Gathering Flowers from the Hillside

J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers, the North Carolina string band, recorded it in October 1946, and bluegrass musicians took it up in the 1950s. Bill Clifton cut it at RCA Victor’s Nashville studio in November 1956, with Ralph Stanley on banjo and Curley Lambert on mandolin, and Starday put it out as a single the following April; the Stanley Brothers played it on stage at Valley View Park in 1957, and Hylo Brown recorded it for Capitol in August 1958, with Red Rector singing lead, Brown on tenor and Tater Tate on baritone. In February 1961 Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs recorded it with Mother Maybelle Carter herself on autoharp for Songs of the Famous Carter Family, and in 1964 the Carter Family of Maybelle and her daughters Helen, June and Anita made it again for Columbia’s Keep On the Sunny Side, with Johnny Cash as their guest. Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper recorded it in 1976 for Sing the Carter Family’s Greatest Hits, with their daughter Carol Lee singing tenor.

Don Reno and Red Smiley recorded it at King’s studio in Cincinnati on October 26, 1959, and it came out in November 1960 on their LP Country Songs (King 701). Red Smiley sings lead with Don Reno on tenor, and Reno plays lead guitar on the session rather than banjo, alongside Smiley’s rhythm guitar, Ronnie Reno’s mandolin, Mack Magaha’s fiddle, John Palmer’s bass and Ray Pennington on drums.