'Tis Sweet to Be Remembered

The song is credited to Malcolm B. Wiseman. He told Bluegrass Today he wrote the melody first and then the lyric, in Knoxville in 1946, with verses in 4/4 and a chorus in 3/4 waltz time, the change reflecting the spice of life. In a 2017 interview with RFD-TV he gave a different account, that he got the sheet music in Knoxville in 1946 and a fiddler taught him the tune, and that he holds the credit because no one ever claimed authorship. A search summary mentioned an older composition attributed to William Marshall Smith, which no page we read confirmed. He used it from the spring of 1947 as the closing theme of WCYB Bristol's Farm and Fun Time, for five years.

He first recorded it for Dot in 1951, his first solo session; Bluegrass Today gives May 21 and RFD-TV May 23, and he places the recording in Shreveport during his time on the Louisiana Hayride. Dot's owner Randy Wood objected at first to its tempo changes and jukebox appeal, and after the hit, in Wiseman's memory, said from now on you pick the material. Wiseman said he was scared to death someone else would record it ahead of him. It became a regional best-seller and his lifelong theme.

Flatt and Scruggs recorded it for Columbia in October 1951, Jimmy Skinner for Capitol, and Cowboy Copas for Dot, a version Wiseman remembers reaching number 8. In 2017 Wiseman and Alison Krauss recorded it as the last track on I Sang the Song. Setlist.fm shows 75 Mac Wiseman setlists from 1957 to 2014 but not this song, so no play count is established. We could not tell whether our upload is the 1951 single, the 1957 LP or a later recording.