Bill Monroe wrote “Come Back to Me in My Dreams.” He first recorded it on 13 February 1945 at the WBBM radio studio in Chicago, with Chubby Wise on fiddle, Stringbean (David Akeman) on banjo, Sally Ann Forrester on accordion, Tex Willis on guitar and Cedric Rainwater on bass; Monroe sang lead, Forrester the tenor and Willis the baritone. That recording is documented only on later compilations, among them Bear Family’s Blue Moon of Kentucky: 1936–1949 (2002).
The song reached record in 1957, when Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys recorded it again at Bradley Film & Recording in Nashville on 15 May, in the second session for his first Decca album, Knee Deep in Blue Grass, released on 23 June 1958. Monroe sang alone on it, with Leslie Sandy on guitar, Don Stover on banjo, Joe Stuart, Gordon Terry and Dale Potter on fiddles, and Bessie Lee Mauldin on bass.
The singer sees the moon and stars and feels the one he has lost is still with him in memories and dreams, and in the chorus asks to be visited there. He sends a prayer to heaven on a cloud so that she will know he wants her with him, and says he knows he will not see her again until they meet in heaven.
Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver recorded it on Once and for Always (Sugar Hill, 1985), the Vern Williams Band in 1980 for the Rounder album Bluegrass from the Gold Country, and IIIrd Tyme Out on Back to the MAC (Rounder, 2001), recorded at the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.
