The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys
Don’t Cheat in Our Home Town
“Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown” was written by Ray Pennington and Roy E. Marcum and was first recorded by the Stanley Brothers in 1963 for King Records, during sessions Pennington himself produced. The original Stanley Brothers reading is a classic late-King-era bluegrass piece — Carter Stanley’s lonesome lead, Ralph’s tenor, and the Clinch Mountain Boys’ tight backing — and it sat as a moderately known piece in the bluegrass repertoire for most of the next two decades.
Ricky Skaggs’s 1983 reading is what reset the song’s profile. Released as the title track and lead single from his Epic album Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown, the Skaggs version went to No. 1 on the country chart in 1983 (his sixth country No. 1) and stayed on the chart twelve weeks. The arrangement keeps the bluegrass instrumental shape — banjo, mandolin, fiddle, dobro — while adding the country-radio production sheen that defined the neo-traditional movement Skaggs helped lead.
Lyrically the song is a bemused sermon to a wandering spouse: cheat if you must, but at least don’t cheat where the neighbours can see. It is one of the cleaner examples of a traditional bluegrass piece carried into mainstream country at No. 1 without losing its bluegrass DNA, and it remains a regular call at bluegrass jams that lean toward the Skaggs-era neo-traditional sound.
