Album
Musicians
- James Monroe — Guitar
- Bill Monroe — Mandolin
- Jack Hicks — Banjo
- Kenny Baker — Fiddle
- Tommy Williams — Fiddle
- Monroe Fields — Bass
“Love Please Come Home” was written by Leon Jackson, a banjo player born on 20 May 1927 in Hackleburg, Alabama. He recorded it for King with Johnny Bryant, from nearby Haleyville, as Leon Jackson & Johnny Bryant & the White Oak Mountain Boys. King’s notes introducing the group said the two were then working in Detroit and named Jackson as its banjo player and tenor singer. The session took place at King’s studio in Cincinnati, with Jackson on banjo and both men singing. The record came out in January 1957 on King 45-5011, backed with Jackson’s instrumental “Buttahatchee.” In 1961 the small Blue Grass Special label reissued both sides on an EP.
The lyric is set out as a letter. The writer asks to be forgiven, begs a sweetheart to come home that night and promises to treat her right. The last verse moves to the house left behind: the wind is cold, the fire is burning low, snow covers the ground, and “our baby’s hungry, sick and cold.”
Don Reno and Red Smiley recorded it on 28 June 1960, also at King in Cincinnati. Smiley sang lead and Reno tenor, with Ronnie Reno on mandolin, Mack Magaha on fiddle and John Palmer on bass. King released it in August 1961 as “Love Oh Love, Oh Please Come Home” (45-5520), with “Double Eagle” on the other side.
Bill Monroe’s band recorded it on 15 March 1972 at Bradley’s Barn in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, with his son James Monroe singing lead and Bill singing tenor. It appeared on their 1973 MCA album Father & Son. In October 1973 Old & In the Way (Peter Rowan, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Vassar Clements and John Kahn) played it at the Boarding House in San Francisco. That performance was issued in 1996 on That High Lonesome Sound. Doc Watson’s 1976 album Doc & the Boys has it with Bob Hill singing lead. Del McCoury sang it on the third Will the Circle Be Unbroken volume in 2002.
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