Footprints in the Snow

Quite a few years ago, my older sister developed a liking for Flatt & Scruggs. She wasn’t hanging out in Bluegrass circles, but picked up the fad from her boyfriend’s Georgia Tech fraternity. I suspect the budding engineers at the fraternity latched onto Flatt & Scruggs as a kind of counter-cultural lark and soon got hooked on the joy of Bluegrass. It happens. At any rate, as I recall, my sister asked for and received the coveted 1963 album “Flatt & Scruggs at Carnegie Hall” for Christmas. One of the songs that stood out on that album was Footprints in the Snow.

A few months ago as Professor Carol and I were discussing her upcoming webinar on Music of Winter—considering things like Schubert’s Winterreise and Vivaldi’s The Seasons—we went through everything we could remember that depicted cold and snow. And Footprints in the Snow came to mind. Carol needs little persuading to include Bluegrass in an educational presentation, and we were lucky to find a high-quality, useable performance.

The song is often attributed to Bill Monroe who did an early recording of it in the 1940s under the name Rupert Jones. But it has been traced further back to Harry Wright in 1887 with the title “I Traced Her Little Footmarks in the Snow.” Another recording predating Monroe’s was done by the Carlisle Brothers in 1939. The Flatt & Scruggs version is here.

We have had a couple of occasions to feature Chris Thile, who took over Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion show. And not just for folk music: we have him playing (very convincingly) J.S. Bach’s Sonata in G minor on mandolin on our Bach Composer of the Month page.