“Fox on the Run” was written by Tony Hazzard, a Liverpool-born songwriter who was supplying songs to British pop acts in the late 1960s. Manfred Mann had already recorded his “Ha! Ha! Said the Clown” in 1967. The group released “Fox on the Run” on Fontana (TF 985) on 29 November 1968, and the single entered the UK chart on Christmas Eve and peaked at No. 5 early in 1969. Talking to Bluegrass Today in 2016, Hazzard said the song came from an imagined scene: a blonde woman walking through a sunlit field of wheat that sloped down to a river. He wrote “corn” because it sang better. He also said the feel owed something to The Band, whom he admired at the time. Manfred Mann’s singer, Mike d’Abo, changed some of the words for the record.
The singer is the fox. A woman tempted him as Eve tempted Adam “in paradise’s hall,” took all the love he had, and left him to die like a hunted animal. In the last verse he drinks to old friends while “the hounds are at my door.”
Banjo player Bill Emerson heard the Manfred Mann version and recorded it with guitarist and singer Cliff Waldron. The track appeared on Emerson & Waldron’s Bluegrass Country (Rebel, 1970), recorded in 1969 at Unity Recording Studio in Washington, D.C. Waldron sang lead, Emerson tenor and Mike Auldridge baritone, and Auldridge also played dobro. Emerson then took the song back to the Country Gentlemen. They recorded it in February 1971 at R. D. Homer & Associates in Clinton, Maryland, for Sound Off (Rebel SLP 1501), with Charlie Waller singing lead, Jimmy Gaudreau tenor, Emerson baritone and Bill Yates the bass part.
Other early recordings include the Bluegrass Alliance’s on Tall Grass (Bridges, 1973). Tom T. Hall cut it for his bluegrass album The Magnificent Music Machine (Mercury, 1976). His single reached No. 9 on Billboard’s country chart and No. 12 in Canada. That same year Hazzard recorded the song himself, as a duet with Richard Barnes on a Warner Bros. single in the UK. Years later he added a verse of his own, about the day she led him through the corn, which he sings in concert.
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