“Hot Corn, Cold Corn” is a traditional song. A rhyme called “Bring On Your Hot Corn” appears in Thomas W. Talley’s Negro Folk Rhymes (Macmillan, 1922), a collection by a Fisk University professor: “Bring along yo’ hot co’n, bring along yo’ col’ co’n,” with the thing to bring along being a “Jimmy-john,” which Talley glosses as a whiskey jug. The song as bluegrass bands sing it keeps the jug as a “demijohn” and strings together short comic verses over a repeated line: Uncle Bill is out in the kitchen raring and pitching, Aunt Peggy is asked to fill them up again, and the preacher is coming while the children cry and the chickens run.
Asa Martin and Roy Hobbs recorded “Hot Corn” in Richmond, Indiana, on 19 October 1932 for the Gennett studio (issued on Champion 16520), and Martin recorded it again with James Roberts, Doc Roberts on mandolin, for ARC in New York on 30 August 1934.
Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys performed it at Carnegie Hall on 8 December 1962, and it was issued on At Carnegie Hall! (Columbia, 1963). The Bluegrass Discography credits Flatt on lead vocal and guitar, Scruggs on banjo, Paul Warren on fiddle, Josh “Buck” Graves on bass and Billy Powers on guitar, with Jake Tullock among the harmony singers, and lists the composers as Akeman, L. Flatt and E. Scruggs. Don Reno, Bill Harrell and the Tennessee Cut-Ups recorded it for Rural Rhythm in 1967. Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass performed it at Flatt’s own Bluegrass Festival at Pinnacle, North Carolina, in June 1977. The band Here Today (Vince Gill, Herb Pedersen, David Grisman, Jim Buchanan and Emory Gordy Jr.) cut it in January 1982 at Group IV Studios in Hollywood for the Rounder album Here Today, and Jerry Garcia and David Grisman included it on Not for Kids Only (Acoustic Disc).
