Cabin in the Hills

Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys recorded it on 5 April 1959 at Bradley Film and Recording Studio in Nashville, with Don Law producing. Flatt sang lead, Curly Lambert tenor, Scruggs baritone and Jake Tullock a high baritone, with Culley Holt and Paul Warren on the bass parts. Rosenberg notes that this was the band’s first five-part harmony, and that with two bass voices there were six voices on the record. The session personnel were Flatt, Scruggs, Tullock, Holt and Hylo Brown on guitars, Buck Graves on dobro, Lambert on mandolin, Warren on fiddle and Joe Zinkan on bass. Columbia released it on 27 April 1959 on a single with “Someone You Have Forgotten” (4-41389). Flatt and Scruggs first left Shook’s name off the song, and, according to the same account, credited him after he contacted them. Rosenberg calls it Flatt and Scruggs’s first big chart hit and says it stayed on the charts longer than any other record of theirs.

The singer pictures his childhood home, a cabin on a hill in the shadow of a tree, and says he would give anything to wander back and be with the people he loved. The last verse gives the sadness of it: he can never return, no matter how much he yearns. The verses are answered by an echo of each line.

Hylo Brown recorded it himself at Starday Studios in Nashville on 21 December 1961. Lester Flatt later sang it with the Nashville Grass on Pickin’ Time (CMH, 1978), with Marty Stuart on mandolin, and Ralph Stanley and Raymond Fairchild recorded it for their 1989 Rebel album.