“I Wonder How the Old Folks Are at Home” was published in 1909 as a sheet-music song, with words by Herbert S. Lambert and music by F. W. Vandersloot, whose Vandersloot Music Publishing Company was based in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. One discography dates the earliest recording to an Edison cylinder by Will Oakland around 1910. Jackson County Ramblers recorded it in 1930 and Karl & Harty in 1932.
The words are those of a man who left the family farm and wonders whether the old people at home miss him and pray for him. He pictures the cattle in the lane, the bluegrass fields where he grew up, the parents who kissed him goodbye, and a mother’s love on the homestead. The Carter Family recorded it in 1929 as “The Homestead on the Farm,” and that title and the original have been used side by side ever since. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs took it up under the Carter title on Songs of the Famous Carter Family (Columbia, 1961), recorded in Nashville on 10 February 1961.
Mac Wiseman recorded it in March 1952 at the WHIN radio studio in Gallatin, Tennessee, with Oscar Sullivan on mandolin, Stringbean Akeman on banjo, Tommy Jackson on fiddle and Ernie Newton on bass. Dot issued it in August 1952 (Dot 1115) as the B-side of “You’re the Girl of My Dreams.” The Bluegrass Discography credits A. P. Carter as composer on that single. A bluegrass-focused jam page notes that bluegrass players generally follow Wiseman’s chords and melody rather than the Carter Family’s. Wiseman returned to the song with the Osborne Brothers on The Essential Bluegrass Album (CMH, 1979).
Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys recorded it on 18 February 1973 at Lemco Recording Studios in Lexington, Kentucky, for Stanley Sound Around the World (King Bluegrass, 1973). Larry Sparks recorded it for Ramblin’ Letters (Tin Ear, 1981).
