Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys
I Don’t Care Anymore
Single: I Don’t Care Anymore (1958) Bluegrass Discography
“I Don’t Care Anymore” was written by Tompall Glaser, the Nebraska-born country singer best known as the leader of Tompall & the Glaser Brothers and as a key Outlaw Country figure of the 1970s. The song was first recorded by Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1958 — one of several Glaser pieces that crossed into bluegrass through the F&S working repertoire of the late 1950s.
The recording most often cited today is Lester Flatt’s 1976 reading with the Nashville Grass on the CMH album A Living Legend (CMH-9002) — the version associated with this entry. By 1976 Flatt was nearly two decades past the Foggy Mountain Boys split with Earl Scruggs and was leading the Nashville Grass with Marty Stuart on mandolin and a strong working band. The Living Legend recording is one of the more confident late-period Flatt sides.
The lyric is a hard heartbreak text: the narrator past the point of caring, past begging, past expecting anything from a woman who has long since stopped meeting him halfway. It works as a moderate-tempo singer’s piece in the harder traditional bluegrass register, and the Karl Shiflett band, the Earls of Leicester, and a long list of festival acts have continued to cover it. The harmonic shape is straightforwardly traditional with a memorable tag line.
