Additional Research Material Part One

Additional Research Material. Part One.

The following is to be considered more of the history of bluegrass music. The material complements the original published book. An addendum.

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Table of Contents

• Ray and Ina Patterson
• According to Alton Delmore’s biography
• John Hartford
• Jimmy Martin corrections
• The Buffalo Gals
• Betty Fisher & Dixie BG Boys
• Jan “Honza” Macak
• Roy “Whitey” Grant
• Winnie Winston
• Mitch Jayne obituary
• Mim McCall obituary
• Bess Lomax Hawers
• Allen Shelton
• Smithsonian Folkways Records
• Mike Seeger
• Junie Scruggs
• Roni Stoneman
• Liz Meyer
• Vern Gosdin obituary
• Nick Haney obituary
• Doc Williams obituary
• Don Pierce
• Jack Cooke obituary
• Bill Carlisle obit
• Felice Bryant
• Smitty Irvin obituary
• Lonnie Glosson obituary
• Wayne Raney obituary
• Benny Martin obituary
• Old Joe Clark
• Earl Scruggs–How he learned the 3-finger style
• Hal Durham
• Mel Bay
• Eddie Dye obituary
• Archie Green obituary
• Jimmy Driftwood obituary
• Lee Moore obituary
• Ola Belle Reed obituary
• Marion Sumner obituary
• Pee Wee King obituary
• Lloyd Loar obituary
• The Earl Scruggs Gibson banjo
• Don Owens
• Don Pierce obituary
• Charles Wolfe
• Ray Davis
• Martin Haerle
• Clarence White obituary
• Paul Warren obituary
• Hal Durham
• Smokey Mayfield
• Edd Mayfield
• Leon Morris
• Wayne Yates obituary
• Bill Yates obituary
• Berk Bryant obituary
• Tony Rice obituary
• Yves Aerts obituary

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Ray and Ina Patterson.  1956 KIBM Roswell, NM. Speaking about the Nashville music scene back in 1956

“Nashville messed up music for most musicians. Blue Sky Boys got out of the business. Ina worked at the local telephone office.   It took 6 bands in Nashville to draw a decent crowd: Johnny and Jack, Kitty Wells, Little Jimmy Dickens, Roy Acuff and Dancer Robert Lunn. Ray owned(s) a 1952 Gibson A-50 mandolin. Both Ray and Ina own a J45 Gibson.

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According to Alton’s autobiography, Roy Acuff came to the Opry when Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith got fired. See The Truth  is Stranger Than Publicity—Alton Delmore’s Autobiography (Nashville: The Country Music Foundation Press, 1977), pp. 115-116.

Alton Delmore wrote, “A group of sponsors down in West Tennessee wrote in and said their sheriff could beat our best Grand Ole Opry fiddle player and wanted to put on a contest to prove it. It was a natural. So David (Stone, Opry manager) decided to put on a contest and carry along a show to back it all up. It would make money. He knew it would. So he gathered a bunch of us and told us what he had done and booked about five or six of the best drawing acts on the Opry. Rabon and I agreed to play this for David since it looked like a smash and it was.

“So David got the posters and other advertising together and sent it down to the west Tennessee people. They really did a good job advertising. Our old-time fiddler had some friends he was riding down with, and when we all got there (I forgot the name of the town—AD) the place was packed and jammed. The sheriff was there, with his bow all rosined up and his fiddle in tune, and he was raring to go. He was a politician and this thing would help him out a lot, win or lose. But our fiddler didn’t show.

“David was worried again. He paced back and forth watching the clock get nearer and nearer to show time. We told him just to start the show and get the people in a good mood and if our fiddler was late they would soon forget about the contest and not give him the razz. He decided to do that and we started the show. It was a good crowd to play to, and we had everything going great. But still no word or appearance from our fiddler. Something was wrong. It was after nine o’clock and still our man had not shown up. We all began to give up hope. David was nearly insane from waiting on our fiddler.

“So we thought it all over and came up with a plan. We would let one of the other fiddle players in our group compete against the sheriff and then if our man came in later there would be another contest. This greatly pleased the audience and we were on easy street again. We put on an extra long show and had the contest and the sheriff won to the delight of all the people. There was no grumbling and the people seemed greatly satisfied with the show. When we got ready to close, David walked out on the stage and apologized for the missing Opry fiddler. He told the stark truth. He didn’t know what had happened to the man and he made them think he was really worried and concerned about our fiddler. He got a fine ovation from the crowd, but that didn’t pay for the anxiety and sweat he had gone through. He was plenty mad, and anyone would have been under the same circumstances. That kind of sweating shortens your days and shatters your nerves. David came up to Rabon and me and told us he was going to lay our fiddler off the Opry for four consecutive weeks and bring in a band each week to play in his place. He told us he wanted us to listen to each band and pick out the one we would like to play personals with. He would leave it all us to decide, and he would let them stay on the Opry for the duration of time they played with us. ‘Now you boys have about six months you can play with this band and then they will have to go. They will never be a genuine act of the Grand Ole Opry. I will tell them that when we hire them, but it will give them some great publicity and they should have no regrets afterwards.’

“Now this man David had laid off was a good friend to me and also to Rabon. We hated to see him in that unfortunate situation, but the boss had spoken and we considered him right. The fellow later told me that his friends who were bringing him down stopped and got them some moonshine. They got too much of it and they decided not to go to the contest, and they knew he was at their mercy. So they just laughed at him when he begged them to take him on to the town. He was given the horse laugh, and he learned a lesson not to trust a lot of people after that. He told David the same story but David would not accept it. He remained adamant. Now what I am writing is the God’s truth, and that is the way fate meant it to be. Otherwise, the fellow I am going to write about in the next chapter (Roy Acuff) may have never been heard of, and may have been left unheard of, like a beautiful flower that blooms in the wilds of some deep wilderness, never heard of, never appreciated and left entirely out of the strange scheme of life. I think fate has a lot more on the ball than some people will admit.”[1]

Author’s note: By this time, Acuff had already recorded “Wabash Cannon Ball” and “Great Speckled Bird” for the American Recording Company (ARC). The ARC group was an immense umbrella of the late 1930s that issued records on a bewildering variety of labels including Perfect, Conqueror, Melotone, Banner, Okeh and Vocalian.

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In the John Hartford biography in the Bluegrass Banjo chapter on page 281, I wrote that the General Jackson showboat runs on the Mississippi River. Actually, it has only been on the Mississippi only twice. It usually is restricted to the Cumberland River near Nashville.

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A correction to the Jimmy Martin biography.

February 1998. This is an interview with Jimmy Martin after my book had come out. I was very pleased that Mr. Martin had spent several hours with me in perfecting his interview with me. He was very cordial and receptive to a person like me who promised to help make him immortal in print. We spent quite a bit of time together at the California Bluegrass Festival and later on the phone. He took me into his confidence that I would write it all down correctly and “do him right.” Unfortunately, I took liberties with the introduction of his biography—found in the Pioneers of Bluegrass chapter. I was incorrect in what I said about him missing concerts due to his drinking. I had heard that he had a history of missed concerts due to his drinking but, as you can read here, he did not.

The following is a conversation he and I had in February 1998. He was angry that I had betrayed his trust and now, Jimmy, even though you’re no longer with us, I apologize. I have included our conversation here to straighten the record.

JM:      “What I was callin’ you about now, I read this book and I wish that you had gotten in touch with me before you put this out and put this ever who’s responsible of doin’ this. It’s got in here that I missed show dates, concerts, on account of my drinkin’. I never missed a date in my life.

“Now listen. I want to tell you somethin’ now. It’s got in there—and Mary can read it to you—it says that I missed concerts on account of my drinkin’. Now, I had drank through my family divorce, I had a lot of trouble, but I did not smoke no dope and I did not do that kind of stuff. I never missed a concert in my life but one concert and that was when I was at Wheelin’ and they had me booked some up there in them hills and one show date I tried to get to and the snow was so deep that trucks, cars and all—and we made it up on that hill as high as the rest of them made—we couldn’t make it. And that’s the only show date I ever missed in my life.

“And it’s also got in here, now listen… Ever who wrote this should have contacted me and let me get a little straighter… Let Maryanne here, who is a girlfriend, that wrote, and they also said my drinkin’ had kept me off the Opry. Now, Maryanne heard Bud Wendell tell me that the Opry liked my way of entertainin’ and playin’ and singin’ bluegrass music, that they really really loved the way I did it and he did and he was gonna make me a member. And Roy Acuff told me that they was gonna make me a member. You listenin’ at me? And Bill Monroe told them that he would resign and quit the Grand Ole Opry…

“See, I like Bill good enough. I don’t want to put nobody down. You foller me? People talks about me and this that and the other. Hell, I don’t owe nobody nothin’ and I’m good to people who’ll let me be good to ‘em. But now when they try to smart off at me like they’re tryin’ to spit in my goddamn face, I’ll knock the hell out of them or tell them to get out of my way, you know. But as far as bein’ good to everybody, I am. Even over at Keith Whitley’s funeral, we were over there and Roy Acuff was settin’ out in the car called me over and he said they was gonna make Keith Whitley a member in two weeks, and Hal Durham had told me that. And Roy said they were gonna make you a member, I wonder why they didn’t. Said, they talked to me about it and said I told ‘em you was a long time overdue, you needed to be on the Opry and the Opry needed you and you could do on the Opry ‘cause you are a good entertainer. But he said Bill Monroe has told them, and man he’s a-bustin’ ag’in’ you—why does Bill want to do you like that?

“I said, ‘Jealously, Roy, is all I know.’ And Bill Monroe is my idol and I don’t want to badmouth Bill Monroe and him dead and gone.

“But Maryanne knows this. And now listen to this ‘cause I want you to hear my end of it. We stopped in Nashville at the DJ Convention. It used to be called the DJ Convention at the Andrew Jackson Hotel and all that. You remember that? [I answered in the affirmative] Well, Ralph Emory called me up in the lobby and was talkin’ to me and said, “I heard you was a-movin’ to Nashville.”

“And I was on WSM then and Bill Monroe was listenin’. And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ Bob Neone (spelling?) and the Wilburn Brothers wants me to come down here and work through their office and as soon as I go back to Wheelin’ and Gene Johnson has quit the business and I need somebody to book me and as soon as I can sell my home I’m movin’ to Nashville and make Tennessee my home ‘cause I’m a Tennessee boy in the first place.

“He said, ‘Well, welcome here. We need you down here, Jimmy. And I’m glad you’re moving.’ Well, as soon as Bill Monroe come into that damn lobby of that hotel, I seen him call Barbara which was my girlfriend—me and her never was married but she lived with me twelve years off and on and we had four kids and I had sent ‘em all to school. So he called her off (to the side) and she was my booker. She got every phone number and every address that Gene Johnson had ‘cause he give it to her to book me. And so Bill called her off. And I seen ‘em argue with each other and Bill was tellin’ her—she told me what Bill told her.

“She said, ‘Jimmy’s doin’ real good in Wheelin’ and I’d advise you to keep him up there. If you let him move down here to Nashville, I’m goin’ to do everything in my power against him.’ It was to keep me off the Opry is what he meant.

“She looked at him and she said she almost slapped him. But she said she looked at him and she said, ‘My boy, you just do everything you can against him. Jimmy’s very popular. And more popular right now than you are and I’m gonna book him and see he makes a lot more money than you do and make more show dates.’ And we did just that. That’s just exactly what was told now.

“Now that’s the reason I ain’t on the Opry. Now we can say, or Sonny Osborne or other acts can tell you this and that and the other and hum-haw the truth around [but] that’s it! You know what I’m sayin’?

“But that’s in this book, and Mary can read it to you, that I missed concerts on account of my drinkin’. Now, I’m not denyin’ drinkin’. You foller me? If I fell off the stage of the Grand Ole Opry and busted my guitar, I’d want ‘em to tell it on me. I don’t want no lies told on me, you know what I’m sayin’?

“I think books like ‘is which you’ll make a lot of money on it… I’d like to see… In other words, if you make a book like this, I’m not Bill Monroe, I’m not people that’s jealous. I’d like to see you sell a million, two million and made money with what you have pushed and tried to put out. You foller me? It’s like Chuck down here. When he first moved down here, Bill Monroe tried every way in the world to run him out of town. And I’d go down there every Saturday night and visit him.

“I said, ‘Chuck, it’s good that you make money.’ Wouldn’t you hate to see him make a flop? If he made a g..damn flop, he’d be no more, would he? You follow me? And I’m smart enough a man… Hell, I’ve got a million damn dollars. I’m not braggin’ or boastin’. Lance LeRoy knows that; he takes care of my books. But I don’t mind somebody else makin’ money! Hell, I want to help ‘em make money!

“I tell guys, they say, ‘Well, we want to book you.’ We went in the hole. We ain’t never made no money playin’ these festivals. I’ve had five or six festivals.

“I said, ‘Why in the shit do you want me back?’ That’s how I tell ‘em. Just personally, if I can’t help you make money, then there’s no use to havin’ me. I love you and you love me but if you cain’t make money, there’s no use to use me. That’s just not the way the United States is built! If you cain’t make money, you damn sure don’t want to go down into your pocket and put it out, do you?

“Now, the reason I’m callin’ you… I hope you understand this but it really hurt me to know that I never missed a concert and that’s put in the book. And also, it hurt me, too, that drinkin’ has kept me off the Grand Ole Opry. Well, if it has, I would like to say this in a full-page write-up somewhere, “How in the hell did Ernest Tubbs get on there? How did Hank Snow? How did Little Jimmy Dickens? How did Roy Acuff when every Saturday night—I don’t want this put out in a paper—every Saturday night for five years that I sung with Bill Monroe, Roy Acuff had a fifth set right in the corner of his room with 7-Ups and Pepsis for chasers. Any time I wanted to take a drink, you’re welcome, he said.

“Now, you didn’t know that, did you?”

Barry:  “Of course, I don’t know everything about that.”

Jimmy: “Now, you don’t know that but I’m a-tellin’ you. But I don’t want it to be put in no write-up! But, now, people don’t tell that kind of stuff on him (Acuff). And like Bob Whitaker come in—I was down there the other Saturday night and I was singin’ with some bluegrass people. We had that whole hall filled up and Bob wanted to sing ‘A Beautiful Life’ with me and I let him.

“And he said, ‘Doggone. He’s the best I ever heard.’ And he said, ‘Sing “Shake Hands with Mother” again and let me sing bass.’

“And he said he’s gonna put me down there at that Opry. I said, ‘You’re just sayin’ that. You ain’t gonna do it.’

“I don’t ask ‘em to put me down there, you know. Bein’ on the Opry is not a-gonna help me as far as makin’ show dates. If I want to make fifty show dates, I can make fifty show dates. But I ain’t gonna work for eighteen or nineteen or maybe twenty. And I’m semi-retired; I’m not gonna get out there and beat my brains out.

“Now, I appreciate you usin’ me a lot of places, but if you’re gonna say somethin’, don’t let somethin’ that I ain’t done… If I missed show dates, I’ll tell you I missed ‘em.

And Lance (LeRoy) was tellin’ me ‘bout where it’s supposed to say ‘Sunny Mountain Boys’ but it says Sunny Martin Boys.

Barry:   “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. That’s a typo I changed in the next edition of the book. I apologize.”

Jimmy: “If it won’t cost you too much, and you don’t need to say anything to anybody and you don’t have to blow good smoke or bad smoke, you need to change where it says drinkin’ caused me to miss concerts and drinkin’ caused me to not be a member of the Opry. It ain’t no such a damn thing! I explained it to you what caused me not to be a member of the Opry. And as far as Flatt and Scruggs, I was there when Bill Monroe—and I don’t want this put in there either—I was there when Bill Monroe tried to get a petition up to keep them up to keep them off there.”

Barry:   “That’s written about in the book, too.”

Jimmy: “Well, now, Ernest Tubb signed it. And Lester Flatt went up and said, ‘Ernest, I didn’t think you would do me and Earl that way.’  And Ernest said, ‘Well, I didn’t even know what I was a-signin’.’

“And Lester said, ‘Well, I’d advise you to look at somethin’ when it’s got me and Earl in it.’  Well, I heard he said that’ I didn’t see that. But I know Lester said it to me.”

Barry:  “Roy Acuff signed it too. And he was ashamed of it.”

Jimmy: “Uh Uh. No. Now that ain’t what I heard. Roy Acuff did not sign it ‘cause Roy Acuff said, ‘Look, them guys are drawin’ me good crowds up there and they belong on this Opry and they’re good enough. Now, I ain’t about to sign nothin’ like that!’ Now, Roy Acuff told me that! Roy Acuff told me that personally to Jimmy Martin!

