In 1928 A.P. Carter, patriarch of the singing Carter family, asked the musical question “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?” Three years later he answered it in the affirmative with “When I’m Gone,” popularly known as “You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone” after it was reworked a few years later by J.E. Mainer and his Mountaineers.
Here’s the original Carter Family recording.
Mainer gave the tune a faster tempo, and it was this version that became an Appalachian standard.
The song received new life in 2009 when a British folk duo that went by Lulu and the Lampshades combined Carter’s chorus with new verses and percussion lifted from a children’s clapping game called the cup game. Their YouTube video went viral.
Anna Kendrick heard a cover of that version on Reddit, and when she was asked to demonstrate her singing ability for the 2011 film “Pitch Perfect,” about dueling college a cappella groups. It so impressed the producers that they wrote the scene into the script.
What one critic called a “Mumfordized” version was an international hit, including the U.S. where it reached No. 6. It even got a music video, directed by the film’s director, in which Kendrick plays a waitress preparing to quit her job.
