“Let That Liar Alone” is a gospel song that entered the recorded tradition in 1927, in a version by the Reverend Edward W. Clayborn, a singer billed as “the Guitar Evangelist” who recorded a body of gospel-blues for Vocalion in the late 1920s. The song’s lineage runs through both the African American sacred tradition and Anglo-American country music.
The lyric is a plain moral warning, set to a driving gospel rhythm: a caution to keep clear of the liar and the slanderer, and to leave such a person to answer for himself. That direct, hard-edged message gave the song a place in both church singing and the secular country repertoire.
The Carter Family recorded a version, titled “You Better Let That Liar Alone,” helping carry it into country tradition. The version heard here is by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, the pioneering duo whose recordings did much to bring old-time and bluegrass material to new audiences.