“Roy Acuff was good to me. He told me… I’d come in there on Saturday night and he’d say ‘Get Jimmy a mandolin.’ And I played ‘Great Speckled Bird’ after Oswald would take a break and make it try and sound just like Oswald on the mandolin, and he’s told me many times, ‘Just bring that mandolin and come on on-stage and play it with me.’

“And I said, ‘Roy, I ain’t got my hat on or nothin’. [Mr. Martin chuckled as he told this story to me.’

“And then he’d tell me that they were gonna make me a member of the Opry. Bill Monroe’s doin’ everything in his power—fightin’ it, fightin’ it awful hard.

“Now, you don’t have to say nothin’ about that but I’d appreciate that bit taken out ‘cause that absolutely is tellin’ somethin’…if it wouldn’t cost you too much. I don’t want to cause you any trouble and say Jimmy Martin caused this and got mad and done this; I don’t want that shit. There’s enough of that shit throwed on me.”

Barry:  “I’ll write something about that. Okay?”

Jimmy: “You know what I’m sayin’?”

Barry:  “Yes sir, I do. I appreciate…”

Jimmy: “Well, like I said, there’s a lot of books… Now me, I’m fixin’ to go into a lawsuit on that film High, Lonesome Sound. Yeah. They’re givin’ me the credit of that, which I was the credit of it ‘cause when I went with Bill Monroe, I don’t know if you put it in the book ‘cause I ain’t read all of it, some people just drawed my attention to this, you know, or I wouldn’t a-read that. But anyway, I’ll read it all.

“In other words, when I went with Bill Monroe, Bill Monroe sung ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ in A. His first recordings, if the write-up would come out was in A. Well, that was with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in the ‘40s. Well, in the ‘50s with Jimmy Martin, he raised it up to the high, lonesome sound up in B natural. If you know chords, you know the difference in that, don’t you?

Barry:  “Yeah.”

Jimmy:  “That put him about three or four frets higher, didn’t it?”

Barry:  “Yes.”

Jimmy: “Well, how come he could do that? Because he was singin’ that much higher with me. You follow me?”

Barry:  “Yes.”

Jimmy: “Well, let me tell you now. When he wanted to sing, he had to have the right tone of voice and the right man to do it with. You couldn’t do it with just any and everybody ‘cause it won’t sound right. You follow me?”

Barry:  “Yup.”

Jimmy: “And when he put the lonesome sound, you just cain’t straight. You got to put a little Hank Williams in there and that’s what I was doin’. And he put that in his voice!

“Well, now, Lester couldn’t do that. And I laid that lonesome sound to him ‘cause Hank Williams wrote that song,

‘“I’m Blue and Lonesome, Too’ and sung it to us.

“But, if you’d straighten that up, I’d appreciate it.  I’ll tell what to write down; this is the way to do it. Don’t say Martin said nothin’. That ain’t good. In other words, you only have to put that Joe Blow said or anything. About Jimmy Martin bein’ a member of the Opry.

“See, Bud Wendell told me I would be a member. And Hal (Harold) Durham said I needed to be. But Bill begged them to not let me on there, that he’d quit and resign if they did. Not that’s it.

“Now don’t put it in there that I said it. But I’m a tellin’ you the truth; that’s the way it was.

“Now you can say that the public and also the managers wanted Jimmy Martin on the Opry but through ‘professional jealousy’ as was in one write-up, that Jimmy Martin was not a member of the Grand Ole Opry which Jimmy says no matter how hard and how much he would have loved to have been a member of the church Grand Ole Opry as of now he will never be a member of the Grand Ole Opry.”

Barry:  “I will use those words.”

Jimmy:  “I appreciate it. That’s very nice of you doin’ that. And put it in there like you can put it in there ‘cause, hell, I just got a third grade education. Hell, I cain’t do nothin’.

“Now don’t say that Jimmy Martin said this but you can quote me in there on the last line, that Jimmy Martin told you that no matter how bad he would-a liked to have been a member of the Grand Ole Opry, that he will never be a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

“Now, don’t be put me a-saying that what kept me off the Opry. Everybody else knows that. See, everybody down at the back of the Grand Ole Opry knows that Bill kept me off the Opry. Bill Anderson, all of them guys know that. All of the staff band and all. “Cause I’d be down there on Saturday night and Clyde Moody would be a-standin’ there. You know him? Well, Clyde Moody would be a-standin’ there with his suit on and I’d have my suit and hat on. Bill would never speak to me. Bill’s boys would speak to me. Osborne Brothers’ boys would speak to me but they’ll never speak to me; they’ll turn their head.

“But now, Bill would get out there and say, ‘We’re gonna do a gospel song. Get that bluegrass quartet around here.’

“All the people looked at me standin’ beside a-Clyde.  He said, ‘I’d like for you to especially to meet an old Blue Grass Boy—used to be a Blue Grass Boy—named Clyde Moody over there.’ He was standin’ right beside me a-lookin’ at me and talkin’ to me.  ‘I’d like to do this for him. So this is for you, Clyde.’

“Here they come a-walkin’ up to me. ‘Why don’t that son of a bitch do you a song?’

“I said, ‘Now you ask him. I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Jealousy, that’s it.’

“I said, ‘Hell, it ain’t gonna hurt him. He’s just makin’ you all run up here and shake hands with me and to hell with Clyde Moody.”’

Barry:  “Yeah. Lance LeRoy said it was just jealousy. He said that.  But, look, can you find page 579 in that book? “

Jimmy: [He turned and asked friend Maryanne, “Find 579, Mary.”] “Boy that’s a big book, ain’t it?”

Barry:  “Yes. I was hopin’ you’d be proud of that.”

Jimmy: “And another place where Al Munde says like it was hard with Jimmy and couldn’t make much money. Well, G..damn! Forget about that. But, I’d like to say right under that while he’s a-sayin’ that right there, ‘Yes, and thank you so much. I felt sorry for you and give you a job and helped you to learn to play timin’ on the banjer. You couldn’t sing a damn lick of baritone or nothin’. I still paid you and let you stay in my group for a year and I still didn’t have a baritone singer.” And he still can’t sing baritone.”

Barry: “I think you already said that in the book already. [It’s on page 220] Yeah. It’s in there. But he’s certainly appreciative of his time with you. He learned a lot; all your men learned a lot.

“Now, on page 579, the topic is ‘Strife at the Opry Caused by Bill Monroe.’ It says there:        “Of course, any good journalist would ask at this juncture, ‘Do you have proof?’ I do, indeed, and the strongest kind of proof.” LeRoy continued, “One night backstage at the Opry while it was still held in the Ryman Auditorium, Roy Acuff came in Lester’s dressing room, one of the small rooms that were barely large enough to hold a five-piece band. It was in 1970 or 1971 and I think, possibly the latter. Roy began reminiscing with Lester and I stood there and heard Acuff relate an incident whereby Bill Monroe brought the petition to him. Acuff said he read it and it specified that Monroe’s music belonged to him and that Lester and Earl should not be brought in to compete with him. Acuff said he signed it but very soon began to realize that the music belonged to Lester and Earl as much as to Monroe. He thereupon looked Monroe up, retrieved the petition, and made Monroe scratch his name off. He said he felt that Lester and Earl would be a credit to the Opry and had every right to be there. Acuff added that Ernest Tubb refused to sign it when it was presented to him by Monroe.

“I would like very much for you to quote me on this in your book and I stand behind every word of it. And proudly. The truth should be told. Hastily, late at night… Best Wishes.” It was signed Lance LeRoy.

Jimmy: “Well, I do think that Lester and Earl was a big help to Bill Monroe’s sound. And I told James Monroe that he knew good and well that when Lester and Earl left Monroe that they took that sound with ‘em.  And James, he said, ‘Well, you’ll have to admit they had a good tenor singer and mandolin player. [Jimmy laughs]

“I thought that was a joke, but it’s about the same truth ain’t it?  They was as much that sound or more than Bill Monroe. You understand what I’m sayin’? “Cause when they left and went to Bristol, they sounded more like them records than Bill did.”

Barry:  “I like the band when Jimmy Martin was in Bill Monroe’s band. That was my favorite band. That was good stuff. But what I was trying to do was glean from everybody’s conversations who talked about you and from what you said and I was trying to tell everything. But I was not trying to ‘dish the dirt.’”

Jimmy: “The conversations about me—now keep this in mind—when I was in Detroit with the Osborne brothers, see they didn’t say nothin’ about the Osborne brothers. They was lookin’ out at their cock eyes at me all the time ‘cause I was the showman end of it and the Osborne brothers was just there playin’ the music and tearin’ it down and it was good and we cain’t be beat together.

“In other words, I was more watched on the stage than everyone of ‘em. You foller me? There was no use Bob singin’ “Ruby” and me a-singin’ a solo ‘cause I’d knock his ass plumb down the line. And I’m not sayin’ that braggin’ or boastin’.

“And then when I went to the Louisiana Hayride, it was the same thing. Even Johnny Horton and every one of ‘em was jealous of us ‘cause we was tearin’ that Hayride all to pieces. Well, when I come to the Hayride, they told me if you come down here you’ll starve to death. You better get you a electric guitar and get rid of that banjo and mandolin ‘cause you cain’t do it. It won’t go over. Them people like Charlie Monroe, Mac Wiseman, Stanley brothers and a lot of those bluegrass people have been there and starved to death. I said that’s what I’ve heard everywhere I go. Don’t tell me that; I’m tired of listening.

“Well, hell, I done good. I tore the crowd up three or four times that night. They said, ‘You’ll do good.’

“We stayed there, then I went to Wheeling. When I walked in there they said, ‘You’ve come to a hole, Buddy, where you gonna starve to death.”

“I said, ‘Don’t tell me that up here, g..damn it.’

“They said, ‘The Osborne Brothers is driving up here from Dayton, and comin’ up here once a month; they can’t make it. Jim and Jesse’s been up here. Lester and Earl had a TV show there: Martha White. They couldn’t make it; couldn’t get no mail.’

“I said, ‘I’m tired of hearin’ this damn stuff.’ And we was the hottest thing ever hit Wheelin’. When I said ‘we’ I mean I had two boys with me: J.D. Crowe and Paul Williams, who could flat whittle it down, you know. ‘Cause we rehearsed it and had everything down to a T just as good as Lester and Earl or anybody had it. You know what I’m sayin’?

“So I hope I ain’t soundin’ snotty to you and I hope you’ll set that out and you’ll say good words and don’t say in there that I called you and had you to change it or nothin’ like that. I would appreciate it ‘cause you’ll find out that I’m not that kind of a damn guy. You’ll find out, by me talkin’ to you surely this mornin’ that I ain’t the kind of guy [who] said, like people tells on me, ‘I called this g—damn, f—kin’ ass up and told him this.’ I don’t want that. You see what I mean? I try to live right. I’m not a church fanatic but I try to live by the good book, Do unto other people as you’d have them do unto you.  And that’s exactly what I do. If I run up and smart off to g..damn somebody, I expect them to knock the shit out of me. And if I go up to somebody and they’re smartin’ off to me, am I gonna stand there and hunker down and squat down and say, ‘Please don’t talk to me like that?’ I’d say, ‘You son of a bitch, get out of my face, there. Or whup me.’ I’ve whupped a few and I’ve been whupped, you know.

Barry:  “I certainly apologize if this hurts you. But I tried to say some wonderful things about you.”

Jimmy: “Well, you did.”

Barry:  “I tried to because you’re my favorite bluegrass singer.”

Jimmy:  “Well, you’ve got me all through this book and I appreciate it. And it’ll make you money, too.”

Barry:  “Well, I hope it makes you more famous because that’s the whole idea of the book.”

Jimmy: “Just clear it in there up that the reason why Jimmy Martin is not on the Grand Ole Opry is… Write this down. Let’s just get the whole damn truth of it. Got a pencil?

[Write] “that Jimmy Martin was in Wheelin’ and he come to Nashville to the big DJ convention at the Andrew Jackson Hotel where his girlfriend, Barbara, was his booker. And Ralph Emery got Jimmy Martin on WSM and asked him how everything was a-goin’ and he said, ‘I heard you was a-movin’ to Nashville. And I told Ralph, ‘Just as soon as I go back to Wheelin’ and sell my home, I was movin’ to Nashville and go to work with Bob Neal and the Wilbur Brothers bookin’ office that Gene Johnson, my manager, was a quittin’ and bought him a radio station.’ You got that?

“And Bill Monroe heard of it and called Barbara in the lobby of the hotel Andrew Jackson and told Barbara that he heard I was a-movin’ to Nashville. And he told her Jimmy was doin’ good in Wheelin’ and I’d advise you to get him to stay on up there. If he moves to Nashville, I’m gonna do everything in my power against him. And Barbara, which is Jimmy’s girlfriend and booker, told Mr. Monroe, ‘Just go ahead and do everything you can against him. Jimmy is very popular now, Bill. And I’m gonna be a-bookin’ him and I’m gonna book him more show dates and he’s gonna make more money than you do. So you just go ahead and do everything you can against him.’

“That’s exactly the words were said.”

Barry:  “Okay. I’ll write that up and send it to you and…”

Jimmy:  “Now don’t say that Jimmy told you. Okay, now, wait just a minute. I want you to correct this here absolutely about the Grand Ole Opry. Come here Mary. Maryanne Garrison. I’m gonna let her tell you in her words when Bud Wendell invited us down to show us Opryland USA before it was opened up. Bud Wendell invited Jimmy Martin and his kids down to show us… Let her tell you that, what Bud Wendell told me that same day about the crowd and everything.

Maryanne Garrison: “Bud Wendell sent Jimmy a letter and invited him to the groundbreaking of the Opryland, Jimmy and his family had told us to come down there and he’ll show us the opening and the groundbreaking and all that. And we went down there with Jimmy and his children and I was there. I took pictures of all the things that’s gonna happen and Bud Wendell came himself, personally, to take Jimmy on the tour of the whole groundbreaking ceremonies. And when he did, he asked Jimmy, ‘Well, Jimmy what do you think about all this that’s gonna happen.’

“And Jimmy said, ‘It doesn’t matter to me ‘cause I’ll never be here anyway; I’ll never be invited down here or anything.’

“And he says, ‘Well Jimmy, I think you should be a member. I think the fans have always written to the Opry personnel and wanted to see you back, time and time again. You are a crowd pleaser and I think you could do the job. Now, you will be a member of the Grand Ole Opry. I promise you that.’

“Now, this is what he said, Barry, ‘cause I was standin’ right there. He did say that and he never pursued it any further.

“Also, I want to say something, too, Barry. I don’t like drinking in any way; I’m appalled by it all the time but I’ve known Jimmy for thirty-eight years and I’ve never—and I’m not saying anything about except this—I’ve known Jimmy all those years and he’s never missed a show date for any drinking, ever! In fact, in the ‘70s when he had a serious automobile accident, Barry, I was here with his children—I used to take care of his kids—and I was here and he hit a telephone pole. It was a serious accident. He had cracked ribs, a broken arm and an eye injury. That very same weekend, he was supposed to play a show in Detroit, Michigan. I told him not to go. His agent at that time was Buddy Lee. They told him they would cancel it. And he said, ‘No. I can make that show.’ I don’t know how he did it ‘cause his ribs were cracked; he was in serious condition. But he went on that old Flex bus all the way to Michigan and did that show. I remember that. So Jimmy has never missed a show for any reason. And that’s the truth.”

Barry:  “The people in California—I don’t remember the conversation right now—they keep on telling me those things kind of happened. So I didn’t delve into it because I was there and people were sort of skirting about it. But they did tell me that stuff. And, maybe I’ll go back and do a little more research on that and clarify it and I’ll send this to you, okay, and then get the word out.”

Maryanne: “And I also want to say this, too, Barry. I think it’s very important, for once, to write the right thing. Jimmy’s been criticized in a lot of areas. But any time he does anything good, it seems like nobody wants to put that in the book. It has nothing to do with my personal feelings because that doesn’t matter. But, really and truly, Jimmy has been a good father to his children, he raised them himself, he’s a good family man, he’s always taken care of them, he’s always made sure that they got a good education in school, he’s tried to encourage them in no matter what they wanted to in their endeavors. Always! He encouraged them to go to college. And they are fine kids even today. And I think these things should be said about his, not just in the music business but also, you know, in the personal side of Jimmy.

