“My Little Georgia Rose” is a Bill Monroe song, credited to him alone, and it was among the first things he recorded for Decca. His Blue Grass Boys’ first Decca session was on 3 February 1950 at Castle Studio in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel, with Jimmy Martin on guitar, Rudy Lyle on banjo, Vassar Clements on fiddle and Joel Price on bass. Monroe sang this one alone and played mandolin. The same session gave him “New Mule Skinner Blues,” “Blue Grass Ramble” and “Alabama Waltz.” Decca paired “New Mule Skinner Blues” with “My Little Georgia Rose” on Decca 46222, issued on 13 March 1950.
It tells a girl’s story rather than the singer’s. She livesrsquo;s story. She lives “way down in the Blue Ridge Mountains,” a rose that bloomed in Georgia, with golden hair. As a baby she was left by her mother “with another,” because the mother had planned a carefree life; the baby has grown into a lady, “the one her mother couldn’t stand.” The singer is her sweetheart. They sing old songs together, and she smiles when he tells her so.
Monroe recorded it a second time on 26 June 1954, with Edd Mayfield on guitar, Jim Smoak on banjo and three fiddles (Charlie Cline, Red Taylor and Gordon Terry). That take stayed unissued until 1966, when it opened the album The High, Lonesome Sound of Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys (Decca DL 4780). Others took it up as “Little Georgia Rose” or just “Georgia Rose.” Stringbean recorded it for Starday (Old Time Banjo Pickin’ & Singin’, 1961). Hylo Brown sang it with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers on 24 November 1962, for Hylo Brown Meets the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers (Starday, 1963). The Seldom Scene cut it on 15 July 1973 for Act 3 (Rebel, 1973), with John Duffey singing lead, John Starling and Mike Auldridge in harmony, and Ben Eldridge on lead guitar instead of banjo. Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass recorded it as “She’s My Little Georgia Rose.”
