Notes & Queries – August 2024

Calling My Children Home At recording sessions in August 1977, the Country Gentlemen recorded their last album for the Rebel label before showing up at Sugar Hill Records. The album was a gospel collection, their second, and it featured Charlie Waller, Bill Yates, Doyle Lawson and James Bailey. The title of the album was Calling My Children Home. When the Country Gentlemen recorded the album’s title track, they probably had no idea that it would have far-reaching appeal. Ralph Stanley recorded it for a 1988 album I’ll Answer the Call. In 1992, Emmylou Harris featured it on her Live at the Ryman CD; it was later recycled on at least a half dozen retrospective discs of her music. And, in 2016, a Trio collection (Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris) included a 1986 previously unissued version of the song that was recorded for, but omitted from, the first Trio album. Over the years, I’ve fielded questions from people about the origins of this song. The most unusu