“There Ain’t Nobody Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone” is credited to Harry C. McAuliffe, who performed as Big Slim, the Lone Cowboy. Born in Bluefield, West Virginia, in 1899, he was a featured performer on the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling in the 1930s and 1940s. He made his first records for Decca in New York in December 1936 under the name Big Slim Aliff. Record labels have not always agreed on the author. Discs over the years have credited McAuliffe, Cowboy Copas, Lester Flatt, or simply “Traditional.”
Cowboy Copas made the first record of it in July 1945 at the E.T. Herzog studio on Race Street in Cincinnati, at one of his early sessions for Syd Nathan’s King label. Copas sang and played rhythm guitar, probably with Roy Lanham on lead guitar, Billy Strickland on steel and Roy Starkey on bass. King issued it in October 1945 as “There Ain’t Nobody Gonna Miss Me,” on the flip side of “You Live in a World All Your Own” (King 511). Copas was still singing it on the U.S. Army radio show Country Style U.S.A. in 1957.
The singer counts what he has lost. Another man has stolen the sweetheart he planned to marry, and his mother and father are now “in the land where angels dwell.” In the chorus he asks that the title line be written on his headstone. The final verse speaks to “old Copper,” the one companion who has been patient, kind and true, as the singer pats his head.
Bluegrass bands took the song up early. Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys played it on WSM radio in June 1953, with Curly Seckler on mandolin and Benny Martin on fiddle. Don Stover, Chubby Anthony and Bea Lilly recorded it for the Folkways LP Mountain Music, Bluegrass Style (1959), and Charlie Monroe sang it at New River Ranch in Rising Sun, Maryland, in May 1956. Jimmy Martin cut it on 30 October 1961 at Bradley Studio in Nashville, with Paul Williams singing the verses. It became the opening track of Martin’s Decca LP Country Music Time (1962). Copas died in March 1963. A year later, on 16 March 1964, Don Reno, Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cutups recorded it at King’s Cincinnati studio as the opening track of Sing a Bluegrass Tribute to Cowboy Copas (King 914). The Kentucky Colonels played it at the Newport Folk Festival that July, a performance Vanguard released in 1991 on Long Journey Home.
Lester Flatt and Mac Wiseman sang it together at RCA’s Nashville studio on 5 July 1973 for Over the Hills to the Poorhouse, with Marty Stuart on mandolin, Haskel McCormick on banjo and Paul Warren on fiddle. Boone Creek recorded it for their 1977 Rounder debut, with Wes Golding singing lead, Ricky Skaggs tenor and Jerry Douglas baritone. Tony Rice included it on Tony Rice Plays and Sings Bluegrass (Rounder, 1988), made at Bias Recorders in Springfield, Virginia. Bill Emerson played banjo and sang baritone, Jimmy Gaudreau played mandolin and sang tenor, Jerry Douglas played dobro and Mark Schatz bass. Later versions include the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience’s DGBX (Acoustic Disc, 2006) and the Broken Circle Breakdown Bluegrass Band’s Unbroken! (2014).
