“A Hundred Years From Now,” first issued as “I Won’t Care (A Hundred Years From Now),” is usually credited to Dave McEnery, the San Antonio singer known as Red River Dave, whose topical songs included “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight.” It was printed in Songs of the Mountains and Plains, a numbered series of song folios from Rialto Music of New York. The credit on records has varied: Clyde Moody’s King record and Lester Flatt’s 1975 recording name McEnery, but the 1957 Flatt and Scruggs single carries a different credit.
The earliest recording found is by the duo Bob Atcher and Bonnie Blue Eyes (Loretta Applegate). They cut it in Chicago on 18 June 1940, singing it together, with Randall Atcher on mandolin and Bill Vance on bass. OKeh released it that August, backed with “Now I Know Somebody Doesn’t Care,” and Columbia reissued the coupling in 1947. Clyde Moody recorded it for King in Cincinnati in December 1947, and King issued it in 1950 with “Tears on My Pillow.”
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs recorded it on 24 March 1957 at Bradley’s studio in Nashville, with Don Law producing. Flatt sang lead and played guitar, Scruggs played banjo, Curly Seckler mandolin, Paul Warren fiddle, Buck Graves dobro and Junior Huskey bass. Columbia released it on 25 November 1957 as “I Won’t Care,” with “I Won’t Be Hangin’ Around” on the other side. Flatt came back to it in September 1975 for his Flying Fish album Lester Raymond Flatt, with Seckler, Warren, Marty Stuart and Kenny Ingram. Red River Dave made his own recording for the Bluebonnet LP The Singing, Yodeling Cowboy, which Praguefrank dates to 1967.
The singer takes the long view of a broken promise. He remembers that only yesterday she told him she couldn’t live without his love, and that she once swore she would never allow another’s kiss. Now she is with someone else and it breaks his heart, but a hundred years from now he won’t be crying, won’t be blue, and his heart will have forgotten that she “broke every vow.” The Bluegrass Album Band recorded it in Berkeley in January 1983 for The Bluegrass Album, Vol. 3: California Connection, with Tony Rice singing lead. Delia Bell and Bill Grant and the Goins Brothers also recorded it.
