“Mountain Laurel” was written by Randall Hylton, one of the most prolific songwriters in bluegrass. The Bluegrass Cardinals recorded it in 1979 on their album “Cardinal Soul.”
The song takes the mountain laurel — the flowering shrub of the southern Appalachians — as its central image, tying the blossom to a memory of home, of the hills, and of a love bound up with that place.
The song became one of Hylton’s better-known compositions.
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