“He’s kind hearted. He’s good to everybody who comes around his home. And instead of always putting the negative things, somebody should say more personal good things about Jimmy’s qualities. If there’s ever to be a book ever to be on Jimmy’s personal life, that’s gonna have to be included in there.”

Barry:  “At one time, Jimmy asked me if I would be interested in writing his story. That was when Teresa was with him. But, anyhow, those two paragraphs that I wrote there under the Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys topic was supposed to set the tone. It was praise, extreme praise. And that’s the way I really feel about it. But then the rest of it is to tell a little bit more about him: that he is a complex individual but then I go into a biographical thing. I didn’t spend much time on what you are concerned with; I don’t ‘dish the dirt’ intentionally.  That thing about the Sunny Martin Boys was a computer glitch and I changed in the next version of the book.”

Maryanne:  “Jimmy wants to talk to you.”

Jimmy:  “I just wanted her to say that so you’d have it in your own ear that Bud Wendell told me that I would be a member. He said that the Opry fans liked the way that I played and sang and the way I entertained and sang bluegrass music.”

Barry:   “Okay, I’ve got it down here.”

Jimmy:  “We’ve crossed it up and it’ll take a brain to straighten it out. I like the way Mary explained it, which I cain’t. But I’ve always been good and tried to help the underdog. You know what I mean? And I’ve never done nothin’ to the Osborne brothers. I’ve never done nothin’ to nobody! And people comes around me and tells me how good I treat ‘em. And I just tell ‘em come on into my home. They don’t have to put off their damn shoes or nothing, you know. And how good I make ‘em feel. And when it comes around to an entertainer, they try to cut me down some and some of them say you’re just jealous, you know.

“I think Lance LeRoy spelled it out pretty well straight. But I say, talkin’ to you, you’ll put a good part right where this place belongs here [in this book]. While you’re doin’ that, you can straighten out that Sunny Martin Boys thing, too, can’t you? Do it all at one time. And when you get the book, don’t send me another book, just send me the correction that you made and I’ll just set here and lay down on the couch and turn me a light and read it over and over and over. You know what I’m sayin’?”

Barry:   “Yes sir. I appreciate that. What I’m going to have to do is write it all up and send you the corrections and stuff. So, I’ll do what I can.”

Jimmy:  “Yeah. Put it in there good for me. And you can say what Roy Acuff told me if you want to. ‘Cause they told him that, you know. You got that all down. Just put it in there where it don’t sound like I’m a-sayin’ it. ‘Cause if I’m a-sayin’ it, it ain’t gonna be good. You know what I mean?”

Barry:  “Yes. But, you know, when I say that you said it, that’s really authentic. That’s the beauty of this book: the first person quotations.”

Jimmy:  “Yeah, but what I’m tryin’ to say it make it sound like, ‘Sure, Jimmy would say that.’ It would be better if Roy Acuff said that: what Roy Acuff told me.  Like I said, when he [Bill Monroe] said that to Barbara, you say Barbara told me that, not Jimmy said that to Barbara. Make it that he called Barbara off and said that to her.”

Barry:   “Okay. I’ll do it. Goodbye.”

Immediately thereafter, I called Lance LeRoy to ask him about these alleged drinking incidents:

Barry:  Lance, this is right after a conversation I just had with Jimmy Martin and I wanted to ask you about it. I don’t know if you’ve see it in the book or not…

Lance:  I have not read… I’ve read so little of it. I just haven’t had much chance to do that. I have my copy.

Barry:  Wow! You have one already? I was going to give you one.

Lance:  That’s okay. I’ve already got mine.

Barry:  Anyhow, in the 3^rd paragraph in the Jimmy Martin section (p. 214), I talk about him missing concerts due to drinking. And he was taking issue to that. He said he might have missed one concert due to drinking but that’s it. So he also went on to explain about why he was kept off the Opry; you know those stories.

Can you elaborate on this statement in my book? What about his missing concerts? Did I say that correctly?

Lance:  I have not read that part, Barry. I really haven’t. I read some of the things, the comments, that I made about Jimmy and I think most of my comments in there—I was on 11 pages and I read ‘em—but I couldn’t really [elaborate] because I really don’t know.

Barry: Would you allow me to read this to you now?

Lance:  If you want to. Sure.

Barry:  I introduce him as the greatest. And stuff like that. But the 3^rd paragraph says “Jimmy Martin’s legacy is multifaceted and includes his wonderful crowd-pleasing music presented in a showman style which few bluegrassers can reach. It includes his own rhythms of bluegrass which is close, but not identical, to his mentor Bill Monroe. It includes a history of missed concerts due to drinking. His behavior offstage kept him from becoming a member of the Grand Ole Opry where he had performed several times and achieved tremendous crowd acceptance. His social relationships with most of the big names in bluegrass, with which he has worked at one time or another, virtually disappeared. He seemed to offend almost everyone at one time or another to the point that they won’t speak to him. But his legacy also includes his tremendous for which he lives. He loves bluegrass, knows it well, and has turned many a promising bluegrass musician into a great one. Just ask J.D. Crowe, Alan Munde, Bill Emerson and Paul Williams. This is his story.”

Then I go into the biographical aspect of his life. What do you think about that?

Lance:  Well, there’s some truth in there. I’d have to have it before me to say, “This is true, this isn’t true” but overall, it seemed like a fair assessment. I think you said, “Made a lot of people mad.” I don’t think he made very many people mad with him, quite honestly. There are a few artists that he didn’t get along with but I think that goes back to the early days, you know. Part of it is, Bill Monroe did, indeed, try to keep him off the Opry. I’m sure. I can’t cite you an incident where he was able to with Flatt and Scruggs, but I have absolute proof that Bill tried to keep them off the Opry. But it was widely supposed that Monroe did try to keep Jimmy off the Opry. I’ve heard that from a lot of sources other than Jimmy, you know. But that’s off the track’ I didn’t mean to get off the track.

Jimmy’s got a strong, outgoing personality. And if he drinks a little bit, it aggravates it a little bit—or it exacerbates it—whatever you want to call it. It brings it out, you know, and he can become, shall we say “loud” sometimes, you know, in talking to people. He’s a very forceful conversationalist, you know.

I’m trying to keep on track here. I think what he does here offends people. I mean, it doesn’t make an enemy of them but some people I know… Jimmy will get into a conversation, he’ll have a few drinks and he’ll jab you with his elbow. He has this habit of jabbing your or punching you and saying, “Listen to this.” I know it offends some people, you know. In fact, it offends a lot of ‘em. But it’s just a flaw with him and it’s not just people turning against him but, as you say, socially, people do shun him because of that. Because they think, “Doggodit, here comes Jimmy and I get into a conversation with him and I can’t get loose; he’ll talk me to death.”

But I think Jimmy’s had only two feuds of non-speaking with anybody. I’m trying to be honest here, Barry. And that was with Bill Monroe and the Osborne brothers. I can’t think of any artists, to my knowledge… But, as far as missing shows, I don’t have any direct knowledge of any. But at the same time, when I got into this business professionally with Lester in early 1969—February of ‘69—and I went my way. I was with Lester and I’d travel with him and I wasn’t representing Jimmy during all those years and he could have possibly missed a date and I wouldn’t have known about it or whatever. I realize that so I just account for him in all those years. I don’t recall hearing him just not showin’ up for a date; I don’t remember that ever happenin’ but that’s not to say that it never happened. I don’t know enough about it to know whether it did or not.

Barry:  Did Bob Artis get sued by Jimmy Martin about a statement about Jimmy’s drinking?

Lance:  I’m told that Bob Artis got sued by somebody else: Bill Napier. Bill Napier sued him and won a lawsuit against him and caused the cessation of the publication of the book [Bluegrass, Hawthorn Books Inc., 1975]. That was not Jimmy! I’m sure Jimmy never sued him. That’s what I’ve been told on pretty good authority. I don’t have any written proof of that but I’m sure that Bob Artis had to cease publication of his book. I think that was a ruling for the settlement that he just not print any more books.

Barry:  Well, Jimmy didn’t indicate that he was going to sue me so I was just trying to get some information on how to present that. So I can do that.

Lance:  I can’t say for certainty one way or the other. If I could, I really would. I didn’t come into Jimmy’s career at all until 1980, I mean bookin’ him. I never booked a date on him prior to 1980 and whatever I said would be speculation. I can say I don’t recall ever hearin’ him missing a date, you know. We’ve all heard of Jimmy drinkin’ on dates but he did make it to the stage, you know. I mean, if you say he’s missing a date by not showing up, if that the definition of missing a date I just don’t recall that, you know.

But I don’t know anything else that might shed some light on it.

Barry:  I changed some editing things I found in the book. I thought you’d like to know.

Lance:  I think at one point, it seemed to me you mentioned that I started bookin’ the Johnson Mountain Boys in February of ’88. Actually, that was the date they broke up. I had been representin’ them since April of 1983. Of course, I don’t want to get into a correction of this and a correction of that, but it’s not the biggest thing in the world, because at another point you did say that I had represented them. I mean, it’s not a big thing to me; don’t worry about it if you don’t change it. I’m not upset about it ‘cause I think the facts would make it obvious it’s an error. But I’m almost certain it on one of the eleven pages where you quote me. Maybe. Maybe now. [I changed it]

Eddie Stubbs and I were together just the other day celebrating the 10^th anniversary of them breaking up. I was the agent up until then.

But anyway, Barry, it’s just a whale of a book and I think the most valuable thing in bluegrass I’ve seen. I’m really proud of it. I don’t own any other bluegrass book, by the way. I don’t own any of them. None of ‘em.

Barry:  Why would you buy this one, then?

Lance:  I just thought ‘cause it quotes the artist and I thought that was very important, you know. Those quotes are so valuable from artists over the years, you know. So much [in other books] is so much the writer’s speculation, which I often don’t have confidence in. And so many of these are quotin’ the artist and right comin’ from the source. And, I agree, some of the artists—I’ve read a few of their things—that I do think they glossed it over and kind of hyped it, you know, but still it’s comin’ from them, you know. And there is some valuable information here about these artists about when they recorded this or that or the other or who played on ‘em or information leadin’ up to the session. Various things. Just little color and background history. It’s very valuable; I consider it an extremely valuable book.

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The Buffalo Gals

Muleskinner News Sept 1976 interview by Tony Trischka.

“The Buffalo Gals, the first all female bluegrass band in the nation, are from Syracuse NY. The group is made up of Martha Trachtenberg on guitar, Susie Monick on banjo, Carol Siegel on mandolin, Nancy Josephson on bass and Kriss on fiddle. Their first festival appearance was at Carlton Haney’s 1974 New Grass Festival. Their love for the string music makes it even more enjoyable for them to play bluegrass music for a livelihood. They play the New England and Eastern parts of the USA. In 1976, they will appear at Berryville VA, Gettysburg PA and the Labor Day Weekend Festival at Blue Grass Park, Camp Springs NC. They also play at many colleges, clubs coffee houses on the east coast.”

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Mule Skinner News Sep 1976

“Betty Fisher was raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC. From the day she was born, she was exposed to string music played by her father “Buck” Buchanan and weekends. She had a natural talent for playing and singing this kind of music and at a very early age she and Buck played several engagements making friends and impressing other artists everywhere they appeared. As she puts it, it was a way of life with her and she loved every minute of it. Her playing lead guitar was a very pleasant style and this created a lot of excitement for them. She holds the title of State Champion Lead Guitarist in South Carolina.

When Betty married, she left the world of entertaining to become a housewife and mother. She was away from the music industry for several years, but after attending a bluegrass festival, decided to organize her own band. So, on October 15, 1972, Betty Fisher and the Dixie Bluegrass Boys made their first public appearance. The success of the group is nothing short of phenomenal. They have had a regular Saturday morning radio program, taped several 30-minute television specials, appeared as guests on other TV shows, recorded four record albums, also two eight track tapes from live stage shows and, traveling throughout eight states, they have appeared on most all the major bluegrass festivals in the southeast.

Betty Fisher was one of the most pleasant personalities of anyone in show business. Her sincere and genuine love for people has been to her advantage. She believes in giving the fans a good, clean stage show and the band members share her enthusiasm and excitement. She uses simplicity in their stage clothes which gives them an eye-catching appeal. Their music has something for everyone. The fast, foot-stomping breakdowns, the slow smooth harmony songs, the ever-popular gospel numbers are all done in very good taste. They have a style all their own, though they do several traditional as well as newgrass numbers, they include some original tunes also. The versatility of each member gives them the extra ingredients needed for an exceptionally well-balanced stage show.

The popularity of Betty Fisher and the Dixie Bluegrass Boys is growing by leaps and bounds, the fan club established just over a year ago has members from all over the United States as well as five foreign countries. The Betty Fisher Show was voted one of the most promising vocal groups by the readers of a recent bluegrass music publication. This is an honor she respects with all humility and looks forward to each new day as providing them with the opportunity to share with all people their feeling and love for a music that is a way of life with her.

The Dixie Bluegrass Boys are three of the friendliest fellows around. They take their music very seriously, yet they enjoy working all aspects of show business: the traveling and meeting new friends has give each of them the opportunity to excel in their own individual ways.

Randy Carrier plays mandolin and fiddle in the band and does a fine job singing a variety of parts in their various arrangements of songs. He just recorded an album for API (Atteiram) titled “Mandolin Variety,” and it is a perfect example of his versatility. He is twenty-five years old, single and a chess player and antique car collector.

Dale Tilley came with the band from Durham, North Carolina. He is one of the most enthusiastic performers on stage today, playing banjo and excelling in his honest-to-goodness down home, loves everybody personality. He enjoys painting and playing basketball, but his main interest is music. He writes all types of songs and sings all parts in the band.

Tommy Fisher is the bass player, and this year is the bass singer on the quartet numbers. He is finishing high school and planning to continue playing music, as it is a fantastic way of having a good time, before settling down to attending college. He plays sports and is interested in cars and hunting as his hobbies.

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Jan “Honza” Macak (deceased April 12, 2011)

Macak founded the first bluegrass festival in Europe, The Banjo Jamboree, in his hometown of Kopidino, Czech Republic. His interest in bluegrass began when he saw banjo pioneer Pete Seeger on tour in Czechoslovakia in 1964. As bluegrass bands formed in the area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, they played “trampgrass”— a mixture of western and Tramp music—and what they heard on the few recordings that came through the Iron Curtain via the radio airwaves.

Macak’s first band was called Vetraci which is Czech for “The Ventilators.” They got their name because they practiced under the ventilator fan at a local band in Kopidino where they practiced. The first Banjo Jamboree in 1973 was mainly intended as a get-together for Czech banjo players.

Macak was awarded the European World of Bluegrass Pioneer award in 2003 and was the first inductee into the Czech Bluegrass Hall of Fame.

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Roy “Whitey” Grant (died September 17, 2010)

The Briarhoppers was a legendary group based in Charlotte, NC. This string band, fronted by Whitey Grant and neighbor Arval Hogan (July 24, 1911 – July 24, 2003) recorded on Decca in 1941. A later interview with Grant revealed, “We’d get 12,000 cards and letters a week, some just addressed to ‘Whitey and Hogan’.”

The Briarhoppers was featured on a CBS radio show aired to American troops overseas during WWII. The band left the air in 1951 then re-formed to play schools and other local venues, and they toured Europe and made an appearance on “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show. In 2003, the band was awarded the North Carolina Arts Council’s Folk Heritage Award.

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Julian “Winnie” Winston.

This biography was gleaned from Julian “Winnie” Winston’s website in October 2011. julianwinston.com/music/me_and_my_old_banjo2.php

“I remember it clearly,” wrote Julian Winston in his internet biography. “My mother taught at a school right off lower Third Avenue in NYC—a major pawnshop area. In the spring of 1955 she came home and said, ‘I saw some banjos. Would you be interested in learning banjo?’ Gad! I HATED banjo, but I was thinking of the plunka-plunka of the tenor banjo. Little did I know.”

Soon he was introduced to the bluegrass banjo by Paul Prestopino and was hooked. “I started to hang out at Washington Square in NYC on Sundays where there was live folk music in the afternoon around the fountain.” Also there were Eric Weissberg, Marshall Brickman, Bob Yellin, Willie Dykeman and Roger Sprung from whom he could learn. Significant old-time players included Billy Faier, Luke Faust, Dick Weissman, John Cohen and Tom Paley.

