“Jimmie Brown the Newsboy” began as a parlour song by William Shakespeare Hays, the Louisville, Kentucky, songwriter credited with some 350 songs. J.L. Peters of New York published it in 1875 as “Jimmie Brown,” subtitled “The Paper Boy,” for voice and piano with a chorus. Hays’s newsboy introduces himself to a passer-by: he is cold and hungry, his clothes are thin, his father was a drunkard and he sells papers to help his mother. In the last verse she tells him to pray, and when she has gone to heaven she will wait there to welcome him home.
The Carter Family recorded the song in Atlanta on 25 November 1929. Sara Carter played autoharp, Maybelle Carter played guitar, and the three of them sang. Victor issued it in May 1931 (Victor 23554), backed with “There’s Someone Awaiting for Me.” A.P. Carter rewrote some of the words, set them to a different melody and, as he usually did, took the songwriting credit. In the form that came down from the Carters the boy shouts his papers along the street with no hat on his head and no shoes on his feet. The last line now has him hoping for a place in heaven “to sell the gospel news.”
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs recorded it at Castle Studio in Nashville on 9 May 1951. Flatt sang, and Scruggs set the banjo aside and played guitar. Everett Lilly played mandolin, Chubby Wise fiddle and Jody Rainwater bass. Columbia released it on 11 June 1951 (Columbia 20830), with “Somehow Tonight” on the other side. A decade later, on 10 February 1961, Flatt and Scruggs cut it again with Maybelle Carter herself in the studio, for the LP Songs of the Famous Carter Family. Mac Wiseman recorded it in March 1959. Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys recorded it in November 1962, though their version wasn’t issued until 1965.
