“Goodbye Old Pal” is a cowboy lament with a yodel. The singer’s best pal is “my old paint horse.” He died along about round-up time and lies buried “in Texas away out West,” where the cactus blooms over his grave and the coyotes cry. The singer wept over the mound. Now he will ride the range on a Texas roan, though he promises to think of his old pal “although you’re dead and gone.” Between verses comes a wordless yodel refrain.
A song of this title was on record by the mid-1930s. Cliff Carlisle, the Kentucky steel guitarist and yodeler, recorded “Goodbye Old Pal” at the American Record Corporation’s New York studio on 29 August 1934. He sang, yodeled and played steel, with Bill Carlisle on guitar. Art Satherley produced the session. It appeared in February 1935 on Melotone with “Valley of Peace” on the reverse, and also on Banner, Oriole, Romeo and Perfect. Discographers of Jerry Garcia’s early music credit the song to Carlisle, “written by (or adapted from an earlier song by)” him. Bill Monroe’s records, and most of the bluegrass versions that followed, credit Monroe.
Monroe recorded it for Columbia at radio station WBBM in Chicago on 13 February 1945, singing it himself. The Blue Grass Boys that day included Tex Willis on guitar, Chubby Wise on fiddle, David “Stringbean” Akeman on banjo, Sally Ann Forrester on accordion and Cedric Rainwater on bass. Columbia held the side until 22 September 1947 and then issued it as 20370, coupled with “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Two months before the record appeared, in July 1947, the Stanley Brothers sang it on their WCYB broadcast in Bristol, Virginia, with Pee Wee Lambert singing lead. Monroe recorded it again for Decca in Nashville on 15 May 1957, with three fiddlers, Joe Stuart, Gordon Terry and Dale Potter, and Don Stover on banjo. Decca opened his 1958 LP Knee Deep in Blue Grass with it.
In 1964 the Charles River Valley Boys recorded it with Tex Logan on fiddle and Joe Val on mandolin for Blue Grass Get Together (Prestige/Folklore). That summer Jerry Garcia played it with the Asphalt Jungle Mountain Boys, a recording issued in 2018 on Before the Dead. Joe Val returned to it with his New England Bluegrass Boys on Not a Word from Home (Rounder, 1977). Peter Rowan sang it on The First Whippoorwill (Sugar Hill, 1985), backed by Bill Keith, Sam Bush and Richard Greene. Michael Cleveland’s Flame Keeper (Rounder, 2002) has Audie Blaylock singing lead, with Jesse Brock on mandolin, Tom Adams on banjo and Jason Moore on bass. Balsam Range recorded it on Marching Home (Mountain Home, 2007), sung by Buddy Melton.