Initially following the banjo stylings of Pete Seeger, he soon saw the three-finger style as a separate kind of music. “At the time,” he continues, “it was all one: blues, bluegrass, folk. It was not unusual to see blues greats like Dave Van Ronk playing along with ‘bluegrass’ bands who were singing regular folk standards.” After hearing Bob Yellin on banjo with the Greenbriar Boys doing “I Walked into a Church One Day,” he began to see the banjo as a “style” of music and became a bluegrass convert.

Winston soon met radio DJ Bill Knowlton whose Fordham University radio program was called “Bluegrass Ramble.” Still a junior at the college, Knowlton invited Winston to an interview he was doing with Harry and Jeannie West who were transplanted southerners living in the Bronx. Harry was finely steeped in not only the music but record collecting and was a dealer of fine instruments. Soon Winston joined the husband and wife team: his first band. And he got his first Gibson banjo: a pre-war RB-1. By 1960, he had become a fine banjoist and played at Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s big festival at Asheville, North Carolina with Harry and Jeannie.

He remembers trying to win a new banjo in the banjo contest at Indian Neck Folk Festival in 1963. “By that time, I had a new banjo and had figured a few things out about the contest. First, if didn’t matter if you were a good banjo player or not; you had to ‘turn’ the audience. The first person who did that had a crack at winning. Second, you had to make it look hard—got that from Scotty Stoneman. Third, the audience loved hearing the second string choked on the tenth fret. That sound was like waving a red flag at a bull. “ forget what I played, but I worked at it and found a place to make the tenth fret choke. It did the job. The audience cheered, and I had them. I won the Mastertone…it certainly helped that I looked like an undernourished teenager, too.”

1963 was a formative year for him, meeting and playing with other greats including David Grisman, Californian Eric Thompson, Fred Weisz, Steve Mandell and Frank Benedetto. They formed The New York City Ramblers to compete at the Union Grove, NC Old Time Fiddler’s Convention on Easter weekend. The band was Winston (banjo), Thompson (guitar), Gene Lowinger (fiddle) and Fred Weisz (bass). They would later change the name to the New York Ramblers.

Winston joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys for a show in 1964 when Gene Lowinger was on fiddle with the band. Del and Gerry McCoury came in from York, PA to play guitar and bass.  The next year found Winston back at Union Grove, this time with Jody Stecher on guitar, replacing Jim Field who had joined the Charles River Valley Boys in Boston. He would return the next couple years with excellent guitarists and continue winning the banjo contests.  Gerde’s Folk City in NYC became the place for bands of this ilk (folk music). Other bands to play there at that time were Josh White Jr, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, John Lee Hooker, and the Irish Ramblers.  Some of their 1966 work was released on David Grisman’s “Early Dawg” LP on the Sugar Hill label. They appeared in Carlton Haney’s first bluegrass festival in 1965 with Winston, Jody Stecher, Sandy Rothman, David Grisman, and Fred Weisz.

In 1967, Winston was an integral part of the northern bluegrass scene. One of the most elite (and most fun) parties was at Tex Logan’s home in New Jersey. One time, “Somewhere about one a.m., I was playing some fiddle tunes with Kenny Baker. In swept Bill Monroe and Roland White. Bill was wearing an outrageous outfit, and Roland was in drag. They proceeded to treat those present to an off-the-cuff comedy routine. I’d never known Bill to ‘let his hair down’ that much. He was very funny.”

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Mitch Jayne July 5, 1930 – August 2, 2010.

After college at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Jayne began teaching in Dent County, MO. About 1959 he met musician-brothers Rodney and Douglas Dillard. He soon joined them as bass player/emcee/storyteller in The Dillards with mandolinist Dean Webb. Though he played bass with the group for forty years, he insisted that he wasn’t the reason he was hired. He was one of the best entertainers in the business because of his wet, comedy and ability to charm the audience. He helped the band into the IBMA Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2009.  Jayne wrote or co-wrote “Hey Boys,” “Old Home Place,” “Ebo Walker,” “Dooley”—all reflections of his love for the Ozarks of Missouri.

Jayne hosted Hickory Hollow Time, a popular radio show on KSMO in Salem, MO, wrote and lectured extensively about the history, culture and resources of America. He wrote several books including Forest in the Wind (1966), Old Fish Hawk (1970). Hawk was made into a movie in 1979 and starred Will Sampson. His book Fiddler’s Ghost won the 2008 Missouri Governors Humanities Book Award.

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James David “Jim” McCall Sr April 30, 1930 to February 9, 2010.

Jim’s powerful rhythm guitar playing was well known in the Baltimore MD area, and later in the Cincinnati OH area when he played in the Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys. They recorded for Capitol, Rural Rhythm Records and REM.  Their move with the band from the east coast to Cincinnati in 1961 soon led to a six-year gig at the small Ken-Mill club/restaurant. Their renown there brought in other famous bands to the restaurant including the Osborne Brothers and the Stanley Brothers.  When McCall and Taylor broke up, Jim joined Vernon “Boatwhistle” McIntyre and Benny Birchfield. Bill Monroe asked him to join the Blue Grass Boys but he didn’t want to tour or move to Nashville so he stayed in the Cincinnati area for the rest of his life, eventually becoming the manager of an apartment complex.

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Bess Lomax Hawes was born January 21, 1921 and was the daughter of folklorist John Avery Lomax and sister of Alan Lomax and was a folklorist herself. She moved to New York City in the early 1940s. She played guitar, banjo, piano and mandolin and was an occasional singer/guitarist with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie in The Almanac Singers. She co-wrote “Charlie and the MTA” as a parody of “Wreck of the Old 97.” It was immortalized by the Kingston Trio in 1959. She worked with Ralph Rinzler, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (1976), was the Honorary Curator of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress from 1935-48, and with the National Endowments for the Arts, creating the National Heritage Fellowships. She helped write Our Singing Country (1941) with her father, her brother Alan Lomax and modernist composer Ruth Crawford Seeger.

During World War II, she worked for the Office of War Information preparing radio broadcasts for troops overseas. After the end of the war, she and her family moved to Boston. According to Peter Drier, Remembering Bess Lomax Hawes, Huffington Post, Nov 30, 2009, “She frequently brought her guitar to the school to perform for the students. Some of the parents, mostly the mothers, asked her to teach them how to play guitar, banjo and mandolin. Bess agreed to charge them one dollar each for each lesson, which lasted several hours, what she called “a whole evening.” She would keep 50 cents for herself to pay for a babysitter and she’d donate the other 50 cents to the nursery school. Word soon spread, and others began to join her classes.

“That was how,” continued Drier, “Bess developed her technique for teaching guitar to large groups of people simultaneously, a method for which she became well-known, and which accounts for the fact that over the years, especially after she moved to Los Angeles in 1951, she was able to teach so many people to play guitar. Many of her students, in turn, became guitar teachers, spreading her method— and her enthusiasm for music—which helped catalyze the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Bess figured . . . ‘students learning guitar individually can get intimidated because they can hear their own mistakes. In a group, the students feel bolder about playing, take more risks, enjoy it more, and feel part of something bigger, which sounds better, anyway.’”

In the 1950s, she moved to California where she taught guitar, banjo, mandolin and folk singing through UCLA extension courses and at San Fernando Valley State College. She was an integral part of “the folk scare,” performing at the larger folk festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival and the Berkeley Folk Festival.  In 1968 she became Associate Professor of Anthropology at San Fernando Valley State College and later head the Anthropology Department at what is now Cal State Northridge. There she compiled an extensive archive of folk songs that remain in a private, limited sector of the library. She retired in 1992. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993. Her memoir, Sing It Pretty, was published by Illinois University Press in 2008. She died November 27, 2009.

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Raymond Allen Shelton (July 2, 1936 – November 21, 2009)

Allen Shelton was sixteen when he joined Jim Eanes on banjo. After six months he joined Mac Wiseman where he record “Love Letters in the Sand.” Soon he was with Hack Johnson where he recorded “Home Sweet Home” using the Scruggs-Keith D tuners.  He re-joined Jim Eanes and recorded “Log Cabin in the Lane” and “Lady of Spain.”  In 1959 he joined Jim and Jesse, staying until 1966 and recorded on their “Berry Pickin’ in the Country,” “Bluegrass Classics” and “Bluegrass Special.” His solo LP was “Shelton Special” (Rounder 0088, 1977).   After a respite of several years from music, he returned to Jim and Jess in 1983 for five years, playing banjo and five-string Dobro. Though he didn’t talk much on stage, his constant smile was infectious to the audience.

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Smithsonian Folkways Records See Mike Seeger information for more on Folkways and its history. It is written by Mike Seeger and tells of his first production with Folkways Records.

The following is part of the liner notes on the 1990 re-release of “American Banjo Three Finger and Scruggs Style. It is a short biography of Smithsonian Folkways Records.

“Folkways Records was one of the largest independent record companies of the mid-twentieth century. Founded by Moses Asch in 1947 and run as an independent company until its sale in 1987, Folkways was dedicated to making the world of sound available to the public. Neal 2,200 titles were issued, including a great variety of American folk and traditional music, children’s songs, world music, literature, poetry, stories, documentaries, language instruction and science and nature sounds.

“The Smithsonian acquired Folkways in order to ensure that the sounds and the genius of the artists would continue to be available to future generations. Every title is being kept in print and new recordings are being issued. Administered by the Smithsonian’s Office of Folklife Programs, Folkways Records is one of the ways the Office supports cultural conservation and continuity, integrity, and equity for traditional artists and cultures.  Several hundred Folkways recordings are distributed by Rounder Records. The rest are available on cassette by mail order from the Smithsonian Institution.”

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Mike Seeger August 15, 1933 – August 7, 2009

Mike Seeger’s first action of importance in the world of bluegrass was his production of the LP called “American Banjo – Tunes and Songs in Scruggs Style” in 1956. This title dismayed Seeger because many of the banjoists on the LP predated Earl Scruggs. Seeger loved the banjo but originally entitled it “American Banjo” This record featured Snuffy Jenkins, Junie Scruggs (Earl’s brother), Larry Richardson, Pete Kuykendall and Donnie Bryant—and ten other banjoists. The LP was originally issued on Folkways in 1956 but in 1990 on the Smithsonian/Folkways label. The second LP had sixteen previously unissued tracks. Seeger’s next bluegrass LP for Folkways was in 1959, “Mountain Music Bluegrass Style.”

With his field reel-to-reel tape recorder he recorded artists such as Don Stover, the Stoneman Family. He produced the album. His production of these LPs was to further his love of preserving this music for the world to share in future generations. The world owes him—and the people like him—a great gratitude of debt for helping to save this music.  Seeger was a half-brother to legendary Pete Seeger and, as such, inhibited his work in the public eye. Pete was acknowledged to be a communist spy after U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee accused Pete of being a communist. This connection Mike had with his brother would cause him to lose his first sound engineer job at age 18 with Capital Transcriptions in Washington, D.C.

Mike began playing instruments in his late teens, soon joining Tom Paley and John Cohen as the New Lost City Ramblers, again trying to play and thus preserve the kind of music he loved. They performed extensively throughout the world and continued to record more LPs for Moses Asch’s Folkways Records.  In 2009 he received the Bess Hawes National Heritage Fellowship Award.

A booklet of additional liner notes was included in “American Banjo Three Finger and Scruggs Style.” Mike Seeger labels it “A look back on the recording” 1990.

“In the summer of 1956 Moses (Moe) Asch of Folkways Records wrote and asked me to produce an LP of Scruggs-style banjo picking. This style was fairly well known at that time amongst country people familiar with the bluegrass style of music but was new to those of us raised in the city who were learning to play the banjo. During the early fifties, players such as Mike Vidor, Roger Sprung and of course my brother Pete had known and played various interpretations of Earl Scruggs’ instrumentals and brought more interest amongst urban people to this new style of banjo playing. I’m sure that Pete, who was recording at that time for Folkways, was the reason that Moe wrote me.

“In 1955 I had bought my first tape recorder, a 40-pound “portable” Magnecord semi-professional reel-to-reel machine. It was one of the first such machines to appear and would compare unfavorable to a present day Pro-Walkman cassette recorder. But this did mean that on-location recording was becoming relatively easy for the first time. I began recording a lot of shows by the bluegrass style performers that traveled to the northern Maryland area where I lived at that time. I was also playing with a Baltimore area bluegrass style group consisting of Bob Baker, Hazel Dickens and a few other friends from southern Virginia and talking a fair amount about the music with collector/musician Pete Kuykendall, now editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, and record collector Dick Spottswood. I had been listening to recordings of old-time country music for a long time. And so, for the times, I had some idea of the background and present status of this new style of banjo picking.

“The first thing I did after getting Moe’s request was to have a long talk with Pete Kuykendall, who had already told me of the important role of Snuffy Jenkins. During our recording session Snuffy steered me to his nephew and to Junie Scruggs. I knew most of the rest of the players through recordings, shows and friends like Pete Kuykendall and Tom Morgan, who helped in setting up the dates with Smiley Hobbs and Don Bryant.

“I wanted as much as possible to first represent a type of banjo picking that predated Earl’s playing as well as his immediate closest influences, and then a broad selection of the players he influenced. I wanted to record mostly tunes that had not been recorded in this style by that time and it actually turned out that way. This was the first time for most of these tunes to be recorded in the style created by Earl Scruggs. I don’t recall asking for old tunes particularly, but that was certainly my bias. Most bluegrass players were establishing new songs and sounds at this time and so didn’t record some of the old-0time tunes that they played on shows. I wanted to record these tunes for their intrinsic value as well as to show the connection of the new style to the older music. I did record a fair number of playing of Earl’s tunes, but I have included only a few arrangements of traditional tunes originated by him, because they differ significantly from his version, and are also very good. I wanted to record much of the banjo picking solo, but many of the pickers wanted backup bad enough to ask me to play. (I wish now that I had declined more often.) Use of backup was also limited due to lack of money and off-the-cuff, impromptu nature of the whole project.

“Due to the very tight production budget ($100 total) I had to limit my travels to one southern swing and to the Baltimore/Washington area. I had quit my job to do this project and was using a high millage Chevy Carryall (a truck-type station wagon) with barely enough money for tape, food, fuel, and an occasional $5 motel. I barely knew how to use the recorder and was too economical with tape to even let the sounds die down at the end of a cut. How times have changed in the days of good, cheap cassette tape! This was the first record I had produced and it was recorded mostly in people’s homes using one omni-directional Electrovoice 635 microphone.

“This album turned out to be the best-selling record that I either produced or played on and it sold well to both rural and urban people. Although the musicians were not paid at the outset, they have been paid royalties over the following 30 years, albeit irregularly. Now, completely re-mastered from the original tapes, available in CD and with new cover and notes, this recording remains a good document of some of the banjo pickers who influenced Earl Scruggs and some of the first of many to influenced by him.”

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Junie Scruggs. The following is from a booklet of additional liner notes included in “American Banjo Three Finger and Scruggs Style.” 1990. Written by the LP’s producer Mike Seeger.

“Junie Scruggs is Earl Scruggs’ older brother. Both his father and sister played the banjo in the old -time ‘rapping style’. Junie learned to play before Earl and, like Snuffy Jenkins, was influenced in his playing by Smith Hammet and Rex Brooks. He told me that they picked the ‘two Sallies’ about the way that he performs them here. He spoke of Earl at a young age going into a room with a banjo and staying all day playing. When he came out ‘he had it,’ and he said something to the effect that ‘it’ was different from anyone else and special Junie played quite a bit in the 1930s, sometimes for fiddle contests, but hasn’t played much since then.”

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Veronica Loretta “Roni” Stoneman Cox Born May 5, 1938. The following is from a booklet of additional liner notes included in “American Banjo Three Finger and Scruggs Style.” 1990. Written by the LP’s producer Mike Seeger.

“She is one of thirteen children of Ernest V. and Hattie Stoneman of the Galax, Virginia area, who were well known old-time country music recording artists of the 1920s and early ‘30s. Just as it is rare for women to play ‘bluegrass style,’ music, it is even more rare for them to play this banjo style. This was not true of old-time music as her mother picked and ‘rapped’ the banjo. Roni took second place at the Gambrills, MD Banjo Contest in 1956.” Eugene Cox won this event.

The origins of the Stoneman’s music was realized as early as 1924 when Pop found the commercial potential of traditional music and carved a career from it. In 1924 Pop wrote the million-dollar seller, “The Sinking of the Titanic.”

The Stoneman Family band won the Country Music Academy’s Vocal Group of the Year award in 1967. After Pop’s death a year later, Roni, known as a virtuoso banjo player in both country and bluegrass music, pursued a musical career on her own.

