Footprints In The Snow

Bluegrass song, published in England around 1880 as “Footmarks in the Snow” by the music hall writer Harry Wright and in American circulation well before Bill Monroe copyrighted it under the pseudonym Rupert Jones. Wright’s original ends happily, with the narrator marrying the woman whose tracks he followed through the snow; the version Monroe sang adds her death, so the closing verses turn every snowfall into a reminder of her. Ernest Branch and the West Virginia Ramblers recorded it first, on June 4, 1931, as “Little Footprints.” Monroe cut his version for Columbia on February 13, 1945, with Chubby Wise on fiddle, David “Stringbean” Akeman on banjo, Wilene “Sally Ann” Forrester on accordion, Tex Willis on guitar, and Bill Westbrook on bass, and it reached number five on the country chart the following year. He recorded it again in 1952 with Jimmy Martin on guitar, Charlie Cline on fiddle, and fourteen-year-old Sonny Osborne on banjo.

Monroe moved to East Chicago around 1929 to work at the Sinclair refinery alongside his brothers Birch and Charlie. In 1932 Tom Owen, the WLS Barn Dance square dance caller, hired the three brothers as exhibition dancers for his touring dance team, and they worked with him for the next two years. Neil Rosenberg, folklorist and ethnomusicologist, places Bill Monroe learning the song during those Chicago years. 100 WLS Barn Dance Favorites, which draws from listeners’ favorites, prints it three years later.