“Little White Washed Chimney” is a sentimental song carried into bluegrass by Bill Clifton, the singer and song collector who did much to preserve older country and old-time material within the music. Clifton recorded it as a single in the late 1950s with his band the Dixie Mountain Boys.
The lyric is a piece of homesick nostalgia, built around a tender image — the little whitewashed chimney of a remembered home place, and the memories of family and childhood that cling to it. That kind of soft, backward-looking sentiment was a thread Clifton drew through much of his repertoire.
Bill Clifton was unusual among his bluegrass contemporaries for his deep interest in half-forgotten old songs, and “Little White Washed Chimney” became one of the numbers most associated with him — a small hit in its day and a lasting part of the bluegrass repertoire.