In the 1970s, Roni reached a national audience when she joined the cast of TV show “Hee Haw,” the most successful syndicated program and country music show in the history of television. She picked banjo and sand from time to time, but it was the character of Ida Lee Nagger that made her unforgettable to millions of viewers. She was so recognizable in this role that she would do other skits/songs including “Pfft! You Were Gone!” as her TV character who, by this time, had become a man-crazy flirt where she would chase men with a net in the Hee Haw Honky Tonk.

She has become “First Lady of Banjo” after her CD of that name came out. It features various members of the Stoneman family.

This from Ivan M. Tribe:

“Her efforts as a straight Country vocalist, while adequate, have received less attention. Like the other Stoneman children, Roni grew up in relative poverty, learning the basics of music at an early age, being particularly enamored with the banjo picking of Earl Scruggs in her youth.    “Since the older Stonemans worked in other bands in the early 50’s, Pop Stoneman organized Roni and Van together with two other neighborhood youths – fiddler Zeke Dawson and bassist Larry King – as Pop Stoneman and his Little Pebbles. By the time the Little Pebbles won the band contest at Galax in August, 1956, Roni had already married and the group dissolved soon afterward.

“After the birth of her first child, Roni worked on the Washington D.C. club circuit scene playing bass for Johnnie Hopkins and banjo with Benny and Vallie Cain’s Country Clan and the Al Jones group. About 1960, she joined the Bluegrass Champs following the departure of Porter Church.

“Roni had made her first instrumental recording for Folkways in 1956 when she and Eugene Cox each cut a banjo tune on the American Banjo Scruggs Style album. This represented the first Bluegrass banjo tune waxed by a female artist. Roni’s initial vocal record occurred a little later when she sang ‘Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey’ as part of a Stoneman Family session.

“Roni worked with the Stonemans throughout the 60’s in Washington D.C. and California and after 1965, when they came to Nashville. She played a key role in their recording, touring, and syndicated television success, but left the group in February, 1971 when she gave birth to her last child. By this time, she was living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her second husband, George Hemrick. The following year she came back to Nashville and recorded a couple of singles for Dot.

“Roni really found her forte in 1973 when she joined the cast of Hee Haw, with a voice and accent well-fitted for many of their skits. In her specialty, the Nagger segment, she portrayed the long-suffering housewife “Ida Lee Nagger” at the ironing board, usually engaged in disagreement with her ne’er-do-well husband “Laverne Nagger” (Gordie Tapp). She also did some banjo picking during her eighteen-year stint on the program.

“From time to time she also made special appearances with the Stoneman Family, especially in 1985 and 1989. Ironically, while delighting millions with her humor, Roni failed to secure long-term domestic happiness, accumulating a series of marriages and divorces. Roni recorded relatively little during her Hee Haw years. A 1974 single on Chart and another on Spin-Chek being her only releases for more than a decade except for a CMH session with her family in 1981. In the fall of 1989, she cut two albums for her own Stone Ray label, one vocal and another highlighting her banjo work, which have been released on cassette only. Since the reorganization of Hee Haw in September 1991, Roni has toyed with several projects including an all-girl band and a pilot for a television program. In 1993, she re-issued her banjo album on sister Patsy’s label.”

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Liz Meyer March 7, 1952 – August 26, 2011. This bio is from the Sept 2011 issue of International Bluegrass.

Liz Meyer, and American artist and songwriter who dedicated a great deal of time to promoting European bluegrass music from her home in The Netherlands, passed away August 26, 2011 after a long illness. The EWOB Festival in Voorthuizen has become a major event on the international bluegrass calendar and many musicians and bands in Europe owe their current success to Meyer’s efforts. Originally from Washington, D.C., Meyer moved to The Netherlands in 1985. Her original songs have been recorded by Del McCoury, Emmylou Harris, Kate MacKenzie, Acousticure, Red Wine and Nugget, among others. Her first album was released on the Aldelphi label in 1982, but the majority of her music has been on the Strictly Country Records, a label her husband Pieter Groenveld owned and managed after a previous partnership with Rienk Janssen. Meyer’s album included Womanly Arts, The Storm, a duet CD with Mark Cosgrave called Regions of the Soul and Live at European World of Bluegrass with Nugget. Liz produced the entire series of EWOB festival live albums including the Folk AirPlay Chart-topping 10 Years of European World of Bluegrass (2008), a t20-disc compilation with live cuts from the events in 1998-2007. Meyer produced more than thirty albums.

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Vern Gosdin August 5, 1934 –  April 28, 2009. Originally from Woodland, Alabama, he was a part of the Gosdin Family Radio Show. About 1960, he and brother Rex Gosdin formed the Golden State Boys in southern California. Vern and Rex recorded as The Gosdin Brothers. Song writer Vern won the CMA Song of the Year in 1989 for “Chiseled in Stone.” His “Hangin’ On” song was the first of 41 songs to appear on the Billboard charts.

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Nicholas Patrick Haney died May 18, 2009. Nick performed with Lost Highway, Weary Hearts, Nashville Bluegrass Band, High Country, Allyx, and the New Kentucky Colonels.

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Doc Williams  June 26, 1914 – January 31, 2011. This bio from Wikipedia.

Andrew John Smik, Jr, from Cleveland, OH and raised in Kittanning, PA, he got his professional start playing with the Kansas Clodhoppers during the early 1930s. Doc eventually formed his own band, Doc Williams and the Border Riders. The group went on the air on WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1937. Soon, with the addition of comedian Froggie Cortez and cowboy crooner, Big Slim the Lone Cowboy, they became one of the station’s most popular attractions.

In 1939 Williams married Jessie Wanda Crupe, a singer who soon adopted the stage name Chickie Williams. They were popular performers but they and their Border Riders never had a national hit even though they performed live and on radio for over half a century.  Doc founded Wheeling Records in 1947, releasing their recordings through this label. Among his best-known songs are “Willie Roy the Crippled Boy” and “My Old Brown Coat and Me.”

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Don Pierce October 10, 1915 – April 3, 2005. This information from Bluegrass Unlimited magazine.

After serving in WWII, Pierce became a sales manager for Four Star Records. He joined Starday Records in 1953 when the small company was in Texas. Soon he became president and moved the company to Nashville when the label briefly merged with Mercury in 1957.  Mercury already had in its stable of performers the Stanley Brothers, Carl Story and Bill Clifton. When the Mercury-Starday merger ended, those three acts ended up on Starday; the label began to specialize in bluegrass music. Other labels were too busy reaping the benefits of aligning themselves with the rock & roll genre which was putting country and bluegrass music out of business. An exception to this rule was the band of Flatt and Scruggs.  Pierce soon signed Jim and Jesse, Jim Eanes, Chubby Wise, Josh Graves, the Lewis Family, the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, the Stoneman Family, Benny Martin, the Country Gentlemen, Red Allen, Hylo Brown, Jimmie Williams & Red Ellis, Olabelle and Alex, Buzz Busby, Charlie Moore, the Brewster Brothers, Connie and Joe, Lowell Varney, Vern and Ray, Ken Clark with Chubby Anthony, the Kentucky Travelers and other bluegrass-type acts.

There were the more traditional music acts which Starday signed, too, like Clyde Moody, Stringbean, Bashful Brother Oswald, Ramona Jones, Lew Childre, Wayne Raney, the Masters Family, Lonzo & Oscar, and Shot Jackson. Some traditional country stars signed with Starday as well: George Jones, Justin Tubb, Dottie West, Cowboy Copas Pee Wee King & Redd Stewart, Ted Sovine and others. Copas’ recording of “Alabam” reached #1 in 1960 and crossed over into the pop charts, really putting Starday on the map.      Besides bands, many artists went to Starday to record their solo LPs: steel guitarists Leon McAuliffe, Don Helms, Jimmy Day; fiddlers Red Hayes, Buddy Spicher, Tommy Vaden, Hank Singer, Jimmy Capps, Billy Byrd, and others.  Pierce sold Starday in 1968 for $2 million; not a bad investment for his original $333.

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Vernon Crawford “Jack” Cooke December 6, 1936 – December 1, 2009. Much of this information comes from Bluegrass Unlimited magazine January 2010 by Walt Saunders, and from “Jack Cooke—A Bluegrass Music Pioneer…Well, Almost” by Glenn Roberts Jr (Bluegrass Unlimited September 2005). The first-person quotations below are from the interview by Glenn Roberts.

The venerable Jack Cooke was the bassist with Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys, singing baritone with the group and was a reliable personality at the festival sales table wherever they would play. Fans remember his big smile and warm greeting. Cooke’s singing was an integral part of Ralph’s group in the lead, tenor or baritone parts. Cooke also was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist.

Cooke was born into a musical family; his entire family seemed to professional musicians in Virginia. With his brothers Curtis (Red) and Hubert, they were the Cooke Brothers.  In the 1950s, Cooke was making guest appearances on the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers’ TV show on WHIS-TV in Bluefield, West Virginia. In 1957 he joined the Stanley Brothers who were based in Bristol, Virginia, on WCYB’s Farm and Fun Time. But they needed a bass player so he took up the new skill and assumed the position.

In his interview with author Glenn Roberts, he said, “I really enjoyed that year with the Stanleys. We stayed in Bristol at the YMCA for $7 a week. It was close enough to home that I didn’t get too homesick. We had to stay there because we did a fifteen-minute, sometimes half-hour, show ever weekday and then went out towards the weekend for shows. We regularly worked five states (VA, TN, KY, WV, and NC). Even though we didn’t make what you’d call ‘big money,’ we did ride in style—Carter and Ralph had a big ’54 Caddy. There were other bass players who played with the Stanleys during this time. Brothers George and John Shuffler were alternating that position when required.  During my whole time with them, we did a show every Thursday night at the Morgan Theater in Grundy [Virginia] and then we’d go to the Pink Room up the mountain nearby Haysi and do a late-night square dance. On the way from Bristol, we’d go by Ma Stanley’s and she’d fix us a big meal out of Ralph’s garden.  Only the old-timers can appreciate the kind of roads we had to travel back then,” told Cooke “There may have been some interstates somewhere in the country but they sure didn’t lead to the places we went to. The roads were all two lanes. I’ll bet it takes half the time today to go somewhere that it used to, and I don’t know of anybody that had a bus back then.”

In late 1958, Bill Monroe needed a lead singer and guitar player since the stalwart Edd Mayfield had recently become deceased (July 7, 1958). Jack applied for the job.  I told Bill I’d like for him to keep me in mind for a job. He said we should try a song together. Just me and Bill; sang and played ‘Live and Let Live.’ After we finished, Bill, with a smile on his face said, ‘That’s a good guitar there, boy.’ I think—in fact I’m convinced—it was my guitar playin’ that got me my job with Bill.  It was about two weeks or so later that Bill called and asked if I wanted a job. He said he had some shows in New Jersey and New York and he’d pick me up in Gate City. I couldn’t believe I was playin’ with the great Bill Monroe; I was really nervous. I didn’t talk on stage for several shows and when it finally come time for me to introduce Bill, I was so scared I asked the audience to make welcome ‘the one and wonly Bill Monroe.’ This happened at a show in Castlewood, Virginia. I guess I was nervous because Carter and Ralph had come to see me playin’ with Bill. They had no hard feelings about me leaving; they both said they didn’t want to hold me back if I thought I was bettering myself.  I’ll always be grateful to Bill for the chance he gave me. In addition to fulfillin’ a childhood dream of playin’ regular on the Grand Ole Opry, I think I saw every state except North Dakota. I met a lot of people I’d never thought of meeting, especially out in California: Tex Williams, Roy Rogers, Rex Allen, Gene Autry, and a lot of others.”  Edd Mayfield recorded with Monroe at the April 1958 session for Decca, but by the next session in December 1958, Jack was on board. He recorded with Monroe for several more sessions, the last being November 1959. Jack Cooke stayed with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys until about 1960.

One of the traps that bluegrass historians sometimes fall into is relying on discographies to mark when a musician was a member of a band. Musicians came and went, and this was particularly true of Monroe’s band and also that of the Stanleys, as opposed to more stable bands such as Flatt and Scruggs, and Reno and Smiley. Band makeup sometimes changed from week to week. According to historian Walter Saunders, “Recording sessions were just a brief glimpse of a band’s history for any given time period, just an instant in time. Jack didn’t record with the Stanleys during his tour with them (which was something over a year but less than two years). They were traveling to Nashville and later Cincinnati to record (Mercury, Starday, and King) back then, and he may not have been able to make the trip for some reason. Also, he was probably in and out of the band from time to time. There’s no question whatsoever that Jack played with the Stanley Brothers in the mid- to late-1950s; not only Jack, but Ralph also said this to me. But the exact dates are fuzzy at best.”  In a 2012 communication with bluegrass historian Walter Saunders, he mentioned that he had earlier spoken to fiddler Charlie Smith who was with Monroe at the time. Charlie told Walt, “When Cooke first came with Monroe, we was not in the union and couldn’t work the Grand Ole Opry and could only work the road shows. Later, he finally got into the union (which wasn’t easy because the union guy in the Nashville local was hard to deal with). Then Jack was able to appear on the Grand Ole Opry and record with Monroe. Since he was not in the union, during his work with the Stanleys, he wouldn’t have been able to do recording sessions with them.”

In 1962 Cooke moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked with the Stonemans a short while. A subsequent move to Baltimore included the formation of his own Virginia Mountain Boys and occasional work with Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys, and with Bill Monroe’s touring band. (Reader, please note that there is evidence that Cooke’s band was called Virginia Playboys; it could have been both names—one replacing the other at some point, but as of the time this is being written (2011) this evidence is flimsy and cannot be proved by this writer’s contacts.)  Also that year, Cooke recorded with the Greenbriar Boys on Vanguard Records, and with Earl Taylor’s band on Rebel. The next two years found him recording with the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys on Ray Davis’ Wango Records. Jack remembered the Greenbriar Boys: “Those boys were a pretty good bunch of pickers for city slickers.” (This and other quotes in this piece are from the interview with Glenn Roberts Jr.)  Jack Cooke founded the Virginia Mountain Boys with Sam Hutchins (banjo), Danny Curtis (mandolin) and Billy Baker (fiddle), and Hazel Dickens (bass) in the Baltimore area. Others during its five-year existence were Kimble Blair and Bill Sage (fiddle), Del McCoury and Bobby Diamond (banjo), and Jerry McCoury (bass).  The interview by author Glenn Roberts Jr. continues. “One time, Bill [Monroe] had this big show in New York [NYU] and he was short a guitar and banjo player. Me and Del [McCoury] agreed to help him. After we did the shows, Bill offered Del a job playin’ banjo.” Shortly thereafter, Billy Baker and Bobby Diamond left the Virginia Mountain Boys to join Monroe.  In 1964 he recorded with Charlie Tomlinson, Billy Baker and the Shady Valley Boys on an LP which called the group the Van Dykes. He also recorded two 45s with his own band: one for Ark Records and one for Gambler. The next year he recorded with the Stanleys for Alex Campbell’s Cabin Creek label.  Jack returned home in April of 1967 to care for his mother who died a year later but destiny kept him in music. He recalled, “If I hadn’t run into Ralph [Stanley] at the flea market in Ramsey [November 1969], I don’t know whether I’d ever gotten back into music. Ralph said he needed a bass player and asked me if I wanted the job. I’ve been with him ever since.” At the time this article by Glenn Roberts was published in 2005, that made thirty-six years. One thing that made Jack so reliable an employee was the fact that he and Ralph lived only about twenty miles from each other. In 2006 Cooke recorded his only solo LP “Sittin’ on Top of the World” (Pinecastle Records).

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Bill Carlisle bio from CMT.com

He was the Grand Ole Opry star whose abrupt midsong leaps earned him the name “Jumpin’ Bill,” died Monday (March 17) at his Nashville-area home after years of declining health. He was 94.

A Grand Ole Opry member since 1953, Carlisle was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2002. Carlisle made his last Opry appearance on March 7 and suffered a stroke last Wednesday (March 12).

William Carlisle was born Dec. 19, 1908 in Wakefield, Ky., near Louisville. Following the lead of brother Cliff, who was four years his senior, Carlisle learned to play guitar and began doing shows in the region during the 1920s. In 1929, Carlisle, his brother and father and other members of the family launched The Carlisle Family Saturday Night Barn Dance on a Louisville radio station. Four years later, Cliff helped his brother get a deal with ARC Records, the upshot of which was the recording “Rattlesnake Daddy,” one of Carlisle’s own compositions.

