“Hello City Limits” was first recorded by Red Allen and the Kentuckians and released as a 7″ single on the Glenmar label in 1965, paired with “Flowers by My Graveside.” The recording also appears on the 1965 Melodeon album Solid Bluegrass Sound of the Kentuckians, alongside “Sad and Lonesome Day” and “Those Gone and Left Me Blues.”
The song was written by Johnny Elgin and Benny Martin — Martin being the Grand Ole Opry fiddle player and occasional bandleader who was also a prolific songwriter in the bluegrass and country circuits. The Red Allen/Kentuckians lineups of the early 1960s — with mandolinist Frank Wakefield in the band’s most-celebrated configuration — produced a small but influential recorded catalogue, including the now-canonical 1964 Folkways album Bluegrass. By 1965 the working band had shifted somewhat, but Allen’s hard mountain lead vocal and the band’s tight high-trio harmony remained the consistent identity through the period.
The lyric is a leaving-town piece in the older country tradition: the narrator finally pulling out, watching the city limits sign recede in the rear-view mirror, the woman behind him gone and not coming back. Allen’s vocal phrasing is what most contemporary pickers reference.
