“The Girl I Love Don’t Pay Me No Mind” was written by the Tennessee fiddler Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith, who recorded it with his trio in 1937. Smith was an influential old-time fiddler whose tunes spread widely through country and early bluegrass.
The song is a gentle complaint of unrequited love. The singer courts a young woman who simply will not notice him; he keeps coming around, and she keeps paying him no mind, and the lyric makes a wry, good-natured tune out of being ignored.
Flatt and Scruggs took the song into their repertoire, and the Earls of Leicester, a band devoted to recreating the Flatt and Scruggs sound, carry it on.
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