“This World Is Not My Home” is a pilgrim’s song: its singer is only passing through, with his treasures laid up beyond the blue and angels beckoning from heaven’s open door, so that he can no longer feel at home here. Later verses tell of a bargain made with Jesus long ago and of a mother waiting in glory whose hand he means to shake.
Where it began is not known. The Hymnology Archive traces the words to Joyful Meeting in Glory Song Book No. 1, published in 1919, where they appeared anonymously, without music, selected by the evangelist Bertha Davis of Columbus, Ohio. The first recording was made in New York on 19 August 1924 by Sam Jones, a Cincinnati blues singer who recorded as Stovepipe No. 1, under the title “Lord Don’t You Know I Have No Friend Like You.” The Golden Echo Quartet of Nashville recorded it unaccompanied for Columbia in April 1927, and Jessie May Hill cut it for OKeh that December. The Carter Family recorded their version, “Can’t Feel at Home,” in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 26 May 1931 (Victor 23569); A.P. Carter was credited with words and music, and the verse about the waiting mother first appears in their recording.
Albert E. Brumley, then a staff arranger for the Stamps-Baxter company and better known as the composer of “I’ll Fly Away,” published his arrangement in Virgil O. Stamps’ Radio Song Album in 1937. His verses follow the Carters’ closely; later recordings, the Stanley Brothers’ among them, carry a Brumley & Sons credit.
Charlie and Bill Monroe recorded it as the Monroe Brothers on 17 February 1936 in Charlotte, Charlie singing lead and Bill tenor. Jim & Jesse cut it on 20 April 1964 at the Columbia studio in Nashville, with Jesse McReynolds singing lead and Jim tenor over Allen Shelton’s banjo, Jim Brock’s fiddle, Ray Edenton’s guitar and Lightnin’ Chance’s bass; it appeared on their 1964 album The Old Country Church. The Stanley Brothers recorded it on 8 December 1965, Carter Stanley singing lead and Ralph Stanley tenor, and it was issued in 1967 on An Empty Mansion, the Rimrock album released in memory of Carter Stanley.
