ABSTRACT
But if historians have overlooked Karl and Harty, the music fans and the musicians themselves certainly have not. Bill Monroe remembers. So does Johnny Cash. So does Grandpa Jones. The Everly Brothers. Gene Autry. They remember the big record hits like “I’m Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail” and “I Need the Prayers of Those I Love” and “The Prisoner’s Dream” and “Wreck on the Highway” and, their best of all,
“Kentucky.” These hits came from a relative handful of records: Karl and Harty recorded only some 50 songs before the war, as compared to over 80 by the Callahans, over 130 by the Delmores, and over 75 by the Blue Sky Boys. True, many of these Karl and Harty records were sold through Sears, Roebuck’s huge mail-order catalog operation, which meant that while the team made rather little on them, the records and the songs spread all over the country. This may be one reason why Karl and Harty songs have remained in the repertoires of hundreds of singers, while the men behind the songs have remained vague and shadowy figures.
