Please Search Your Heart

Goble, who died in Michigan in 2018 at the age of 86, was among the busiest writers in bluegrass. Writing alone, with his longtime partner Leroy Drumm, or with Bobby Osborne, he produced songs such as “Big Spike Hammer,” “Tennessee 1949” and “Colleen Malone,” and in 2012 he estimated that he had written more than 700 songs, about 90 of which had been recorded. The IBMA gave him a Distinguished Achievement Award in 2002.

The singer is pleading with a woman who has left him. He admits he was in the wrong and says he has paid for it, and he asks her to search her heart for a reason to stay before it is too late. When she walked out he had claimed he would never be blue or cry if she found someone new; now he asks for one more try and begs her not to say goodbye.

Lawson and Crowe recorded it again in January 1983 at 1750 Arch Studios in Berkeley, California, as members of the Bluegrass Album Band, for The Bluegrass Album, Vol. 3: California Connection (Rounder). Tony Rice sang lead, Lawson tenor and Crowe baritone, with Bobby Hicks on fiddle, Jerry Douglas on Dobro and Todd Phillips on bass; the same album includes Goble’s “Big Spike Hammer.” Later versions include Jeff Autry’s on Foothills (Pinecastle, 1999), sung by Mickey Harris with Larry Stephenson on tenor, and IIIrd Tyme Out’s live recording at the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, with Russell Moore singing lead, on Back to the MAC (Rounder, 2001).