A.P. Carter’s tombstone in Maces Spring, Virginia, carries a gold record. The song on that record is Keep on the Sunny Side. The Carter Family took a gospel hymn from 1899, made it their radio theme, and turned its chorus into one of the most sung refrains in country and bluegrass music. A century on, jams close the night with it.
Where it came from
The song began as a hymn titled Keep on the Sunny Side of Life. Ada Blenkhorn, a hymn writer born in Cobourg, Ontario, wrote the words in 1899. J. Howard Entwisle set them to music. The hymn appeared that year in Bright Melodies, a songbook edited by John R. Sweney and Entwisle. The Cyber Hymnal preserves the origin story. Blenkhorn’s nephew was disabled and used a wheelchair. He asked to be pushed down the sunny side of the street. His phrase became her chorus, and her opening line set the stakes: “There’s a dark and a troubled side of life.”
The hymn spread through church songbooks and singing schools for three decades. That world raised A.P. Carter. His uncle Flanders Bays was a singing school teacher who traveled southwest Virginia, and A.P. helped him teach shape note singing in churches. On May 9, 1928, A.P., Sara, and Maybelle Carter recorded the song for Victor in Camden, New Jersey. Victor released it on disc 21434, paired with River of Jordan. It became the trio’s signature. When the Carters broadcast over border station XERA in the late 1930s, the song served as their radio theme. A.P. died in 1960, and the gold record went into his stone. The song came back in 2000, when The Whites sang it on the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the film that pushed old-time and bluegrass music back onto the charts. The Carters’ full story runs through the history of bluegrass music as well.
How it works
This is a three-chord gospel song in verse-chorus form. The whole thing runs on the 1, the 4, and the 5. Verses start on the 1, touch the 4, and lean on the 5 before coming home. The chorus works the same chords, with the 4 landing under the answering “sunny side” lines. Arrangements differ on the turnarounds, so follow the leader.
Keys vary by singer. The 1928 Carter record plays back near B. Tab sites chart it in C. The Idaho Bluegrass Association jam guide calls it in G, and G is a safe default at a jam table. Capo up if the melody sits too low.
The guitar part matters as much as the chords. Maybelle Carter picked the melody on the bass strings while her fingers brushed the high strings for rhythm. Players call it the Carter scratch, and this song is a textbook place to learn it. Jams sing it because the chorus repeats after every verse, everyone knows the words, and harmony singers get those echo lines to stack. It works as a gospel number, a closer, or a first lead for a nervous singer. More standards like it live in the songbook.
Recordings worth hearing
Start at the source. The Carter Family’s 1928 Victor recording sets the template: scratch guitar, Sara’s lead, and family harmony on the chorus. Maybelle Carter sang it again in 1972 on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken, the album that joined the old guard with the long-haired newcomers. The Whites’ 2000 version for O Brother, Where Art Thou? carried the song to a new audience on a soundtrack that won the Grammy for album of the year. June Carter Cash recorded it for Wildwood Flower, released in 2003 after her death, and Johnny Cash sang it with the Carter clan across decades of shows and records. On the bluegrass side, Mac Wiseman, Flatt and Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, and Doc Watson all cut versions worth study. Line them up and you can hear the song move from parlor hymn to radio theme to jam standard.
Sources
Facts on this page come from the Country Music Hall of Fame, the hymn’s entry at Hymnary.org, the Cyber Hymnal, the Discography of American Historical Recordings, Encyclopedia Virginia, Wide Open Country, the Idaho Bluegrass Association, and Pickers Guide. Release details for Victor 21434 come from 45worlds.