Recording for a variety of labels during the ’30s, Carlisle popularized such tunes as “String Bean Mama,” “Jumpin’ and Jerkin’ Blues” and “Sally Let Your Bangs Hang Down.” He also toured the live-radio circuit, sometimes with Cliff, sometimes with his own band, working at stations in Lexington and Louisville, Ky.; Charlotte and Winston-Salem, N. C., Greenville, S.C.; Shreveport, La.; and Knoxville, Tenn. In Knoxville, he and his brother starred for years on the historic country music shows, Midday Merry-Go-Round and Tennessee Barn Dance.

Working as the Carlisles, the brothers achieved their first chart hit, “Rainbow at Midnight,” in 1946. Two years later, as the Carlisle Brothers, they charted again with “Tramp on the Street.” Bill Carlisle came into his own as a solo recording artist in the early 1950s via a series of novelty hits, most of which he wrote himself. These included “No Help Wanted,” “Knothole,” “Shake-a-Leg” and one that added an enduring phrase about aging to the American lexicon, “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.” In addition to Carlisle, the song was cut by Ernest Tubb and Red Foley, the Maddox Brothers and Rose and the unlikely duo of Rosemary Clooney and Marlene Dietrich.

Carlisle’s most surprising hit was his 1954 cover of the Drifters’ R&B smoothie, “Honey Love,” which came out the same year. His version reached No. 12 on the country charts. Carlisle made his final chart appearance in 1965-66 with “What Kinda Deal Is This.” Although best known for his novelty tunes, Carlisle also wrote the now-classic hymn, “Gone Home.”

During much of his half-century on the Grand Ole Opry, Carlisle sang with a group that featured his son, Billy, and daughter, Sheila.

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Mack Magaha August 1, 1929 to August 15, 2003.

The Dancing Fiddle Man from Honea Path, South Carolina, was not only a great fiddler, he was a great showman, a true entertainer who left an enthusiastic impression on all who saw him prance around the stage.  Since he was the eleventh of sixteen children, his father just decided to call him “Mack.” The family had their own family band with Mack beginning to learn fiddle at age seven. With what he considers “a gift from God,” “I won my first fiddling contest when I was only eight. The prize was fifty cents and a ten-pound bag of sugar. I gave the sugar to Mama and I divided the money with my brother Elmer who was on banjo.” [This from Eddie Stubbs, “Life’s Highways,” Bluegrass Unlimited October 2003].

Mack’s family was poor; Mack had to quit school after the 5^th grade to help the family survive financially. Mack was drafted into the Army in 1952 and was sent to Korea where he was wounded by mortar fire near Pork Chop Hill. While recovering in the hospital he began playing the fiddle to possibly become good enough to make a living from it—and because he loved to please people with this talent.  In October 1954, he was discharged and immediately began recording with Reno and Smiley. When the act became a full-time touring band at Easter weekend of 1955, Mack went with them to Richmond, Virginia and the Old Dominion Barn Dance based at 50,000 watt WRVA.  In December of 1956 the group moved from radio to television on Roanoke, Virginia’s “Top of the Morning Show” one and a half hours each morning.  They were very busy, trying to perform daily on TV and make many personal appearances in the evenings. Even though the group was popular, sidemen like Mach and bassist John Palmer could barely make ends meet. Mack and Palmer painted house or fixed cars to help their bottom line.

In the band, Mack was not only an important part of the band’s sound, he helped write “I Know You’re Married” and was Jeff Dooolytater in their comedy skits.  In late 1964 as the band was breaking up, Mack left his $85 per week job for a job on the Opry with the very popular Porter Wagoner Show which was being shown in nearly 200 different markets.  In 1976 Mack started playing at Opryland’s amusement park which soon evolved into his own bluegrass show six days a week. He continued working with Porter Wagoner as well as with Roy Acuff.  A stroke in 1994 ended Mack’s performing career. According to Eddie Stubbs, an expert on the Reno and Smiley group, “Mack Magaha was a committed Christian, a devoted husband and father, an outstanding fisherman, a wonderful friend and, to the music community, a first-rate fiddle player and entertainer. He was a pioneer that made a difference, and he will certainly be missed.”

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Felice Bryant died April 22, 2003.

She and husband Boudleaux wrote music standards, some of which became popular in the bluegrass genre. With hits such as “Rocky Top,” “Bye Bye Blues,” “Wake Up Little Susie” for the Everly Brothers and “Country Boy” for Little Jimmy Dickens, they were entered into the National Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1991. Felice wrote most of the lyrics; Boudleaux wrote most of the lyrics.

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Jessie Smith “Smitty” Irvin died March 24, 2003

Smitty’s early work in bluegrass was on the WWVA Wheeling Jamboree with Toby Stroud’s Blue Mountain Boys where Josh Graves was a band member in 1954).

Smitty was also one of the first three-finger banjo pickers in the Washington, D.C. area, inspiring Bill Emerson and Roy Clark. It was there (1961) in D.C. that he worked extensively for the Jimmy Dean Show, appearing on ABC network once every six weeks throughout 1963, and almost nightly on WMAL (WJLA) television with Buck Ryan on fiddle. Soon both Buck and Smitty would join Bill Harrell’s Virginians with Smiley Hobbs on mandolin and Stoney Edwards on bass. They recorded “The Wonderful World of Bluegrass Music” for United Artists in 1961, and “Ballads and Bluegrass” for Monument.

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Lonnie Glosson February 14, 1908 – March 2, 2001

Lonnie Glosson began his career in 1924 on KMOX in St. Louis, MO. Soon he was on WLS in Chicago (National Barn Dance) where he was a member of the Delmore Brothers in addition to a solo career with his harmonica. Here he was paired with Gene Autry. He partnered with Wayne Raney (1936). He wrote “Arkansas Hard Luck Blues” and “Matthew 24.” He co-wrote “Why Don’t You Haul Off and Love Me” with partner Wayne Raney. He received the Ozark Pioneer Music Award in 1999 and was inducted into the George D. Hay Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000.

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Wayne Raney August 17, 1921 – January 23, 1993

Wayne Raney’s “Why Don’t You Haul Off and Love Me,” co-written by partner and fellow Arkansan Lonnie Glosson (1949), played a major role in making the harmonica a popular instrument through their musical performances as well as through their mail-order harmonica business where they sold millions of them.

Raney pursued music due to his foot deformity. At age thirteen he hitchhiked to the border radio station XEPN.

The duo of Glosson and Raney first found work together in Little Rock at KARK in 1938 and then for WCKY in Cincinnati. After the war, Raney played with the Delmore Brothers on the King label, recording on “Blues Stay Away from Me” which he co-wrote with the Delmores.

Beginning on the Grand Ole Opry in 1949, he also toured with Lefty Frizzell and on the WWVA Jamboree. A decade later found him a disc jockey, record producer and founder of Rimrock Records.

He wrote “We Need a Whole Lot More of Jesus” and recorded his own gospel LP “Don’t Try to Be What You Ain’t,” for Starday. His autobiography was Life Was Not Been a Bed of Roses. He is in the Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame, The Western Swing Society Hall of Fame, and the George D. Hay Country Music Hall of Fame, and received the Ozark Pioneer Award.

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Benny Martin May 8, 1928 – March 13, 2001. Born in Sparta, Tennessee.

“The Big Tiger” was born into a musical family called the Martin Family. At age twelve he performed on the WNOX Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round in Knoxville.  In 1941 he moved to Nashville to perform with “Big Jeff” Bess. Soon he was on the Opry, working with Curly Fox, Jam Up and Honey, Roy Acuff, Kitty Wells and Johnnie and Jack. In 1946 he recorded “Me and My Fiddle” for Pioneer Records and again for Mercury in 1954.  Martin replaced Chubby Wise in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in 1947 and stayed about a year. But his fame with Flatt and Scruggs put him on the map. He recorded “Flint Hill Special,” “Why Did You Wander,” “Dear Old Dixie,” “I’ll Go Stepping Too,” “Someone Took My Place with You.” On these recordings you can hear the bow techniques which made him famous: bouncing and staccato fiddle kickoffs.  There in Nashville he made himself available to record with the Stanleys, the Osbornes, Reno and Smiley, and Jimmy Martin. Additionally, he partnered with Don Reno for a year. He developed an eight-string fiddle, sometimes playing it on the Opry and for labels MGM, Mercury, RCA, Decca, Starday, CMH and OMS.  His liner notes for “The ‘Big Tiger’ Roars Again, Part One” won the IBMA award for Best Liner Notes.

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Manuel Dewey “Old Joe Clark” Clark  August 6, 1922 – February 20, 1998. Born in Erwin, TN. AKA “Speedy”

Clark was a comedian banjoist. He played fifty years at the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, on the Opry, at Madison Square Garden, in several movies, and in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys as a comedian (not as a musician).

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Louis Marshall “Grandpa” Jones Oct 20, 1913 – February 19, 1998. Born in Niagra, KY.

Louis’ early career included the songs of Jimmie Rodgers, billing himself as “The Young Singer of Old Songs.” This led to joining balladeer Bradley Kincaid over WBZ in Boston where he began doing his Grandpa Jones bit in 1935 at Kincaid’s suggestions. Louis was twenty-two. It was also Kincaid who dressed him in his now-recognizable high-top old leather boots.  Jones’ next career move was to WWVA in Wheeling, WV where he heard Cousin Emmy playing clawhammer banjo and begged her to teach him.

By 1942 he had moved to WLW, Cincinnati (“the Nation’s Station). There he met Merle Travis, Alton and Rabon Delmore, and Ramona Riggins who performed there. He joined the Delmores and Travis as the Browns Ferry Four, soon becoming renowned as the first great country gospel quartet. As the Shepherd Brothers, Louis and Merle recorded for Sydney Nathan’s brand new King Records.  He married Ramona on October 14, 1946. According to Louis’ autobiography Everybody’s Grandpa [page 103], Ramona “…told us stories about how people reacted to a woman fiddler. ‘In high school, the teachers would ask, “What are you going to do when you grow up?”   She replied, ‘The other girls would say they wanted to be a nurse, or to do this or that, but I’d just say, “I don’t know what I want to do.” I did know, but I knew they’d laugh; I knew they’d make fun of me if I said “I want to play the fiddle.”’  “People stared at her when she got on a bus with her fiddle case, too. Cousin Emmy and the Coon Creek Girls were about the only women radio stars then playing instruments, so it was a little unusual. But when Ramona took off on ‘Ragtime Annie,’ or ‘The Gal I Left Behind,’ people perked up and took note, and nobody worried much about whether it was a man, woman, fish or whatever.”  For King Records Louis recorded “Eight More Miles to Louisville” (1946), “Mountain Dew” (1947), and “Old Rattler” (1947). He joined the Opry in 1947, and Hee Haw! in 1969.

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How Earl Scruggs learned to play in the three-finger style. From “Conversations: Bela Fleck & Earl Scruggs” April 6, 2009.

“I was sitting picking one day, and I’d pick with thumb and index finger….and all of a sudden, I was adding that one-two-three thing…and I thought, ‘Dang! That sounds good.’ My oldest brother…he didn’t know I could pick with three fingers on that banjo…he said, ‘Is that all you can pick?’ A little streak of electricity went up my spine. I didn’t know if I could pick anything else or not.”

In an article by Thomas Goldsmith in the June issue of Bluegrass Unlimited, page 41, Earl spoke of the three-finger picking origins.  “I kind of had a vision of—the two-finger style just wasn’t syncopated the way I wanted it. Anyway, it started almost like a dream. Well, it was just daydreaming when I started playing that three-finger style.  We lived in the country, of course, and I was sitting on the edge of the porch. I could see him [his brother Junie] coming up the dirt road and I was picking this ‘Reuben.’ I could see him turning his head like that, once in a while. He was trying to get the drift of it—he was trying to pick up what he was hearing. Anyway I just kept on picking. He came on walking across the yard into the house. As he came up the steps and came into the house he said, ‘Is that the only tune you can play?’”  Author Goldsmith continued, “Scruggs laughed as he recalled his sudden fear that Junie had hit on something. Was his fabulous new sound simply a novelty that only worked on one song in a different tuning?”  Earl continued, “And, really, it shocked me. I had never tuned it back up to standard G tuning: I had played ‘Reuben’ for two or three days. But I tuned it up into G and that three-finger style still worked.”

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Melbourne E. “Mel” Bay February 25, 1913 – May 14, 1997. Mel Bay was born in Bunker, Missouri. Raised in De Soto, MO he performed regularly in various Ozark bands. After moving to St. Louis, MO he became a highly sought-after tenor banjoist and teacher. He began writing guitar methods in 1947, a good foundation for books which taught people to play. As of 1997, now under the command of son Bill Bay, Mel Bay Publications, Inc. has sold approximately 20 million copies. He received many significant awards for his achievements. The company is now in Pacific, MO.

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Eddie Dye died March 18, 2009. He was an entertainer who played in Styx River Ferry in San Francisco, the Nashville Jug Band, and toured with The Bluegrass Band (in the early 1980s). More recently he was in the Sidemen.

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Archie Green died March 22, 2009.

Archie was the musicologist, author and folklorist who wrote “Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs” and helped in the establishment of the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center.  According to Art Menius, “Archie was the most inspirational folklorist of the past half-century. Whenever you were down and discouraged about your work, Archie would seemingly appear if by magic to lift your spirits, let you know how important your work was, and how he believed in you.”

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James Corbitt Morris aka Jimmy Driftwood June 20, 1907 – July 12, 1998. Born in Timbo, Arkansas.

James learned to play guitar at a young age on his father’s homemade instrument. This became his trademark.  This guitar’s neck was made from a fence rail, its sides from an old ox yoke, and the head and the top and bottom from the headboard of his grandmother’s bed.  He taught high school and wrote “Battle of New Orleans” (1957) in order to teach his students about this part of history.  Johnny Horton later recorded it and made it a hit. It won the 1960 Grammy Award for Song of the Year. He also wrote “Tennessee Stud.”      He became a popular performer on the Opry, the Ozark Jubilee, and the Louisiana Hayride, Carnegie Hall and numerous folk music festivals. As a folklorist, he established the Rackensack Folklore Society, an association of Arkansas folk singers and musicians, the Ozark Folk Center. Due to his extensive knowledge of folk music, he was appointed musicologist for the National Geographic Society.

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Lee Moore born in Circleville Ohio. September 24, 1914 – August 17, 1997.  Lee Moore was one of the most influential and best-liked deejays in the history of country music. He was also known for his laid-back, anecdotal recorded tunes. His taste for hard country music was reflected in both his emcee work and as a recording artist.  Lee and his music were well loved by a dedicated audience who listened to his all-night country music radio show (he was known as the Coffee Drinkin’ Night Hawk) on the huge 50,000 watt WWVA in Wheeling, WV. The station was very popular among touring country and bluegrass artists, especially during the 1950s and ‘60s. His radio show, which aired at 2:00 am from 1953 to 1969, made him famous among insomniacs and all-night truckers all over the eastern United States.

He influenced many people toward his music during these years through this show and through his recordings for various labels (with and without his wife, Juanita) including this one which he recorded for Uncle Jim O’Neal’s Rural Rhythm Records in 1968 with the Bluegrass Cut-Ups as his backup band. This, of course, was Red Smiley’s band but Red wasn’t on the recording. Even without Red, the Cut-Ups was still one of the finest bands in the business. The Cut-Ups were Tater Tate (fiddle), Billy Edwards (banjo), John Palmer (bass) and Danny Milhon (Dobro). Moore’s other Rural Rhythm recording, the first one, was backed up by the equally-talented Charlie Moore and Bill Napier. Among the tunes featured on this recording is “The Cat Came Back,” a very popular tune which, although somewhat dated by today’s standards of modern bluegrass or country music, sold quite well back in 1953 when he began his recording career.  Lee’s radio show ended when the station changed its format in 1969. He retired from the radio business but continued as a regular performer on WWVA’s World’s Original Jamboree until 1973. He then moved to New York State. He died August 17, 1997.

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Ola Belle Campbell Reed August 18, 1916 – August 17, 2002. From Lansing North Carolina.  One of thirteen children, Ola Belle played old-time banjo and was vocalist and guitarist with the New River Ranch Boys and Girls.  Her first professional job was in Maryland during the 1930s with her brother Alex in Shorty Wood and the North Carolina Ridge Runners. In that band she met Bud Reed who played harmonica, guitar, fiddle and banjo. They married in 1949 and soon formed the New River Ranch Boys and Girls where, at times, included banjoist Ted Lundy, Deacon Brumfield on resonator guitar, and Sonny Miller on fiddle.

