“You’ll Find Her Name Written There” is credited to Harold Hensley, a fiddler who played on Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Capitol sessions. Ford recorded it in Hollywood on 21 June 1949, at the session that produced “Smokey Mountain Boogie,” and Capitol paired the two on a single.
The words are a lament for a woman who has died. Her name stands on a marble headstone, and the singer says it will also be found in the heavenly book and at the pearly gates, where a new voice now sings among the angels. He is left alone in deep despair, and he breathes her name into the air.
Charlie Monroe and his Kentucky Pardners recorded it in Nashville on 6 May 1951, and RCA Victor released it in September of that year as the flip side of “That Wild Black Engine.” Bill Monroe cut it on 31 December 1954, with Jackie Phelps on guitar, Hubert Davis on banjo, Charlie Cline and Bobby Hicks on fiddles and Ernie Newton on bass; Decca issued it on 7 January 1957, paired with “Sitting Alone in the Moonlight.”
Old & In the Way, with Peter Rowan, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Vassar Clements and John Kahn, played it at the Boarding House in San Francisco in 1973; that recording was released in 1997 on Breakdown. Del McCoury recorded it for his 1990 Rounder album Don’t Stop the Music, and Jim Lauderdale and Ralph Stanley included it on their 1999 Rebel album I Feel Like Singing Today.
