Hear Marty Stuart Cover the 1967 Country Gem ‘Skip a Rope’

The latest offering from Mary Stuart’s upcoming album Songs I Sing in the Dark is “Skip a Rope,” the 1967 country song first recorded by the singer Henson Cargill.

“The song is a socially conscious treasure from those times, relevant literature with a beat,” Stuart said of “Skip a Rope” in a statement. “I’m still mesmerized by the song. The song’s three-note, plaintive, drone-like intro beckons me inside the walls of the piece and then drops me off at a heart-to-heart level with the message in the song. It’s a message that’s just as relevant today as it was during the song’s heyday when it reigned on the charts. As a matter of fact, ‘Skip a Rope’ stands as an eternally relevant, statesman-like monument of a song.”

“Skip a Rope,” written by Glenn Douglas Tubb and Jack Moran, is also set to appear on Charley Crockett’s forthcoming album, to be released later this year. The song became a Number One country hit for Cargill after he released it in 1967.

Stuart’s upcoming 20-track album, which includes covers of artists like Tom Petty, Merle Haggard, and Waylon Jennings, was recorded acoustically in Nashville. “Songs are like magic carpets,” Stuart has said of his new album. “They can transport you from wherever you are to somewhere we want to be.”