“You’d Better Get Right,” also known as “You’d Better Get Right (Little Darlin’),” is credited to Bill Monroe. It reached the Stanley Brothers through Carter Stanley, who had worked in Monroe’s band. In a 1966 interview with Mike Seeger he said he knew only the chorus when he left, did not know the verses Monroe had used, and wrote words of his own around phrases he remembered from Monroe’s version. He gave Monroe the writer’s credit because the idea and the tune were Monroe’s.
The song is a warning to a sweetheart who has been running around. The singer tells her to quit it, says he will tear her playhouse down if she keeps cheating, and, in a softer verse, recalls that she once said there was no one else and hopes they will meet again.
The Stanley Brothers recorded it for Mercury on 5 April 1955, with Carter on lead vocal and guitar, Ralph Stanley on banjo, Joe Meadows on fiddle, Jim Williams on mandolin and Bill Lowe on bass. It was issued within weeks as the B-side of “So Blue” (Mercury 70612); Billboard reviewed the single on 21 May 1955.
