“There Is a Time” was written by Rodney Dillard and Mitch Jayne of the Dillards, the Missouri bluegrass band. The Dillards recorded it in the early 1960s, and it gained wide notice when the band, playing the Darling family, performed it on “The Andy Griffith Show.”
The song is a meditation on the seasons of a life, echoing the old idea that there is a time for everything. It tells a young woman to gather the roses while she can, for youth and its sweetness pass; the lyric is gentle but shaded with the knowledge of how short that time is.
The song became a bluegrass standard, loved well beyond the television show. The version heard here is by the Dillards.
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