at Vetco Studios in Cincinnati for his 1980 LP Playing It Simple, with Dave Evans on banjo, and played it again with Red Taylor on fiddle on the 1983 Old Homestead album Living Legends, with Gordon Reid on banjo and guitar, Joe Stuart on guitar, Joe Pointer on bass and Burt Hoffman on drums.