“Gone Home” was written by Bill Carlisle, the Kentucky-born singer, guitarist and comedian (his stage character was “Hot Shot Elmer”) who recorded with his brother Cliff from 1933 and joined the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2002.
The song is a gospel song about loss. The singer’s friends have died one by one, as their work on earth was done, and the songbirds and an old weeping willow by the door seem to say that they have gone home. They have joined the heavenly fold and walk streets of gold. Life is lonely without them, but the last verse looks ahead to the trumpet on Judgment Day, when the singer will see them again. Each line of the refrain is answered by the words “they have gone home.”
Carl Story and his Rambling Mountaineers made the earliest known recording, on 23 September 1952, as a gospel quartet. Story sang lead, Red Rector tenor, Ray Atkins baritone and Claude Boone bass, with Story on guitar, Rector on mandolin, Atkins on dobro and Boone on bass. Mercury held it back until 26 January 1955, when it came out as “They Have Gone Home,” backed with “Follow Him.” Story recorded the song again several times, including on Songs for Our Saviour (1966) and with the Brewster Brothers on Just a Rose Will Do (1977).
Later that year Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys cut it at Bradley Studios in Nashville on 3 September 1955. It was a quartet record too: Flatt sang lead, Curly Seckler tenor, Scruggs baritone and Paul Warren bass. Scruggs played guitar alongside Chet Atkins, with Buck Graves on dobro and Bob Moore on bass. Columbia released it on 24 October 1955 with “Bubbling in My Soul” on the other side. Later recordings include Jim & Jesse’s (1990), Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder’s on Soldier of the Cross (1999), and the Osborne Brothers’ from June 2001, issued on Detroit to Wheeling (2003). The Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band recorded it in 1987 for Almost Acoustic.
