“We Can’t Be Darlings Anymore” was written by Lester Flatt and Curly Seckler. Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys recorded it in Nashville on 21 November 1950. Flatt sang lead and played guitar, and Seckler sang tenor and played mandolin. Scruggs was on banjo, Benny Sims on fiddle and Jody Rainwater on bass. Columbia released it on 9 April 1951 as the B-side of “I’m Head Over Heels in Love” (Columbia 20805).
The singer’s darling has died and gone ahead of him. Left lonely and grieving, he says they can never be darlings again on this earth, and that they will be together again only when they meet in heaven.
Red Allen and the Kentuckians sang it on the radio in March 1966, with David Grisman on mandolin, and Acoustic Disc later issued that broadcast. Cliff Waldron recorded it in August 1971, with Ben Eldridge on banjo, for Bluegrass Time (Rebel, 1973). Flatt cut it again with the Nashville Grass for A Living Legend (CMH, 1976), where Seckler was back on mandolin and harmony and Marty Stuart was in the band. In September 1980 the Bluegrass Album Band recorded it at 1750 Arch Street Studio in Berkeley for The Bluegrass Album (Rounder, 1981). Tony Rice sang lead, with Doyle Lawson on tenor, J.D. Crowe on baritone and Bobby Hicks on bass, and Todd Phillips played bass fiddle.
The Johnson Mountain Boys opened their 1983 Rounder album Live at the Birchmere with it, with Larry Robbins singing lead and Dudley Connell tenor. Seckler recorded it again in Nashville on 12 June 1989 with Willis Spears and the Nashville Grass for Rebel. David Grisman played it with the Del McCoury Band on Life of Sorrow (Acoustic Disc, 2003). A performance by John Hartford, Tony Rice and Vassar Clements, with Hartford singing, came out in 2011 on Hartford Rice Clements.
