Little Maggie

The singer sees Maggie standing over yonder with a dram glass in her hand, drinking away her troubles and courting another man. He insists she was made for him, as flowers were made for blooming and stars for shining. He last saw her on the bank of the sea with a forty-four around her and a banjo on her knee. In the end he sends her away: he’ll find another woman, and she can find another man.

G. B. Grayson, a fiddler and singer, and the guitarist Henry Whitter made the first recording, as “Little Maggie with a Dram Glass in Her Hand,” in Victor’s New York studio on 1 August 1928; it was issued on Victor 40135. The Stanley Brothers recorded it at the studio of radio station WOPI in Bristol, Virginia, around February 1948 (Bluegrass Discography dates the session to 1947). Ralph Stanley sang lead and played banjo, with Carter Stanley on guitar, Pee Wee Lambert on mandolin and Leslie Keith on fiddle. Rich-R-Tone issued it in April 1948 on Rich-R-Tone 423, backed with “The Little Glass of Wine.” The brothers cut it again for Starday in June 1960 at Magnum Studio in Jacksonville, Florida, and it opened the anthology Banjo Jamboree Spectacular in 1961. After Carter’s death on 1 December 1966, Ralph kept the song with his Clinch Mountain Boys. It is on Live in Japan (Seven Seas, 1971) and on Play Requests (Rebel, 1972).

Other early recordings include Obray Ramsey’s, which opens Banjo Songs of the Southern Mountains (Riverside, 1956), and Larry Richardson’s on American Banjo Tunes & Songs in Scruggs Style (Folkways, 1957). Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys put it on Folk Songs from the Blue Grass (United Artists, 1959).