“It Won’t Be Long” is a bluegrass song credited to the songwriter Johnny Anderson and recorded by Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys during the first half of the 1950s. It appeared on their landmark 1957 album “Foggy Mountain Jamboree.”
The lyric is one of hopeful waiting — a singer counting the time until he is reunited with the one he loves, sure that it won’t be long now. That note of expectant longing, set against the band’s bright, banjo-driven drive, was a familiar register for Flatt and Scruggs.
“Foggy Mountain Jamboree,” the album that gathered this and eleven other tracks, is widely regarded as one of the most influential records in bluegrass, a virtual blueprint for the music. “It Won’t Be Long” has remained part of the Flatt and Scruggs repertoire ever since.
