“The Children Are Crying,” also known as “Calling Your Name,” was recorded by Earl Taylor and his Stoney Mountain Boys in 1959 for an album of bluegrass songs presented by the folklorist Alan Lomax.
The song is a sorrowful picture of a broken home. With a parent gone, through death or desertion, the children are left crying, calling a name that will not answer; the lyric stays with the grief of a family pulled apart.
The song carried into the wider bluegrass repertoire.
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