Ira and Charlie Louvin, the brothers from Henagar, Alabama, who sang as the Louvin Brothers, wrote “Are You Missing Me?” They never put out a record of it themselves. Their version survives only as one of the songwriting demos they cut between 1951 and 1956, and it stayed unheard until the 2018 collection Love & Wealth: The Lost Recordings. The song reached the public through Jim and Jesse McReynolds instead.
The story turns on a broken promise. The singer kissed his sweetheart goodbye and she swore she would wait. Then a letter came “like a bolt from the blue.” In spite of her vows, “the glitter of gold” had turned her head, and while he was away trying to find work she had married another man. The chorus puts the question back to her: now that he is gone, is she “all alone with a memory”? Is she missing him?
Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys recorded it at Castle Studio in Nashville on 13 June 1952, with Jesse McReynolds singing lead over Jim’s tenor. Jesse played mandolin and Jim guitar, with Curly Seckler on second guitar, Hoke Jenkins on banjo, Sonny James on fiddle and Bob Moore on bass. Capitol issued it in September 1952 as the B-side of the brothers’ own “I’ll Wash Your Love from My Heart” (Capitol 2233). In 1981 that side was chosen for the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Country Music. Ten years after the first session, on 22 June 1962, the duo cut it again for Epic at Columbia’s Nashville studio, with Allen Shelton on banjo and Jimmy Buchanan on fiddle, for the LP Bluegrass Special (1963).
Mac Wiseman had recorded it a few months before that Epic session, on 12 February 1962. It opened his Capitol album Bluegrass Favorites, with Benny Williams singing harmony and Chubby Wise and Tommy Vaden on fiddles. The Bluegrass Cardinals made it part of their first album in 1976, recorded in Los Angeles in October 1975 with Don Parmley singing lead. Charlie Louvin later sang it with Jim and Jesse on the CMH collection 50 Years of Bluegrass Hits (1985). In 2021 Darrin Vincent and Jamie Dailey sang it as a duet for the Smithsonian Folkways compilation Industrial Strength Bluegrass.
