The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys
Going to the Races
Shadows of the Past (1957) Bluegrass Discography
Musicians
“Goin’ to the Races” was written by Carter Stanley backstage at a bluegrass show at Watermelon Park in Berryville, Virginia on August 18, 1957. By the standard account, Stanley sketched the lyric and chord shape in a matter of minutes and handed it to the still-young Country Gentlemen. The Gentlemen self-produced and pressed several hundred copies of the resulting 45 in September 1957, with a John Duffey gospel piece on the B-side — the first record under the band’s name.
Stanley fashioned the song largely from older material, drawing most directly on “Let Her Go, God Bless Her,” a mid-1930s string-band hit for J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers. The 1957 Country Gentlemen recording is the version most contemporary pickers reference; it has a distinct first-pressing, hand-distributed character that makes it valued among collectors as well as players.
The lyric is a defiant farewell to a wandering lover — the narrator cutting his losses and going to the races rather than chasing her any further — in the same broad family of brisk-tempo refusal songs as “Don’t This Road Look Rough and Rocky.” The harmonic shape is straightforwardly traditional and three-chord, and the song is a comfortable up-tempo singer’s piece for any band that wants a Country Gentlemen-era piece in the set.
