“The Girl I Love Don’t Pay Me No Mind” is credited to the fiddler Arthur Smith, who was born in 1898 near Bold Springs, Tennessee, and who formed his band the Dixieliners with the McGee Brothers in the 1930s. The first recording listed by SecondHandSongs is by the Arthur Smith Trio, which was Smith with the Delmore Brothers; Bluebird issued it on a 78 (B-6913) in April 1937. Smith had made his first records with the Delmore Brothers for Bluebird in January 1935.
The lyric is a lover’s plea that goes sour. The singer asks a sweetheart who pays him no attention to put her hand in his, then says she has left town, bound for Alabama. By the last verse he has decided she is sorry for what she did and pictures her coming back with her head bowed down.
Lester Flatt sang it on Charlie Monroe’s radio broadcasts in 1944, singing tenor to Monroe’s lead, and Hylo Brown recorded it live at New River Ranch in Rising Sun, Maryland, on 9 August 1959. Flatt & Scruggs performed it on their television show, and a performance from the show’s 1956–62 run is on the Shanachie DVD Best of the Flatt & Scruggs TV Show, Vol. 5 (2009). Flatt returned to it on 5 July 1973 at RCA’s Nashville Sound Studios for Over the Hills to the Poorhouse (RCA Victor), a duet album with Mac Wiseman. Bashful Brother Oswald’s Don’t Say Aloha (Rounder, 1978) has Onie Wheeler on lead vocal and Charlie Collins on harmony. The Earls of Leicester recorded it on 15 February 2016 at The Butcher Shoppe in Nashville for Rattle & Roar (Rounder, July 2016), with Shawn Camp, Charlie Cushman, Jeff White, Jerry Douglas, Johnny Warren and Barry Bales.
