“Mansions for Me” is a gospel song by Bill Monroe. Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys recorded it on 16 September 1946 at the WBBM radio studios in Chicago. Lester Flatt sang lead and Monroe tenor, with Earl Scruggs on banjo, Robert “Chubby” Wise on fiddle and Howard Watts, known as Cedric Rainwater, on bass. Columbia released it on 24 March 1947 on two 78s, numbered 37294 and 20107, with “Mother’s Only Sleeping,” cut at the same session, on the other side. Columbia reissued the coupling in 1954 as 54013.
The song contrasts the singer with his neighbours, who are building houses “as sweet as can be,” levelling their yards and planting trees. He will leave his “little hut” as it is, because Jesus is building him a mansion, “built by my Lord beyond Calvary.” In the verses he gets ready to go, cleansing his sins “more whiter than snow” and packing his troubles. He tells those with homes in this world and fine cars to drive that a time is coming when everyone will pass away.
Red Allen recorded it in 1953 at the Gateway studio in Cincinnati for the Kentucky label, as the B-side of “White Dove.” The Stanley Brothers sang it at a Friends of Old Time Music concert at New York University on 30 November 1962, with Carter Stanley singing lead and Ralph tenor. That performance was issued by Smithsonian Folkways in 2006. Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice recorded it as a mandolin-and-guitar duet for Skaggs & Rice (Sugar Hill, 1980). Bobby Osborne cut it in Nashville in 2005 for Try a Little Kindness, with Rhonda Vincent among the singers. Skaggs returned to it with Kentucky Thunder on Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 and 1947 (2008).
