Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys
Take Me in a Lifeboat
Single: Pain in my Heart (1951) Bluegrass Discography
“Take Me in Your Lifeboat” (also “Lifeboat”) is a Southern gospel song from the older revival-and-quartet tradition, with the maritime-as-spiritual conceit that runs through “Drifting Too Far from the Shore,” “Harbor of Love,” and similar pieces. The lyric works through a single image: the singer drowning in life’s storm, calling to Jesus to take him into the lifeboat that will carry him to the further shore.
The song’s authorship and exact dating are not consistently documented in the publicly available sources, but the piece appears in print and on early commercial recordings from the 1920s and 1930s. The song was carried widely through the Southern gospel quartet world of the mid-20th century before crossing into bluegrass through the Stanley Brothers, the Lewis Family, and other gospel-leaning bluegrass acts.
The Bluegrass Album Band’s Vol. 2 reading from 1982 — the version associated with this entry — is one of the more frequently cited contemporary bluegrass recordings. The supergroup’s tight traditional arrangement and Tony Rice’s lead vocal give the song the burnished surface that defined the Bluegrass Album Band project. It works as a moderate-tempo gospel quartet piece in G with a strong four-part harmony slot on the chorus refrain.
