“Don’t Lie to Me” is a hard-driving bluegrass number generally credited to singer and guitarist Red Allen, a Kentucky-born vocalist who came up through the bluegrass scene of the 1950s before leading bands of his own.
After settling in the Washington, D.C., area at the end of the 1950s, Allen joined forces with mandolinist Frank Wakefield, and the pair fronted a group billed as the Kentuckians. Their partnership, which ran into the mid-1960s, was known for a tight and aggressive brand of bluegrass; “Don’t Lie to Me” dates from that period and was captured on the band’s recordings of the early 1960s.
The song never became a jam-session standard on the order of the Allen–Wakefield band’s best-known material, but it has endured among musicians drawn to that hard-edged sound.
