Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms: A Song History

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The Traditional Ballad Index gives no author for "Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms," notes its stock of floating verses about shunning railroad and farm work, and points to words it shares with "Late Last Night When Willie Came Home" and "My God, How the Money Rolls In."[1] The oldest dated recording in the Ballad Index's list is from 1931.[1] According to the Discography of American Historical Recordings, Buster Carter and Preston Young, with Posey Rorer on fiddle, cut "I'll Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms" in New York on June 26, 1931, for Columbia 15690-D, and Copyright Office files credit Carter with words and music.[2] Sources differ on the date, since the New Lost City Ramblers' 1961 notes, which say their own version came from Carter and Young, place that record in 1927.[3]

Japanese woodblock print of a woman lifting a small child to look into a stone water basin, their faces reflected in it.

Kitagawa Utamaro, Mother and Child, woodblock print, ink and color on paper, ca. 1800. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Bill and Charlie Monroe, recording as the Monroe Brothers, made their version in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 12, 1936, and it was issued on Bluebird B-6773.[4] Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs left Bill Monroe's band early in 1948, formed the Foggy Mountain Boys that spring, and recorded for Mercury before signing with Columbia in 1950.[5] Their Mercury single of the song (Mercury 6372) is dated about 1951 in the Ballad Index, though sources differ: the Ramblers' 1961 notes place the Flatt and Scruggs recording in the late 1940s.[1][3] Those notes rate the Flatt and Scruggs bluegrass version as probably the best known.[3] Steve Eulberg includes it, in D-G-B-D tuning, in Dulci-Bro: Method And Resources For Playing Resonator Dulcimer, a resonator dulcimer method published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index (folklorist.org): "Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms".
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Columbia matrix W151651. I'll roll in my sweet baby's arms / Buster Carter ; Preston Young".
  3. Smithsonian Folkways: "New Lost City Ramblers, Vol. 3" (FA 2398), liner notes.
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Victor matrix BS-02546. Roll in my sweet baby's arms / Monroe Brothers".
  5. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum: "Flatt and Scruggs".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Steve Eulberg, Dulci-Bro: Method And Resources For Playing Resonator Dulcimer".
  7. Image: Kitagawa Utamaro, Mother and Child, woodblock print, ink and color on paper, ca. 1800. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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