There's another Fox Hollow thread here.

As some background on "Bright Morning Stars", it came to Fox Hollow in 1968, sung by Robin and Ellen Christenson and Tony and Irene Saltan (Ellen and Irene are the Kossoy Sisters; Robin and Tony were then their respective husbands). Robin had found the song in Ruth Crawford Seeger's book, "American Folksongs for Christmas." I'm pretty certain the Robin was the one who discovered the song's potential for great harmonies.

There's another version of BMS on Peggy Seeger's Folkways LP of songs from her mother's book. Ruth had found it in a field recording at the Library of Congress.

After the '68 Fox Hollow, it moved into the common folkie repertoire. It was recorded by The Pennywhistlers, and there's a version by the Young Tradition on a very obscure English compilation album called "The Folk Trailer". By that fall, it had become a familiar part of many singing sessions all over the Northeast.

At the same time, it was still being sung in Kentucky. I have a strange self-published 45 of the song sung by George Tucker, a retired coal miner, who told me that it's in a hymnal called "The Baptist Sweet Songster" (I might be wrong about that title; it was 30 years ago), and I think it's also on one of the Stanley Brothers' Starday LPs.