Hot Rize
I’m Gonna Sleep With One Eye Open
In Concert (1984) Bluegrass Discography
“I’m Gonna Sleep with One Eye Open” is associated with Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys’ 1955 Columbia recording — the version most contemporary bluegrass listeners reference. The song belongs to the lighter register of the F&S working catalogue from the band’s mid-1950s Columbia period, when the recordings settled into the Foggy Mountain sound that would define the rest of the decade.
The lyric is a wry, bemused-jealousy text: the narrator’s woman has been seen around town, he is no longer trusting her sleeping habits, and he is going to start sleeping with one eye open to keep tabs on her. It belongs to the lighter-touch register of Flatt’s lead writing — not a hard heartbreak text, but a domestic-suspicion comedy in the Roy Acuff/early-bluegrass tradition.
The song became a regular call in bluegrass and country sets through the 1960s and 1970s and has been covered by Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Marty Stuart, and Ricky Skaggs. The harmonic shape is straightforwardly traditional, the tempo is brisk, and Scruggs’s banjo break out of the kickoff is the element most cover bands try to replicate. It works as a comfortable up-tempo vocal piece in G with a strong tenor harmony slot on the chorus.
