“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.
