Keep on the Sunny Side

Ada Blenkhorn wrote the words and J. Howard Entwisle the tune, and the song first appeared in 1899 as number 128 in Bright Melodies, a Sunday school songbook Entwisle edited with John Sweney for a Philadelphia publisher. It was printed in A flat, in four parts, for children and young people's societies to sing. The story usually told is that Blenkhorn took the title from a disabled nephew who asked to be pushed along the sunny side of the street. Nobody has turned up a source for it.

The song did well in the hymnals. Hymnary.org counts it in 54 of them, the Service Hymnal of 1925 among them. A. P., Sara and Maybelle Carter recorded it for Victor in 1928, and it became their theme, the song that opened their radio shows. Their record is a cover of a song already three decades old, which is why its melody is free for anyone to play.

The Carter record carried it into country and bluegrass, where it has been a jam standard ever since. A. P. Carter's gravestone in Virginia carries the title. The Whites sang it on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack in 2000.

On a mandolin in G the tune sits on the D and A courses, from the open D course up to the d at the fifth fret of the A course. The verse is quick words on a few notes and the chorus climbs to the d and comes down the scale, so the work is keeping the eighths even. The print wrote them long and short. Once the notes are sure, lean on the first of each pair a little and the old lilt comes back.