Musicians
- Carter Stanley — Guitar
- Bill Napier — Mandolin
- Ralph Stanley — Banjo
- Jack Cooke — Bass
“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.
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