“Wicked Path of Sin” is a gospel song written by Bill Monroe. He recorded it in Chicago on 17 September 1946, at the WBBM-CBS studio in the Wrigley Building, the day after the first sessions Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs played with him. It is a vocal quartet: Flatt sang lead, Monroe the tenor, Scruggs a harmony part and Monroe’s brother Birch the lowest part. Columbia held the recording until October 1948, when it came out as Columbia 20503 coupled with “Summertime Is Past and Gone.”
Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper recorded it first for release, in 1947 at radio station WWNC in Asheville, North Carolina, and it came out on the small Rich-R-Tone label as number 417.
The lyric is a conversion testimony rather than a plea. The singer looks back on a life in a world of sorrow, spent on the wicked path of sin without a thought for tomorrow or for what he would lose in the end. Now he hears joy bells ringing and angels singing, hears his Savior call him to be washed of his sins, and ends the song safe with Jesus, expecting to meet loved ones in heaven.
The Stanley Brothers recorded it as “This Wicked Path of Sin” on 10 February 1959 at the King studio in Cincinnati, with Carter Stanley singing lead, Ralph Stanley the tenor, Al Elliott on mandolin and the baritone part and George Shuffler on bass and the lowest part, plus Chubby Anthony on fiddle. It came out on King’s EP 457 and on the LP Hymns and Sacred Songs (King 645, November 1959).
