“Little Cabin Home on the Hill” came out of Bill Monroe’s band in the years when Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs were in it. Bluegrass Discography credits the song to Monroe alone; SecondHandSongs credits Monroe and Flatt. SecondHandSongs also lists it as based on Will S. Hays’s “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” a minstrel song of 1871 whose melody turned up in many later songs.
The singer is alone in the cabin he shared with the woman he loved. Someone has taken her from him, and he sits listening to the rain beat on the window pane. He hopes she is happy, but he keeps his longing for her so that he won’t be alone. In the last verse he asks that, if she comes to the end of the way and finds no more happiness, she let her thoughts turn back to their little cabin home on the hill.
Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys recorded it for Columbia at the CBS studio of radio station WBBM in Chicago’s Wrigley Building, on 27 October 1947, with Art Satherley producing. Flatt sang lead and played guitar, Monroe sang tenor and played mandolin, and the band was Earl Scruggs on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle and Howard Watts on bass. That day’s session also produced “I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky,” “I Hear a Sweet Voice Calling” and “Blue Grass Breakdown.” Columbia issued it on 12 July 1948 on Columbia 20459, backed with “I Hear a Sweet Voice Calling.” By then Flatt and Scruggs had left Monroe, early in 1948, and soon formed the Foggy Mountain Boys.
Sonny Osborne recorded it as “Cabin Home on the Hill” at Gateway Studio in Cincinnati in November 1952, and it appeared on Kentucky 608 in 1953. Earl Taylor and His Bluegrass Mountaineers used the same title on Blue Grass Taylor Made (Capitol, 1964). Elvis Presley recorded it as “Little Cabin on the Hill” on 4 June 1970 for Elvis Country (I’m 10,000 Years Old). Billy Strings sang it with Terry Barber on Me/And/Dad (Rounder, 2022), with Ronnie McCoury on mandolin, Rob McCoury on banjo and Michael Cleveland on fiddle.
