Gold Watch and Chain

The Applejack Band
Zoomer Roberts: lead vocal, bass
Charlie McDonald: rhythm guitar, vocal
Buddy Winston: lead guitar, vocal

recorded c. October, 1989 at KTEP Studio B, Cotton Memorial Building, University of Texas at El Paso

I first became aware of this Carter Family song when I saw Alisa Jones sing it on a Grand Ole Opry telecast in 1979. It was the most pitiful, heart-wrenching thing I'd ever heard. It haunted me for some time, and I searched high and low for a copy of it (a task in the days before the Internet). Finally, it appeared on an Emmylou Harris album, and I've been singing it ever since. Over the years it has become something quite different from Alisa Jones' sad-eyed plea for reconciliation. In the early 1980s, June Carter sang it on the Nashville Network and included a verse that went more or less like this:

There's a white rose that grows in my garden
It has been blooming there for a while
It broke through on the day that I lost you
It will die if I ever should smile