Doin' My Time - Jimmy Skinner

 Doin' My Time is a bluegrass classic. It's kind of the archetypical bluegrass song in that it's a song with an unhappy topic and a fun, bouncy sound.

 BMFSDB says that Billy has played this one 73 times as of this writing, & it has appeared in about 7% of his shows. In 2022, he went on a Doin' My Time tear & played it 18 times. On some songs, there may be several versions, but one is definitive & is the one that everybody thinks of when they hear it (think Doc Watson Black Mountain Rag). With Doin' My Time, I think that different guys in the band probably reference different versions when they think of or play it. I'm pretty sure Billy Failing is thinking of the Flatt & Scruggs version.

While I'm sure Billy Strings references that, I'm guessing he thinks of the Tony Rice version just as much or more.

The Original

Doin' My Time was written by Jimmy Skinner & released in 1948. According to secondhandsongs.com, there have been 31 recorded versions. I'm guessing the real number is close to double that. I couldn't find any chart information about the original, so I'm assuming that it didn't do much, but people definitely heard it, as it has developed a long life, primarily thanks to Flatt & Scruggs. Interesting to hear that the banjo riff was in the original.

Jimmy Skinner

Jimmy Skinner was born in 1909, in Blue Lick, Kentucky. He sang & played guitar, leading his own band for his full career as far as I can tell. He hosted a radio show in the '50's and recorded for Capitol and Decca. Later in the '50's, he recorded for Mercury and had some decent chart success. 

During the '60's, his career fell off, but was revived on the '70's when he gained popularity again playing bluegrass festivals. Jimmy died in 1979.

Covers

It seems like everybody has covered Doin My Time. Here are a few of the (mostly bluegrass) covers:

Red Allen

Johnny Cash

The Country Gentlemen

The Seldom Scene

Jimmy Martin

and New Grass Revival (who seem to have been listening to Jimmy Martin)