“Preachin’, Prayin’, Singin’” was written by E. C. McCarty and published by Acuff-Rose. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs recorded it with the Foggy Mountain Boys on 20 October 1950, at a Mercury session held in the studio of radio station WDAE in Tampa, Florida. The band then was Flatt, Scruggs, Benny Sims, Curly Seckler and Jody Rainwater, and the same day produced “Doin’ My Time,” “Pike County Breakdown” and “Salty Dog Blues.”
They treated the song as a gospel quartet. Flatt sang lead, Seckler tenor, Scruggs baritone and Sims bass, and the accompaniment was pared down to two guitars, Flatt’s and Scruggs’s, with Rainwater on bass; there is no banjo on the record. Mercury held it for almost two years, releasing it on 13 October 1952 as Mercury 70016, backed with “Will the Roses Bloom (Where She Lies Sleeping).”
The song is sung by a traveller passing through a town who comes upon a crowd worshipping in the public square. He means to keep going, but a voice welcomes him in, and he stays and feels at home among people who have gathered from all around to sing and to set their troubles aside. Travelling on at the end of the day, he comes away sure that these people know how a life should be lived.
Red Allen recorded it within a year, cutting it at the Gateway studio in Cincinnati for a 1953 Kentucky single, on the back of “Paul & Silas.” In 1989 the Bluegrass Album Band recorded it at Bias Recorders in Falls Church, Virginia, for The Bluegrass Album, Vol. 5: Sweet Sunny South (Rounder), with Tony Rice singing lead, Doyle Lawson and J. D. Crowe in the harmony, and Vassar Clements, Jerry Douglas and Mark Schatz added on fiddle, Dobro and bass. Herb Pedersen’s Laurel Canyon Ramblers included it on Blue Rambler 2 (Sugar Hill, 1996). Charlie Daniels sang it with Ricky Skaggs and the Whites on Songs from the Longleaf Pines (Koch, 2004), on which Earl Scruggs played banjo, and Daniels took its title for a live DVD, Preachin’, Prayin’, Singin’: Live from Nashville, in 2008. Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road recorded it for True Grass Again (Pinecastle, 2018).
