Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler

The rambler sings the warning himself. He asks the girl not to fall in love with him, because he is a rambler and is leaving for her sake, though she is “the sweetest sweetheart in this world.” Had he never had the blues or “the lure of the road,” things might be different. But he is bound to hear the whistle of a freight train and the boxcars rattling down the line. In the last verse he admits he “handed you a line,” says he is sorry, and insists he doesn’t want to hurt her.

Skinner recorded the song again after he moved to Decca. The session was on 22 September 1953 at Castle Studio in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel, with Paul Cohen producing, Grady Martin on lead guitar, Lunsford on electric mandolin and Tommy Jackson on fiddle. Decca issued it in February 1954 with “What a Pleasure,” and it was later included on his Decca album Country Singer.

Jimmy Martin recorded it at the Bradley studio in Nashville on 30 October 1961, with Paul Craft on banjo and Owen Bradley producing, and it appeared on his 1962 Decca album Country Music Time. Tony Rice sang it on his 1977 Rounder album Tony Rice, recorded in Berkeley in July 1976 with J.D. Crowe, David Grisman, Jerry Douglas, Richard Greene and Todd Phillips. J.D. Crowe and the New South played it on their 1979 Live in Tokyo album. Earl Scruggs and Tom T. Hall put it on their 1982 Columbia album The Storyteller and the Banjoman, with Hall and Rodney Crowell singing. Other versions include Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys’ Live in Holland (1981) and Mac Wiseman’s Grassroots to Bluegrass (1990). A version by Grisman and Rice from tapes made in Mill Valley, California, was issued on The Gasoline Brothers.