“Little Bessie” is a deathbed song. For most of it the dying girl speaks to her mother. She asks to be held close because she is cold and tired and something presses on her chest like a stone; she says she lay patiently all day, and that just before the lamps were lit she heard someone call her name and tell her to come up where children never suffer. The last two verses step back: on her mother’s breast little Bessie falls asleep, and she is now looked after by her Savior at the gates of heaven.
The Blue Sky Boys, the brothers Earl and Bill Bolick, recorded it on 25 January 1938 at the Hotel Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, Earl singing lead and playing guitar and Bill singing harmony and playing mandolin. Bluebird issued it in February 1939 as B-8017, backed with “We Buried Her.” In 1961 two bluegrass groups cut it within weeks of each other. The Country Gentlemen recorded it on 19 March at Capitol Transcriptions in Washington, D.C., with Charlie Waller on guitar, Eddie Adcock on banjo, John Duffey on mandolin and Tom Gray on bass, and it came out that June on the Folkways album Sing and Play Folk Songs and Bluegrass. The Stanley Brothers had recorded it earlier, in early February 1961 at the King studio in Cincinnati: Carter Stanley sang lead and played guitar, Ralph Stanley sang tenor and played banjo, Curley Lambert played mandolin, Vernon Derrick fiddle and Chick Stripling bass. King released it on a single on 15 May 1961, backed with “Village Church Yard,” and on the album Old Time Camp Meeting in April 1962.
Ricky Skaggs recorded his own arrangement for Ancient Tones (Skaggs Family Records, 1999), with Bryan Sutton on guitar, Mark Fain on bass and Mary Alice Hoepfinger on harp, and Dwight McCall included it on Never Say Never Again (Rural Rhythm, 2007).
