“Blue Ridge Cabin Home” comes from Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, although the published credit names neither man. The songwriter credit reads “Certain–Stacey,” with the publishing held by Golden West Melodies. Those were the maiden names of the two leaders’ wives: Louise Certain, who married Earl Scruggs and from 1955 managed the band, and Gladys Stacy, Lester Flatt’s wife. For a while Flatt and Scruggs put their wives’ names on some of their songs for copyright purposes, and “Some Old Day,” cut at the same session, carries the same credit.
The lyric is a homesick song about a place the singer can only return to in memory. He remembers a well-beaten path on the mountainside where he wandered as a boy, a “ramshackle shack” in the hills of old Virginia, and the graves of his mother and father, who lie there together. The chorus asks that when he dies he be buried on that mountain, near his Blue Ridge home.
The band recorded it on 2 September 1955 in Nashville, with Don Law producing. Lester Flatt sang lead with Curly Seckler singing tenor; Earl Scruggs played banjo, Jack Shook second guitar, Seckler mandolin, Paul Warren fiddle, Buck Graves dobro and Ernie Newton bass. Columbia issued two other titles from that session as a single, “Randy Lynn Rag” and “On My Mind,” but held “Blue Ridge Cabin Home” back for two years. It first appeared on 7 October 1957 on the LP Foggy Mountain Jamboree (Columbia CL 1019). County Records later took the song’s name as the title of its 1978 Flatt & Scruggs collection.
Larry Sparks recorded it in 1974 at Lemco Studio in Lexington, Kentucky, with Dave Evans singing tenor and Wendy Miller baritone, for Sparklin’ Bluegrass (King Bluegrass, 1975). Lester Flatt came back to it with Mac Wiseman: RCA Victor put their version out as a single in April 1973 and on the LP Over the Hills to the Poorhouse that September. The Osborne Brothers included it on Bluegrass Collection (CMH, 1978). On 22 September 1980, at 1750 Arch Studios in Berkeley, the Bluegrass Album Band made it the opening track of The Bluegrass Album (Rounder, 1981). Tony Rice sang lead over a quartet, with Doyle Lawson on tenor, J. D. Crowe on baritone and Bobby Hicks on bass.
