Little Maggie - Traditional

 Little Maggie is one of the old songs that predates the earliest recording, maybe by 50 years or so. Billy Strings plays a supercharged version that is patterned from what I would say is the definitive version by the Stanley Brothers. According to BMFSDB.com, Billy has played Little Maggie in 263 shows as of this writing. Over the years, you have a 1 in 4 chance of hearing Little Maggie at  Billy Strings show, although those stats are skewed by the fact that the band played it around 100 of those 263 times in 2017-2018. 

At Billy's shows, my experience has been that Little Maggie packs the most punch when coming as the 2nd half of a two song segue. How Mountain Girls Can Love is the same way.  Coming out of a hot jam, maybe into a key change and then Billy belting out "Yonder staaaaaaaaaaaaaaands little Maggie" gets the crowd (or at least me) fired up. And of course, you get "I'm going to pay Jarrod Walker's fine" and a hot mando break. What's not to love?

The Song

Little Maggie doesn't show up with a lot of lyrical variation for such an old song, especially when you compare it to something like Shady Grove. As noted on secondhandsongs.com, it's related to Darlin' Corey and has at least 109 recorded versions. The first recorded version pretty much has all the elements of subsequent recordings, but it really is "owned" by the Stanley Brothers.

Other Notable Versions