“Doin’ My Time” is a Jimmie Skinner song. Skinner was born in 1909 near Berea, Kentucky, and grew up in Hamilton, Ohio. His career as a singer and songwriter was based in Cincinnati, where he made his first records. His earliest known recording of the song is an unissued demo from about 1944 or 1945, with Raymond “Curly” Lunsford on electric mandolin. It stayed in the can until Bear Family’s 2003 Skinner box set, which takes its title from the song.
The first release came in 1948. Skinner cut the song early that year at the E.T. Herzog studio on Race Street in Cincinnati, with Lunsford on electric mandolin, Joe Depew on bass and his brother Esmer Skinner on fiddle, and it came out as Red Barn 1150, backed with “Dad Too Is Lonely.” He recorded it again at Herzog in the summer of 1949 for Lou Epstein’s Radio Artist label, which issued it that September on Radio Artist 252. Mercury leased that master in 1958.
The singer is on a convict road gang, working on the rock pile with a ball and chain, where “they call me by a number, not a name.” The judge smiled as he sent him to “that good road for a while,” and he swings his hammer like John Henry. The refrain says he has to do his time “with an aching heart and a worried mind.” The last verse counts down the days: he’ll quit his rowdy ways, and his girl will be waiting when he is out.
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs recorded it with the Foggy Mountain Boys on 20 October 1950 at radio station WDAE in Tampa, Florida. Flatt sang lead, and the band was Curly Seckler on mandolin, Benny Sims on fiddle and Jody Rainwater on bass. Mercury released it in May 1951 as the A-side of Mercury 6333, with the instrumental “Farewell Blues” on the other side. Johnny Cash cut it at Sun in Memphis on 4 August 1957, with Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on bass, and it went on his first album, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar!, released that October.
Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper recorded it in Nashville in October 1961, with Stoney singing lead, for a 1962 Hickory single. Jimmy Martin included it on his 1969 Decca album Free Born Man. In December 1969 the Country Gentlemen recorded it for Rebel, with Jimmy Gaudreau singing lead. Tony Rice cut it at Lemco Studios in Lexington, Kentucky, with J.D. Crowe on banjo and Larry Rice on mandolin. Skinner kept returning to the song himself: he recorded it with Rusty York and the Kentucky Mountain Boys at the King studio in Cincinnati in 1961 for a Bluegrass Special EP, and again in 1973 for a QCA single.
