“Tennessee 1949” was written by Pete Goble and Leroy Drumm, the partnership behind “Colleen Malone,” which won the IBMA Song of the Year award in 1991 after Hot Rize recorded it. Goble was born in 1932 and grew up in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, before moving to Detroit in 1948, where he worked at Great Lakes Steel until he retired. Drumm was born in 1936 in Algonac, Michigan. Goble was introduced to Drumm in a Detroit bar in 1961, and the two began writing together about ten years later. Goble ran his own publishing company, Brandy Keg Music, and it is the publisher credited on this song.
The song is a look back at a home town in Tennessee as it was in 1949. The narrator, long gone, wonders whether it is raining in the mountains, whether the church still stands beside the river, whether the old men still sit and talk about the old days, and whether he could find the place where his mother is buried. He asks whether anyone would remember the teenage boy who loved guitars and country music, and he remembers the girl who broke his heart when he was seventeen. The last verse says he has spent many years searching the world for something he cannot recall, and is now searching his memory instead.
Bill Emerson and Pete Goble recorded it for their album Tennessee 1949 (Webco, 1987) at Webco Studio in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with Goble singing lead and Emerson on banjo and baritone vocal, joined by Jeff Tuttle on mandolin, Bryan Smith on bass, Joe Meadows on fiddle and Mike Auldridge on dobro. Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers recorded it on 30 October 1986 at Chandler Audio in Ashland, Kentucky, and opened side one of Silver Reflections (Rebel, 1987) with it. Sparks sang lead and played guitar, with Barry Crabtree on banjo, David Harvey on mandolin, Art Stamper on fiddle and Tim Sargent on dobro. Rebel has reissued Sparks’s recording on several collections, including The Best of Larry Sparks: Bound to Ride (2008).
