“Alone and Forgotten” is a bluegrass song from the partnership of Red Allen and Frank Wakefield, the singer-guitarist and the mandolin innovator who worked together in the early 1960s. It was among the songs they performed for a recurring radio program at WDON in Wheaton, Maryland, in 1963, recordings released to the public years later.
As the title promises, the song is a study in loneliness. The singer has been left behind — alone, and worse, forgotten by the one he loved — and the lyric stays with that double weight of absence and of being unremembered.
Allen and Wakefield were among the harder-edged bluegrass acts of their era, Allen’s lead voice paired with Wakefield’s inventive mandolin. The version heard here is by Red Allen and Frank Wakefield.
