“Say Won’t You Be Mine” was written by Carter Stanley. The Stanley Brothers recorded it for Mercury on 9 August 1953 at Universal Studio in Nashville, with Carter singing lead and Ralph Stanley the tenor part; Ralph played banjo, Carter guitar, Jim Williams mandolin, Art Stamper fiddle and George Shuffler bass. Mercury issued it on 3 November 1953 as the A side of a single (70270) coupled with “Our Last Goodbye.”
The song is told by a man who left his sweetheart behind and has been rambling for a long time. He hears the night birds crying and a lonesome dove, and he calls her back, asking her to meet him on the mountain under the lonesome pine, among the blooming laurels, where the two of them promised to love each other in childhood. By the last verse he has prayed many times to see her and is on his way home.
Later bluegrass musicians kept it in circulation as a Stanley Brothers number. The Country Gentlemen recorded it in 1988 at Masterworks in Fairfax, Virginia, with John Duffey on lead, for their 1989 Sugar Hill reunion album Classic Country Gents Reunion. Ricky Skaggs, with Peter Rowan, included it on Family & Friends (Rounder, 1982) and again on Songs of the Stanley Brothers (1997), and Blue Highway recorded it for It’s a Long Long Road (Rebel, 1995). In 1996 Ralph Stanley II and John Rigsby recorded it for Clinch Mountain Echoes (Copper Creek), and Ralph Stanley himself cut it for Sixteen Years (Copper Creek, 1996).
