“Drink Up and Go Home” is a barroom country song written by Freddie Hart, the California-based singer and songwriter best remembered for his early-1970s hit “Easy Loving.” Hart first recorded the number himself and released it in 1956.
The song is a closing-time scene: the narrator surveys the lonely drinkers around a tavern and counsels them, and himself, to drink up and head home rather than nurse their troubles any longer. Its plainspoken sympathy for the down-and-out gave it a long life well beyond Hart’s original country recording.
Bluegrass took the song up by way of Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys, who recorded it in 1961 for the album “Country Music Time.” Martin’s hard-edged delivery suited the lyric’s weary resignation, and the song has since been recorded by a range of artists, among them Tex Ritter and the duo of Jerry Garcia and David Grisman.
