Artists have been performing and recording “Rank Stranger” for more than 60 years, but the Stanley Brothers’ 1960 recording for Starday Records remains the definitive version.
Their sparse arrangement perfectly suited the song about a lonesome narrator who comes to the realization that you can’t go home again.
The Stanleys didn’t write it. That credit goes to Albert E. Brumley, who can pair it with “I’ll Fly Away” for possibly the greatest 1-2 songwriting punch in country gospel history.
It’s a beautiful song written in 1942 that many musicians still perform today, but only the Stanleys’ version ended up in the National Recording Registry as a document worth preserving as part of America’s sound-recording heritage.
“Rank Stranger” lyrics and chords
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I wandered
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again to my
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home in the
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mountains
Where in youth’s early dawn I was happy and
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free
I looked for my
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friends but I
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never could
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find
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I found they were all rank
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strangers to
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me (rank
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strangers to
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me)
Everybody I
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met seemed to
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be a rank
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stranger
No mother or dad, not a friend I could
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see
They knew not my
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name and I
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knew not their
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faces
I found they were all rank
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strangers to
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me (rank
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strangers to
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me)
They’ve all moved a
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way said the
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voice of a
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stranger
To a beautiful home by the bright crystal
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sea
Some beautiful
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day I’ll
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meet them in
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heaven
Where no one will be a
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stranger to
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me
Everybody I
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met seemed to
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be a rank
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stranger
No mother or dad, not a friend I could
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see
They knew not my
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name and I
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knew not their
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faces
I found they were all rank
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strangers to
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me (rank
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strangers to
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me)
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