In 1951 Ola Bell, Bud and Alex ran Campbell’s Corner, a grocery and general story which also carried records and musical instruments. Alex also has his own radio studio.  Ola Belle wrote “High on a Mountain,” and “I’ve Endured.” She received the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Award in 1986.

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Marion Sumner March 28, 1920 – August 17, 1997. Born in Summersville, Florida

Marion was one of nine children, and just about all of them were musicians.  He played in many bands—some country, some bluegrass: Roy Acuff, Cousin Emmy (1937), Jim and Jesse, Cowboy Copas (1952), Don Gibson, Esco Hankins (between 1962 and 1964), the York Brothers (Leslie and George, until 1965), Arthur Smith, the Stanley Brothers, Johnny and Jack (1941), Molly O’Day, Preston Ward (on King Records), Kitty Wells, the Payroll Boys and with banjoist Lee Sexton. Chet Atkins knew Marion as one of his favorite breakdown fiddlers of all time. He recorded with June Appal, Rich-R-Tone, and Old Homestead. He and Lee Sexton appeared in the film “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

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Pee Wee King (Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski). February 18, 1914 – March 7, 2000.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a Polish-American family, he learned to play the fiddle from his father who played the instrument professionally. Pee Wee began his professional career during the 1930s, touring and making cowboy movies with Gene Autry. He joined the Opry in 1937.   Pee Wee was the bandleader of the Golden West Cowboys in 1946 when he and Redd Stewart composed “Tennessee Waltz.” He also co-wrote “Slow Poke” and “You Belong to Me.” Pee Wee was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and Country Music Hall of Fame in 1974.  On the Opry, he was one of the first band leaders to go against the Opry’s band on drums, horns, accordions or electric instruments. Bob Wills was also in this camp in 1945.

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Roy Hilton Huskey December 17, 1956 – September 6, 1997.

Roy’s father was Roy Huskey Jr who died at age 43. Young Roy’s first professional job as bassist was with Del Wood on the Opry. He recorded with dozens of well known country and bluegrass artists. He was voted SPBG;MA’s Bass Player of the Year 1994-1997, and IBMA’s best 1990 to 1993.

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Lew Childre (real name Lew Houston). November 1, 1991 -June 4, 2001. Born in Opp, Alabama.

According to Dr. Charles Wolfe, “…great Opry legends, Whitey Ford, The Duke of Paducah, paid tribute to Lew Childre by calling him” one of the greatest one-man shows in the business.” And, indeed, Lew could entertain in a dozen different ways: he could play the guitar, both in standard and in Hawaiian style; sing; buck dance; do comedy; recite poetry; ad lib commercials; improvise dialogue; or tell fish stories. And he could do this both on the stage and on the air, and he could do it with an easy affability that made him one of the most popular and sought-after entertainers from the 1930’s to the 1950’s.

“He was one of the last – and best – of the old-time entertainers that had been trained on the stages of the old-time medicine and vaudeville shows. His career ranged from the dusty Depression-era Texas tent shows of Harley Sadler and Milt Tolbert to the early TV stages of Nashville. He worked with many of the greats, including Wiley Walker, Floyd Tilman, Curly Fox, Bill Monroe, Bill Boyd and Stringbean. He was no instrumental virtuoso, but he had a wonderfully flexible voice that could ease into a complex yodel at the drop of a hat, as well as a rich fund of old comic songs and stories. For years he charmed listeners across the country.”

Lew played resonator guitar with the Blue Grass Champs in Washington, D.C. in 1957 – 1961.

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 Lloyd Allyre Loar. January 9, 1886 – September 14, 1943

This article by Roger Siminoff on the internet

Lloyd Loar’s contributions to string musical instruments ranks among other musical geniuses such as Antonius Stradivari, Orville Gibson, Leo Fender, and Christian F. Martin. The legacy of their craft and the contributions they made exceed the merits perceived in their time, and they established the criteria by which all string musical instruments are measured today. But one might suggest that Loar was just a cut above the rest. His approach to the science of music (to which his patents attest) and the acoustical properties of the instruments he created, bear no equal. He was one of the earliest pioneers to amplify instruments electrically, and in his search for excellence, he created a keyboard instrument that would never go out of tune. (When I uncrated one of Loar’s personal instruments 50 years after he packed it for storage, it was still in perfect pitch – every note!) Possibly even more important is that this was an electric keyboard whose design was decades ahead of its time.  What further separated Loar from the rest is that he was a musician – not a luthier – with an overwhelming interest in instrument construction, a rich understanding of musical acoustics, and the knowledge to design instruments that produce elegant tone.

The Early Years and Education
Lloyd Allayre Loar was born on January 9, 1886 in Cropsey, Illinois, a tiny farming town about 120 miles southwest of Chicago. A town small enough that there are no signs that say “Welcome to Cropsey” when you enter from either side on the main road. (The current population is about 200.) Lloyd was the son of George F. Loar (1858-1953) and Clara Moore Green Loar (1860-1929) who were married on November 24, 1884. Lloyd, the oldest of three children, had a brother Raymond (born July 10, 1888 and died in 1905 at the age of 17), and sister Madelon (born April 21, 1900 and died in 1940). Like Lloyd, Madelon was interested in music, and both she and Lloyd were influenced by their father. Madelon married banker Cress. V. Groat on September 12, 1931, but little is known of the Groat family other than they lived in Peoria, Illinois.

Lloyd’s father, George, was born near Waynesburg, Pennsylvania and moved to Fairbury, Illinois, another small farming town nine miles north of Cropsey when he was nine years old. Lloyd’s mother, Clara, was born in Vinton, Iowa. George was the postmaster of Cropsey; a job which left him with sufficient time to be a partner in Loar and Hayward, druggists. Around 1889, George sold his interest in the drug store, and he and Clara moved their family to nearby Lewiston where he dabbled in real estate in Gibson City (a coincidence, but no relation to the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Co. Limited that Lloyd was to work for years later), operated a sanitarium in Peoria, and re-entered the drug store business in Lewiston. Lewiston was to be their final home, and George, Clara, and son Raymond are laid to rest in the cemetery in Lewiston. George and Clara were members of the Presbyterian Church in Lewiston, and George was a member of the K. and F. Lodge. It appears that Lloyd had an excellent role model; his father was also a teacher, a proactive innovator who developed many drug remedies, and a talented musician who, as the family records say, “could play almost anything.”  Some members of the Loar family in 1897. Back row (L to R): Clara Loar, George Loar, Emma Loar Gaddis. Center row (L to R): Raymond Loar, Lloyd Loar. Front row (L to R): David Loar, Thomas Loar, Laura Loar. Lloyd was 11 when this photo was taken. Sister Madelon was born three years later.

Lloyd attended Lewiston High School from 1899 to 1903 and showed special interest in physics and geometry, in which he likewise received good grades. While in high school, Lloyd began performing in local music programs. At age 18, he entered the Oberlin Conservatory (Ohio) to study harmony, orchestration, canon, counterpoint, fugue, music theory, and piano. By 1906, when Lloyd was just 20 years of age, he was performing skillfully and professionally on Gibson mandolins in both solo and concert settings, and he was equally proficient on piano, violin, viola, and mandola. He was the leader of the Oberlin Mandolin Club for two years, and from 1906 to 1910 he performed in concert under the management of the Chicago Musical Bureau

In 1918, when he was in Europe to work as a concert entertainer for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in support of the war effort, Loar studied under Monsieur Paul Vidal, Professor of Composition at the National Conservatory of Music (Paris), and he attended the National Institute of Radio Engineering in Paris. Lloyd continued his education at the Chicago Musical College in the second and third ten-week sessions of the 1919-1920 school year studying Harmony with Louis Victor Saar, and composition with Felix Borowski (then president of the Chicago Musical College). And, in 1921 Lloyd received his Master of Music diploma in Theory and Counterpoint from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. That same year Lloyd Loar won first prize in a contest for American composers staged by the National Federation of Music Clubs. He was a member of the Acoustical Society of America, a patron of Delta Omieron National Music Fraternity, a member of the Masonic Order, and was active in Kiwanis International.

 In 1906, at 20 years of age, Loar was performing professionally with a Gibson three-point F2 mandolin. During this period he was a member of the Fisher Shipp Concert Company whose members included Loar, Fisher Shipp, Etta Goode Heacock, and Louis G. Karnes.

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The Earl Scruggs Gibson Banjo by Doug Hutchens. This article originally appeared in the BITH newsletter.

The Gibson Earl Scruggs banjo model was initiated in 1984. If you go back to the advertisements of that time, 1984 were to be signed. And that’s how many were signed as stock models. I know the person who purchased the banjos with serial numbers 1983 and 1984.

This banjo in the beginning was the developed through the efforts of Roger Siminoff collaborating with both Gibson and Earl. The tone ring was a standard Stewart- MacDonald ring with a standard Stewart-MacDonald 3 ply rim. The flange was made from the same die from which all the flanges had been made since the late 20’s. The peghead shape and color is an interesting story by itself.

Earl had let Jim Faulkner from Indianapolis put a new neck on his banjo. Jim was the creator of the Scruggs/Ruben capo and, according to Earl, he wanted to build a neck for Earl’s banjo at the time. Earl really didn’t want a new neck, but, since Jim was such a nice guy, he let him take the banjo home with him after playing Bean Blossom in 71 or 72. Earl said when Jim brought the banjo back to him in Madison, he opened the case and was not immediately fond of the new neck. Jim thought he would do Earl a favor and refinish the resonator to match the new neck (and possibly to put his own twist on banjo history). Earl again said that Jim was such a nice guy and he didn’t say anything about it.

It is also important to remember that in the late 60s and early 70s, peghead and pearl cutting was not the art it was to come in the next several years. Gibson actually did a great job in recreating the copy neck that Jim Faulkner had made and the color was absolutely correct. The pearl in the first Gibson Earl Scruggs banjos was cut by pantograph. Gibson even used several petal and heart designs to attempt to make the neck look like the one made by Jim Faulkner.

I started work with Gibson as a consultant in October 1986 and went full time in June 1988. By that time we had Granadas in production. The RB-3 came next and then others of the original Gibson banjo line. Greg Rich did not want to do anything to the Scruggs model for the time being. Earl was reluctant to change the model since so much hype had been made about how it was a recreation of his banjo.

In the spring of 1989, we put together a prototype of what we wanted to present to Earl as the “new” Earl Scruggs model banjo. The prototype used a standard Granada neck and had a solid colored resonator with the same reddish brown color on the resonator side walls. We took it out to show to Earl and he played it for a while and said there is just something missing. I had a slightly different prototype model in my van, even more similar to the Granada, the only difference being in the resonator construction. He loved it. His words were “Boys, that’s what I wanted when we started this whole thing”. After talking with him at length that day, he suggested that we use an ebony fingerboard and put the inlay at the first fret to make it look “better than the Granada”. Soon afterward, we refinished Earl’s original resonator and put a new neck on his banjo. That’s about the way it’s been since.

The last of the first run of Scruggs’ yellow banjos was serial number 1141. After that, all of the standard Scruggs models, except a few special production banjos, were finished exactly like the Granada. For a while, the resonators were still made with complete maple side walls. The old resonators had a 3-ply sandwich consisting of a face maple veneer on the outside, and a ply of poplar running perpendicular to the back, then a third ply of maple on the inside. At Gibson’s request, Stewart-MacDonald had been making resonator sides of 3-ply of maple. Since there was a good supply of those at the time, all of the remaining resonator sides from that supply were used on the RB-250 and Scruggs models until they were gone. Stewart-MacDonald had already gone to poplar in the center of the sandwich except for the ones they were making for Gibson. Once the supply of 3-ply maple resonator sides was exhausted, all resonators contained the maple- poplar-maple sandwich combination.

The small peghead was a product of the Faulkner neck. For those who don’t know, Jim Faulkner also made some of the first copy Top Tension hoops in the late 60s and early 70s and a series of one of the most desirable tone rings that Gibson had during that period. Many of these tone rings ended up in the RB-800s and RB-500s. But Jim, like the rest of us who were attempting to build banjo necks back then, didn’t have the greatest patterns from which to work. The peghead design was weak by today’s standards. It was small and cryptic looking.

The towering in the early Scruggs model banjos was indeed a Stewart-MacDonald ring. The problem with those banjos was with the setup! The Stewart-MacDonald tone ring is an excellent ring, and I’d still rather have it than most on the market today. Some banjo “critics” didn’t like the Stewart-MacDonald ring. I’ve found one thing in my 30 or so years in dealing with banjo parts and the players. Banjo players always want whatever they can’t get. There is a mystique about trying to get something that others cannot attain. And when Stewart-MacDonald rings were readily available, many thought they can’t be any good. Anyone could order them. (A side bar to that. Does anyone know who made the tone ring for Stewart-McDonald for several years? I’ll leave that for speculation, but you’ll be pleasantly surprised.)(Steve Ryan, also in Ohio as is Stewart-Macdonald. – ed.)

The problems with the originally produced “yellow” Scruggs banjos were not with respect to the tone ring. The problems came from other places:

1. The ring and shell did not fit properly together. The tone rings varied in inside diameter (the way practically all good rings do) and the shells were cut with a slight taper so that the tone ring would tighten as it slid down onto the shell. This caused a dampening effect, producing a tight fit once the ring was put on the shell, but leaving a small airspace where the skirt of the tone ring was suppose to make contact with the outside of the shell.
2. The resonator ‘was ‘way too heavy. Gibson had ask Stewart-MacDonald to make sidewalls as I mentioned previously from 3-ply maple instead of 1/3 poplar. Anyone who has ever worked with wood knows the difference in the weight of poplar and maple. I found out about the poplar in the resonator from an old friend Harry Sparks, who helped me as much as anyone in getting my act together with banjos. Harry, once while living outside Frankfort, Kentucky tried an experiment with several original flat head banjos. In the late 60s and early 70s he had his hands on many of those. He said that they tried banjo after banjo exchanging resonators and each time it would change the sound; some drastically and some only slightly. The most dramatic sound change of all occurred when they put a top tension resonator on a non-top tension banjo. But, that’s another story altogether.
3. The neck fit was not the best. They basically put the heel on the pot the way it came from the carving machine. Those of you who have had those banjo necks off the rim will notice that they did no final fitting of the neck and the shell. They just bolted them on and sent them out. I’ve seen just a little tinkering help those banjos considerably. Those types of details are, by the way, done at the factory before an instrument leaves Gibson today.
4. The ebony fingerboard has a different sound. Though Earl liked the ebony fingerboard because it made his banjo look different from the others, ebony does produce a distinct sound unlike that one gets from a rosewood fingerboard. Some will argue this, but I traveled the country for a few years and heard more than my share of banjos. Take it from me, there is a difference and if those of you who have an ebony board could hear their banjo with a good neck and a rosewood board, you’d agree. Sounds crazy, it’s only a little over 1/8 of an inch thick, but there is definitely a sound variation.

And one last note about Earl playing the “honey colored” banjo. This happened a couple of years after Flatt & Scruggs had broken up, during the Earl Scruggs Review days. If you’re looking for Flatt & Scruggs photos exhibiting this banjo, you’re not going to see it. Also, there were a few times I was able to get security clearance while the ‘Review’ was together to go back stage. Earl had another banjo set up with a pickup that he used part of the time.

Another side bar: the neck that Faulkner replaced was a neck made of mahogany. This neck had been on the banjo since the Beverly Hillbilly days. It was made by G.W. Gower. Many talk of the sweet sound of the Granada opposed to the more harsh and strong sound of the Scruggs. Try one of the Scruggs Deluxe, it is basically a Granada with an ebony board and an extra inlay or two. It has the same harshness of the Standard Scruggs.

I asked Doug Hutchins for a bio to accompany this article. Here is his reply:  “I’m from Patrick County, VA, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Having grown up in this area I was very interested in the banjo as we had a steady diet of Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs and Don Reno & Red Smiley on TV in those days (early ’60’s).  I was fortunate enough to get to meet and subsequently work with Bill Monroe in 1971 and was associated with him in one way or the other till his passing with such activities as getting the many former members of the band together for his birthday from ’82 until ’93.  I also have filled in with the Whites, Don Reno & Bill Harrell, Larry Sparks, The Goins Brothers, and Kenny Baker and Josh Graves.

