“I Hope You Have Learned” is credited to Bill Carrigan and Eugene Butler. Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys recorded it on 28 November 1953 at Castle Studio in the Tulane Hotel, Nashville. Jimmy Martin sang lead and played guitar, and Monroe sang tenor and played mandolin. Rudy Lyle played banjo, Charlie Cline fiddle and Ernie Newton bass. Decca released it on 8 March 1954 as Decca 29009, paired with “Wishing Waltz.”
The singer is in prison. He was jealous and could not stand to see her with another man, and he says she drove him to the crime. The judge has made him pay. He has been gone only a year and she has already forgotten him, while every minute in his cell feels like a day. He wonders whether she will be waiting when he is free. In the last verse he hopes she will learn some day and come back broken-hearted, but he warns her that if she waits, it may be too late.
The Stanley Brothers were singing it on stage in 1957. A show at New River Ranch in Rising Sun, Maryland, on 1 June 1957 was later issued by Copper Creek on Shadows of the Past (1981). On it Carter Stanley sings lead and Ralph Stanley tenor, with Curley Lambert on mandolin, Chubby Anthony on fiddle and Jack Cooke on bass. Del McCoury and the Dixie Pals recorded it in Nashville on 9 August 1971, with Buddy Spicher and Jimmy Buchanan on fiddles. It was issued on Collector’s Special (Grassound, 1976) and later on Rebel’s Livin’ on the Mountain (1992).
Tony Rice recorded it for Manzanita (Rounder 0092, 1979), credited to the Tony Rice Unit and recorded in January and February 1978 at 1750 Arch Studios in Berkeley, California. Rice sang lead and played guitar; Ricky Skaggs, on fiddle, sang tenor. Sam Bush played mandolin, Jerry Douglas dobro and Todd Phillips bass. Skaggs came back to the song as “I Hope You’ve Learned” with Kentucky Thunder on Bluegrass Rules! (Rounder, 1997), singing lead with Paul Brewster on harmony. That album won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. Donna Ulisse included the song on Showin’ My Roots (Hadley Music Group, 2013).
