“Short Life of Trouble” is a traditional old-time song of heartbreak and hard luck. Like much of the old-time repertoire it has no known author, and it was recorded by several of the great early hillbilly acts in the 1920s, among them the duos of Grayson and Whitter and of Burnett and Rutherford.
The lyric is a plain lament — a jilted lover reflecting that a life weighed down by such sorrow is bound to be short and full of trouble. That stark, fatalistic sentiment, common in the old mountain songs, gave it a quiet power.
The Stanley Brothers sang the song on their early radio broadcasts, and it became closely tied to Ralph Stanley, who made it the title track of a 1996 album devoted entirely to the songs of Grayson and Whitter.
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