Stone Walls and Steel Bars

“Stone Walls and Steel Bars” was written by Ray Pennington and Roy Marcum. Pennington, born in Clay County, Kentucky, in 1933, was a singer, songwriter and record producer who began in an Ohio western swing band, signed with King Records in 1958 and then worked at the label as a producer and artists-and-repertoire man, producing the Stanley Brothers and Reno and Smiley. The Stanley Brothers recorded the song for King on 26 July 1963 at the King studio in Cincinnati, at a session that also produced “Train 45,” “Shout Little Lulie” and “Lonesome Night.” Carter Stanley sang lead, with Ralph Stanley on banjo, George Shuffler on guitar, Henry Dockery on bass and Ralph Mayo on fiddle. King issued it as a single, with “Lonesome Night” on the other side, and put it on the LP Country Folk Music Spotlight.