“Bowling Green” — also known as “I Wish I Was in Bowling Green” — is a traditional song that reached records through Cousin Emmy, the Kentucky banjo player and entertainer, who recorded it in 1947. Cousin Emmy said she had learned it from an old man who worked for her father, which places the song in oral tradition well before that.
The lyric is a wistful, homesick number, the singer longing to be back in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It should not be confused with the unrelated 1967 Everly Brothers pop song of the same name; this is the older folk piece, carried forward by the Weavers, the Kossoy Sisters, and other revival-era acts.
Della Mae, a band built around strong harmony singing and string-band drive, recorded “Bowling Green” on their 2011 album I Built This Heart, giving the old Kentucky song a contemporary bluegrass reading.
