“Tennessee Border” was written by Jimmy Work, a singer and songwriter born in Akron, Ohio, in 1924. He first recorded it in Detroit around October 1948, and it was issued on the Alben label (501) with “Jealous Heart Is Broken” on the other side.
The song is a courting story. Its singer describes a blue-eyed girl with auburn hair, her daddy’s only daughter, who lives down on the Tennessee border. He drives across the state line one night and picks her up in his pickup truck. Her mother refuses to give up her only daughter, but the two marry on the border anyway, and the last verse goes back to the roses and the moonlight of the night he fell for her.
Other singers had the hits with it in 1949. Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded it at Radio Recorders in Hollywood on 21 January 1949, with Merle Travis, Speedy West and Cliffie Stone in the band, for Capitol 15400. Red Foley cut it at Castle Studio in Nashville on 6 February 1949, with Grady Martin, Zeb Turner and Owen Bradley among the players and Paul Cohen producing, for Decca 46151, backed with “Candy Kisses.” Foley’s record reached No. 3 on Billboard’s country chart and Ford’s No. 8. A sequel, “Tennessee Border No. 2,” followed that November as a duet by Foley and Ernest Tubb (Decca 46200). Work was recording for Decca himself by 1949 and re-recorded “Tennessee Border” for the All label in 1959. A Hank Williams recording appeared on The Lonesome Sound of Hank Williams in 1960.
Bill Harrell & the Virginians recorded it in 1997 at Doobie Shea Studios in Boones Mill, Virginia, for The Cat Came Back (Rebel REB-CD 1742, 1998). Harrell, Mitch Harrell and Bobby Lundy sang, with Harrell on guitar, Lundy on banjo, Herschel Sizemore on mandolin, Carl Nelson on fiddle and Mike O’Ferrell on bass.
