Johnny Cash Albums The Columbia Years No 1

“My Grandfather’s Clock” is a song written in 1876 by Henry Clay Work, the author of “Marching Through Georgia”. It is a standard of British brass bands and colliery bands and is also popular in bluegrass music. The Oxford English Dictionary says the song was the origin of the term “grandfather clock” for a longcase clock. In 1905, the earliest known recording of this song was performed by Harry Macdonough and the Haydn Quartet (known then as the “Edison Quartet”).

The song, told from a grandchild’s point of view, is about his grandfather’s clock.

The clock was purchased on the morning of the grandfather’s birth and works perfectly for 90 years, requiring only that it be wound at the end of each week.

The clock seems to know the good and bad events in the grandfather’s life; it rings 24 chimes when the grandfather brings his bride into his house, and near his death it rings an alarm, which the family recognizes to mean that the grandfather is near death and gathers by his bed. After the grandfather dies, the clock suddenly stops, and never works again.