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The Stanley Brothers - Memories Of Mother / Could You Love Me (One More Time)

(Mercury 70400) Jul 1954

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This single, with two of Carter's own compositions, was cut at the Stanley's third session for Mercury and it's another top notch effort.

Memories Of Mother, one of Carter's many 'Mother' songs, imagines her death 'on a dark stormy night' and the subsequent thoughts of a loving Ma:-

Mother's at rest, in a lonesome old graveyard
On a hill far away, there stands her white tomb
With the grass covered o'er, it seems so neglected
When the spring season comes, sweet flowers will bloom

I'll never forget, the love Mother gave us
As children we played, around our old home
I know her reward, is a mansion in heaven
While the children on earth, are all scattered and gone

On Could You Love Me (One More Time) Carter's vocals are likewise wonderfully plaintive, as he recalls the sad tale of a lost, and now unobtainable love. This song seems to have been written around 1950, with some input from Lester Woodie.^[1]

Memories Of Mother was also re-cut by The Stanleys for their Good Old Camp Meeting Songs LP. Ralph also later re-recorded it as a duet with Claire Lynch on his Clinch Mountain Country CD and Could You Love Me (One More Time) on his The Stanley Sound Today LP.

Both sides of the single can now be found on The Complete Mercury Recordings 2xCD set.

Mnay thanks to Gary Reid for the correction!

PS: If anyone can supply images of the Green label 45, or the missing Green or Black 78 labels, please get in touch via the Contact page - thanks!

For a detailed breakdown and background to the Stanley's session, check Gary B. Reid's The Music Of The Stanley Brothers book, pages 45-46, and 71-72.

[1] In the article 'Lester Woodie: Coming Up The Hard Road' by Wayne Erbsen, 'Bluegrass Unlimited', Mar 1980 (p.48) - Lester Woodie indicated that he helped him a bit with the lyrics to Let Me Love You One More Time, but he seems to have confused the song with Could You Love Me (One More Time). In the B.U. interview he recalled:- "Carter wrote a lot of his songs while we were riding along in the car. I remember we were staying at a hotel in Huntingdon, West Virginia while we were doing s TV show up there. That was one of the first live TV shows that there were. He was working on that song 'Let Me Love You One More Time'. I think I helped him with a word or two on that one. Carter seemed to write on impulse. A lot of times riding along in the car he'd get a line or two and maybe by the next morning he'd have the rest of it. He may be riding along and just start singing. He'd sing two or three lines, or maybe a whole verse. Then that night when we were warming up for the show, he'd get his guitar and run over it again. Maybe by the next day, he'd have the rest of it." - and the Stanley Brothers appeared on WSAZ-TV for a few months in 1950: Billboard 2 Sep 1950.

In a separate interview with Gary Reid on 26th March 1981 they discussed the the BU article:-

GR: I think you mentioned two songs in the article that you helped write or you were with them when they were writing them. I forget the title of one of 'em, Could You Love Me One More Time or Let Me Love You One More Time.
LW: Right, that's the one Ricky Skaggs redid not long ago.

As Skaggs released Could You Love Me One More Time as a single on Sugar Hill in 1979, it's almost certainly this song Lester was referencing, as opposed to Let Me Love You One More Time.