I’ve Lived A Lot In My Time

A country song credited to Jim Reeves with Jack Rhodes and Dick Reynolds, first recorded by Reeves on 29 August 1955 and issued that autumn on RCA Victor as the flip side of “Jimbo Jenkins.” The lyric is a first-person catalogue of a hard life — a lost fortune, an unfaithful lover, a prison cell, soldiering and rambling, hoeing corn and picking cotton — that turns in the final verse toward religious consolation, which is largely what earned it a place in bluegrass sets alongside gospel material. Earl Taylor and his Blue Grass Mountaineers recorded the best-known bluegrass version in Nashville on 30 January 1963, with Frankie Short singing lead, Taylor on tenor, and Benny Martin on fiddle; it was released on Blue Grass Taylor-Made (Capitol T-2090/ST-2090, 1964). Bobby Bare and the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band also recorded it, and Billy Strings has performed it live since February 2023.