Musicians
- Bill Monroe — Lead Vocals, Tenor Vocals, Mandolin
- Jimmy Martin — Lead Vocals, Guitar
- Rudy Lyle — Banjo
- Roger "Red" Taylor — Fiddle
- Joel Price — Baritone Vocals, Bass
“When the Golden Leaves Begin to Fall” is a homesick love song: the singer has left his sweetheart in the Blue Ridge Mountains, knows she says his name in her prayers each night, and means to come back with a wedding ring and keep the home fires burning before the winter snow. It came to bluegrass through Bill Monroe. He recorded it on October 15, 1950, at the Castle Studio in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel, with Jimmy Martin on guitar, Rudy Lyle on banjo, Red Taylor on fiddle and Joel Price on bass; Monroe sang lead on the verses and tenor on the chorus over Martin’s lead and Price’s baritone. Decca issued it that December on the back of “Uncle Pen.” The label credited the song to Albert Price. Monroe returned to it in March 1972 with his son James singing lead on the chorus, for their MCA album Father and Son.
The song stayed in the repertoire of bands who studied Monroe closely. Sonny Osborne, still a teenager, cut it in Cincinnati in 1953 with his brother Bobby on mandolin; Joe Val, the Boston mandolinist and high tenor, recorded it with his New England Bluegrass Boys for Rounder in 1975; and Peter Rowan, once Monroe’s lead singer, put it on The First Whippoorwill (Sugar Hill, 1985), his album of Monroe songs, with Alan O’Bryant on tenor, Sam Bush on baritone and mandolin, Bill Keith on banjo and Richard Greene and Buddy Spicher on fiddles. The Vern Williams Band, the California group Vern Williams led with his son Delbert, recorded it as well, and in 2011 Audie Blaylock & Redline recorded it with Carl Jackson singing alongside Blaylock.
Longview, the bluegrass supergroup built around Dudley Connell, James King and Don Rigsby, included it on Lessons in Stone (Rebel, 2002), recorded at River Track Studio in Fort Gay, West Virginia. Connell sings lead with Rigsby on tenor and Glen Duncan on baritone, over Joe Mullins’s banjo, Rigsby’s mandolin, Duncan’s fiddle and Marshall Wilborn’s bass.
Assisted by AI.
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