Baby Blue Eyes

A bluegrass song written by Jim Eanes and first recorded by him on February 21, 1949 in Nashville for Capitol Records; released in June 1949. It was Eanes’s first hit as a solo artist after stints with Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, and remained his signature song through the early 1950s. Flatt & Scruggs picked it up on a Mercury session and helped carry it into the broader bluegrass repertoire; later cuts include Vince Gill’s version on the 2024 Smithsonian Folkways collection Industrial Strength Bluegrass.

Jim Eanes (1923–1995), born Homer Robert Eanes Jr. in Mountain Valley, Virginia, was a guitarist and tenor singer who performed under the stage name “Smilin’ Jim”; he wrote “I Wouldn’t Change You If I Could,” a #1 country hit for Ricky Skaggs in 1982.