“Ain’t Got Time” is a gospel song credited to Buford Abner, a singer and prolific gospel songwriter long associated with the Swanee River Boys, a Southern quartet that built its following on radio in the 1930s and 1940s. The song comes from that era of close-harmony gospel and was recorded by other acts, with an early version appearing in the late 1940s.
Its message is the familiar gospel exhortation of urgency, that there is no time to stop and tarry on the way to salvation. The Foghorn String Band, a group rooted in old-time string music, recorded it on their 2018 album Rock Island Grange, giving the quartet-gospel number a stripped-down old-time treatment.
