Brand New Tennessee Waltz

The singer tells a woman that she favors a girl he once knew in Tennessee, and that he left Tennessee in a hurry just as he is leaving her. Love, he says, is mainly just memories, and everyone has a few. His leaving will be like finding her again “descending Victorian stairs,” and he feels like one of her photographs. The chorus is a new Tennessee waltz in which she is “literally waltzing on air,” with no telling who will be there.

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys recorded it on 22 February 1971 at Roy Homer & Associates in Clinton, Maryland, with Charles Freeland producing; Rebel issued it as a single that March, and it appeared on Rebel’s LP SLP-1503. Earl Scruggs recorded it with his Revue in Nashville on 18 October 1971, with Randy Scruggs on guitar, Norman Blake on dobro, Gary Scruggs on bass, Vassar Clements on fiddle and Bob Wilson on piano, and Columbia put it out as a single backed with “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Dry Branch Fire Squad recorded it for their 1979 Rounder album Born to Be Lonesome, with Kenny Baker on fiddle and Bobby Osborne on fiddle and mandolin. The Nashville Bluegrass Band put it on their 1985 Rounder album My Native Home, with Pat Enright singing lead and Mike Compton singing lead tenor, and Ralph Stanley recorded it again in 2014 with Del McCoury singing, for the 2015 album Man of Constant Sorrow (Red River).