“Highway of Sorrow” is credited to Bill Monroe and Pete Pyle. Pyle was born Raymond H. Pyle in Burnsville, Mississippi, in 1920. He joined Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in September 1941, and the Mississippi Country Music Trail credits him with writing both “True Life Blues” and “Highway of Sorrow” while he was in the band. The Country Music Hall of Fame holds a 1974 oral-history interview with him that lists “Highway of Sorrow” among his songwriting credits.
The lyric is a confession. The singer had a kind, true wife, but he fell for another woman and went astray. He went back and got down on his knees and begged his wife to ease his heart, but she was hurt too deeply to forgive him. He ends by saying he is traveling the highway of sorrow alone, with his friends and his home lost, headed for destruction on the wrong track, with no turning back.
Monroe recorded the song at Castle Studio, in the Tulane Hotel in Nashville, on 23 April 1951. The Bluegrass Discography lists Monroe on mandolin and lead vocal, Grady Martin on electric guitar, Jack Shook on guitar, Rudy Lyle on banjo, Hal Smith on fiddle, Ernie Newton on bass and Ferris Coursey on drums. Decca issued it on 15 October 1951 as Decca 46369, backed with “Sugar Coated Love.”
Del McCoury and the Dixie Pals included it on High on a Mountain (Rounder, 1973). The Johnson Mountain Boys recorded it for Live at the Birchmere (Rounder), Doc Watson for Riding the Midnight Train (Sugar Hill, 1986), and Tim O’Brien for True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe (Sugar Hill, 1996).
