The lyric belongs to the “mother song” tradition that ran strong through early country and bluegrass — a tender remembrance of a mother now gone, with images of an angel coming for her on a dark and stormy night and of flowers blooming at her grave. That kind of frank, deeply felt sentiment was central to the Stanley Brothers’ appeal.

Sung in the brothers’ high, mournful mountain harmony, “Memories of Mother” became part of their lasting body of work and a representative example of the sentimental side of the early bluegrass repertoire.