“All the Good Times Are Past and Gone” is a traditional American folk song of uncertain authorship, generally placed in the early 20th-century South. The earliest known commercial recording is from 1930 by Fred and Gertrude Gossett, who claimed only to have learned the song, not to have written it. Like many pieces in the old-time and bluegrass canon, the song’s lyrics circulate in many variants, drawing on the pool of “floating verses” that move freely between traditional songs.
By the bluegrass era it had become a staple of the repertoire, with versions credited variously to Traditional, Charles Monroe, or Ralph Stanley depending on which arrangement you encountered. The Stanley Brothers and other first-generation bluegrass acts carried the song into the post-war commercial recording catalog, anchoring it in the genre.
The song has remained a regular in old-time and bluegrass jam sessions, and it received a contemporary boost through Billy Strings’ frequent live performances in the 2010s and 2020s. Words still vary widely from one singer to the next; there is no single canonical lyric set, and every singer brings their own arrangement of the floating verses to it.