“In 1986 I began a syndicated radio program Bluegrass Today.” continued Hutchins, “which lasted until 1998 and which featured interviews each week with various entertainers within our industry. It was also in ’86 that I became a consultant to Gibson Guitars in Nashville. The new owners asked that I join the team of Greg Rich and Jim Triggs in getting the banjo line more in keeping with what they were in the 1920s and ’30’s. I worked as a consultant for a couple of years spending much of my time working on getting the inlay patterns and engraving patterns correct, then in June of ’88 I began full time as Director of Artist Relations and Product Manager with Gibson where I stayed until 1990, opting to leave to spend more time in the mountains of Virginia but retaining the position of consultant until 1994.  “I consider myself as being one of the luckiest people in the world, having been able work with and to call many of the first generation of Bluegrass music my friends.”

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Don Owens Aug 29, 1930 – April 21, 1963 From IBMA 2008 Hall of Fame candidates

“Don Owens began his career in music as a DJ in 1946 at the age of sixteen. Tragically, it was cut short his death in an automobile accident on April 21, 1963 when he was only thirty-two. By the time of his death he had become a popular radio and TV personality in the Washington, DC area as well as a singer, promoter, publisher, songwriter and music agent.

“He briefly assisted in the very early careers of Patsy Cline, Roy Clark and The Stoneman Family, all of whom had ties to the area. The suburbs of Washington provided a rich market for both country and bluegrass music in that area and Don Owens was on the cutting edge as a promoter with his own TV and radio shows. He gave radio airplay to records of bluegrass artists and arranged quality personal appearance bookings for them in better class venues when they were traveling in the area. He was an investor in and eventually owner (1956) of Blue Ridge Records which recorded a half dozen or more important bluegrass artists. Of tremendous historical significance is an outdoor show produced an  promoted by Owens and John U. Miller at Watermelon Park in Berryville, VA., held on Sunday, August 14, 1960; the earliest single-day bluegrass festival currently known to music historians. Billed as “Bluegrass Day,” the event appears to have drawn as many as 3,000 fans and featured (in order of their billing) Mac Wiseman, The Osborne Brothers, Scotty Stoneman, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Don Reno and Red Smiley, Buck Ryan and Smitty Irvin and Bill Harrell.

“Don Owens was a founding member of the Country Music Association and is an inductee to The Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame. In 1987 he was posthumously awarded the IBMA’s Distinguished Achievement Award.”

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Don Pierce. October 10, 1919 – April 3, 2005. From IBMA 2008 Hall of Fame candidates

“Born October 10, 1919, in Seattle, Don Pierce invested $333 in 1952 for a 1/3 share of Starday Records and Starrite Publishing, founded that year by Texas businessmen Jack Starnes, Jr. (Star) and Harold W. “Pappy” Daily (day), from whose names the company name was derived. Through the mid-1950s Starday specialized in east Texas honky-tonk music. In 1955 Daily and Pierce bought Starnes’ interest and subsequently entered a joint agreement with Mercury Records in January 1957, under the Mercury-Starday imprint. The agreement was dissolved in 1958, however, when Daily and Pierce also parted ways, Pierce getting the trademark and other assets of Starday and moving them from Texas to a Nashville suburb, Madison, Tennessee.

“Beginning in 1959 Pierce rebuilt the catalog, emphasizing bluegrass, older country artists, gospel and instrumentals. Pierce gave many artists a chance to make some of their earliest recordings, including Buzz Busby, The Country Gentlemen, Red Allen, Bill Harrell, The Kentucky Travelers, The Brewster Brothers, The Stoneman Family, Jimmy Williams & Red Ellis, Charlie Moore, The Lewis Family, Bill Emerson, Don Owens, as well as established assets such as The Stanley Brothers, Carl Story, Bill Clifton, Jim Eanes, Jim & Jesse, Hylo Brown, The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, Brother Oswald, Shot Jackson, Ramona Jones, Stringbean, Lew Childre, Benny Martin, Josh Graves, Clyde Moody and Chubby Wise. Hiring young Martin Haerle (later CMH Records president) from Germany, they marketed aggressively overseas and by mail order domestically. Featuring vivid, full-blown color photography, he sold LPs by the millions with artists and musical styles that major labels had largely ignored. Pierce created a legacy of 400 album titles that preserved a body of musical Americana of the 1940-1960s era, performed by dozens of artists who are now considered legends. In 1968 Starday merged its catalog with that of King Records to form Starday-King. Don Pierce’s entrepreneurship enabled him to turn his 1952 investment of $333 into a conglomerate that he sold in 1969 for $5,500,000 to LIN Broadcasting of Nashville. He died April 3, 2005.”

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Charles Wolfe. August 14, 1943 – February 9, 2006. Born in Sedalia, Missouri. From IBMA 2008 Hall of Fame Candidates.

“A self-described “cultural historian,” Charles K. Wolfe earned a PhD from the University of Kansas. An intense interest in old-time fiddle music plus a desire to learn more about southern popular country music led him to accept employment at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1970. Here he taught English, science fiction and folklore until his retirement in 2005. Wolfe was in his element in middle Tennessee; a thirty-minute drive from Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry; fifteen miles from the birthplace and home of the legendary Uncle Dave Macon at Readyville in adjoining Cannnon County and easy access to numerous musicians and entertainers who lived in the area and were legends or legends of the future. Here he did invaluable research and interviews with surviving members of the early bands that were preserved in his later writing. Soon after moving to Tennessee he joined the Tennessee Valley Old-Time Fiddlers Association where he judged many contests and came to know numerous fiddlers. He contributed to the organization’s publication The Devil’s Box a quarterly with a wide circulation. But the legacy of Charles Wolfe is his prolific work as an author of books, largely historical in nature, that provide a priceless written and photographic documentation of the early days of southern country music and its people. Some examples are DeFord Bailey; A Black Star in Country Music, co-written with David Morton, and A Good Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry, a 1999 winner of two national book awards. He also authored many liner notes for albums. For more than twenty-five years he was very active in the production of the Uncle Dave Macon Days celebration, held each July in Murfreesboro and he received three Grammy nominations for his work on an album project of obscure, previously unknown, Macon recordings. The IBMA honored Dr. Charles Wolfe in 1990 with its Distinguished Achievement Award.”

Wolfe’s album notes were three times nominated for Grammys. Other honors included a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, two MTSU Outstanding Research awards, an Award of Merit from the International Bluegrass Music Association and a Lifetime Achievement award from the Curb Music Business Program at Belmont University. He was a writer and chief consultant for the PBS series American Roots Music.

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Ray Davis. Born August 24, 1939 in Wango, Maryland. From IBMA 2008 Hall of Fame Candidates.

“2008 marks Ray Davis’ 60^th year in bluegrass radio, spanning virtually the entire life of the genre. Beginning on the radio at the age of fifteen in 1948, he had introduced Hank Williams on stage twice before Davis reached the age of twenty. His style has been called a throwback to the 1950s but his record shows remain as relevant and popular as ever and he has become a legend and an icon of traditional bluegrass and bluegrass gospel in the Washington/Baltimore market. A native of the community of Wango, Maryland, he worked for brief periods on stations in Maryland, South Carolina and Florida. Returning to the Baltimore area in 1951, he began to book and emcee bluegrass and country events. Davis broadcast in Baltimore over WBMD from a studio on the lot of Johnny’s Used Cars (‘The Walking man’s friend’), beginning what is perhaps bluegrass music’s longest professional relationship which lasted for 38 years. It was temporarily interrupted during 1954 when he was hired as a broadcaster by the Texas border superstation XERF, located across the Rio Grande River from Del Rio, Texas in Vila Acuna, Mexico, returning to Johnny’s Used Cars after eighteen months.

“In 1962 he began Wango Records, selling product by mail order. The label has a large catalog of bluegrass and bluegrass gospel by artists that, at one time, included The Stanley Brothers, Don Reno & Red Smiley, and Charlie Moore. In late 1985 Davis joined the staff of Washington’s WAMU-FM, Public Radio’s flagship station where his drive-time three-hour show became legendary and he was the station’s leading fund raiser. More than two decades later and semi-retired, he continues ‘working close’ on a reduced scale with weekly programs on two WAMU-FM-originated outlets, internet station www.bluegrasscountry.org and HD radio channel.”

“In 1986 Ray Davis received the IBMA;s Distinguished Achievemen0. Born in Stuttgart, Germany. From IBMA 2008 Hall of Fame candidate.”

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Martin C. Haerle Martin Haerle.  August 24, 1939 – September 4, 1990. From IBMA 2008 Hall of Fame Candidates.

“Mr. Haerle “developed a love of American bluegrass and traditional country music in the late 1950s via the Armed Forces Radio Network in Stuttgart, Germany, where he was born August 24, 1939. His interest in this music brought him to the U.S. in 1960 where he convinced Don Pierce of Nashville’s Starday Records to hire him. Here he gained valuable experience in the type of artists to record and in production and marketing.

“In 1964 he resigned as General Manager of Starday, returning to Stuttgart to oversee a real estate investment. Two years later he moved to Mobile, Alabama, to assist his wife’s parents in the operation of a radio station they owned. Anxious to get back into the music business, Haerle joined United Artists Music Group in Los Angeles in 1968, With Arthur (“Guitar Boogie”) Smith of Charlotte, NC, as a 20% stockholder, he founded CMH [Country Music Heritage] Records, Inc. in Los Angeles in 1975. Starday Records, throughout the 1950s to mid-1960s, was by far the most prolific issuer of recoded bluegrass product. Therefore, in beginning his own business, it is logical that Haerle specialized primarily in bluegrass and traditional country with the artists and music he loved and knew best. CMH quickly became a major player in the recording and publishing of these fields of music.

“A partial list of artists signed includes Grandpa Jones, Lester Flatt, the Osborne Brothers, Don Reno & Bill Harrell, Carl Story, Mac Wiseman, Merle Travis, Jim & Jesse and the Stonemans. With his seven years of experience at United Artists, Haerle developed what was quite possibly the most effective and comprehensive distribution system that bluegrass music has seen even today, adapting market penetration techniques learned at United Artists to the more specialized bluegrass industry.” Martin Haerle died suddenly of a heart attack on September 4, 1990, at the age of fifty-one years

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Clarence White. June 7, 1944 – July 15, 1973. Born in Lewiston, Maine. From IBMA 2008 Hall of Fame Candidates.

“Much of Clarence White’s career coincides with that of The Kentucky Colonels, a highly-acclaimed bluegrass group with a brief two-year span on the national scene in the early to mid-1960s. Clarence began playing with brothers Roland and Eric in Maine, where he was born June 7, 1944. The family relocated to the Los Angeles area in the mid-1950s where older brother Roland and Clarence organized The Country Boys. This group made four appearances on the nationally-televised Andy Griffith Show. The name was changed to The Kentucky Colonels but, despite its undeniable success, the group had disbanded by early summer of 1965. Clarence became a session guitarist and was active in two groups: Cajun Gib and Gene & Nashville West. During this period he played intermittently with the recording band Muleskinner. Acquiring a national reputation as a lead guitarist, he joined The Byrds, remaining until early 1973 when the group members went their separate ways.

“In March, 1973, Clarence and Roland reorganized as The New Kentucky Colonels but the venture was cut short by the tragic death of Clarence in an automobile accident in the early morning hours of July 15, 1973, following a night club engagement in Palmdale, California. Clarence White remains a legendary figure through recordings, whose rhythm and lead guitar work has inspired and heavily influenced countless players, including top professionals such as Tony Rice.”

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Paul Warren. May 17, 1918 – January 12, 1978. Born in Lyles, Hickman County, Tennessee. From IBMA 2008 Hall of Fame Candidates.

“Born May 17, 1918, in the community of Lyles, in Hickman County, TN, Paul would walk several miles through the woods each Saturday night as a boy to listen to a neighbor’s battery-powered radio. His major interest was the Grand Old Opry fiddlers and of these, his hero was the “King of the Fiddlers,” Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith. He got his first job in 1938, playing on Radio Station WSIX in Nashville with what was later to become the Johnny &Jack/Kitty Wells Show where he remained for a total of thirteen years.

“During military service in the European theater during World War II, he spend 29 months in a prisoner of war camp. Narrowly escaping starvation, he returned after discharge to his job with the Show where he appeared on The KWKH Louisiana Hayride, the Grand Ole Opry and on other stations. He played fiddle on many of the RCA Victor country hits of Johnny & Jack and on Kitty Wells’ hit records on the Decca label in the 1940s and early 1950s.     On February 16, 1954, Paul and Benny Martin essentially swapped jobs, Benny leaving Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs to go with Johnny & Jack/Kitty Wells while Paul assumed Benny’s former job with Lester & Earl and the Foggy Mountain Boys. It was fifteen years later, almost to the day, when Lester and Earl parted company and during that time Paul never missed one of the group’s TV shows, radio broadcasts or personal appearances, which totaled in the thousands. He also recorded more than 250 songs with Flatt & Scruggs on Columbia Records. With these areas of exposure he was by any measure the most visible and best-known fiddler of the 1955 to 1975 era in bluegrass music.

“When Lester and Earl went their separate ways on February 22, 1969, Paul remained with Lester as a member of the Nashville Grass. Here he again traveled extensively and recorded with Lester on Columbia, RCA and CMH record labels. After several months of declining health he was forced to retire in January 1977. He died January 12, 1978, at the age of 59. After his death CMH Records release in 1979 an LP which featured Paul Warren fiddle tunes taken from road shows over the years as well as from early morning broadcasts over WSM and from the Grand Ole Opry.

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Hal Durham. 1931 – March 30, 2009. From McMinnville, Tennessee.

Hal was an integral part of the Grand Ole Opry for 32 years as announcer, general manager and program director. He succeeded W.W. “Bud” Wendell as GM in 1978. Among the important policy implementations he made on the Opry: He brought full drum sets onto the stage; He allowed Opry members to remain members with less required personal appearances at the show.

His early career in radio began on WROL, Knoxville, TN, then became an announcer at WSB, Atlanta, then back home in 1960 to become Program Director. The likeable Durham ended his GM job at the Opry in 1993 when he became President of the Grand Ole Opry Group.

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Smokey Mayfield. died September 11, 2008.

Smokey was the last survivor of the Mayfield Brothers with Edd and Herb who played in west Texas. Edd was a good friend of, and band member in, Bill Monroe’s band.

In the late 1940s, the Mayfield Brothers was a  warm-up band in Lubbock and Amarillo for Tennessee Ernie Ford, Maddox Brothers and Rose, Hank Snow, and other country music groups.

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Edd Mayfield.  April 12, 1926 – July 7, 1958. Born in Dawn, Deaf Smith County, TX. From Walt Saunders bio of Edd Mayfield for Outbound Music.com

“Thomas Edd Mayfield was Bill Monroe’s lead singer/guitarist in 1951, again in 1954, and once more in 1958. He recorded “Christmas Time’s A-Comin’,” “The First Whippoorwill,” and a series of gospel numbers that became Bill Monroe’s second Decca LP, “I Saw the Light,” released in 1958. So bluegrass fans have heard him whether they knew it or not.  Edd Mayfield, more than anyone else in Monroe’s band, had earned the right to wear a cowboy had on stage. Edd was from West Texas and was a cowboy. And I don’t mean a drug store, make-believe, Saturday morning, radio variety of cowboy. I mean a ridin;, ropin’, brandin’, steer wrestlin’, honest-to-gosh real, working cowboy. He was a favorite of Bill Monroe, and with good reason. Edd was a great lead singer whose voice matched perfectly with Monroe’s, and a solid guitarist. Sadly, he passed away in 1958, a victim of leukemia

“I knew that Edd had played in a band with his brothers before and after his three stints with Monroe, but had no idea they had made commercial recordings as home recordings. This set [on Outbound Music.com or Outbound Radio where this biography was found] came as a happy revelation to this writer.   Not surprisingly, the Mayfields were big fans of the Monroe Brothers, and later Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. Despite their location on the West Texas plains, the Grand Ole Opry came in loud and clear out of Nashville, and the boys—from a musical family—quickly learned to play instruments and sing the lonesome songs. The Mayfield brothers considered themselves disciples of Monroe’s music even though they rarely performed with a banjo. The core group consisted of Smokey on fiddle, Herb on mandolin, and Edd playing guitar. Anyone who thinks that in the 1940 and ‘50s, all the bluegrass bands were from the southern Appalachian region needs to listen to this collection. They Mayfield brothers were lonesome singers—way-up-the-creek—lonesome. On top of all their other talents, they were fine songwriters. No less than seven of the twenty-one titles are Mayfield originals, and another was written by musicians who performed with them.”  Edd Mayfield served in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

“The Mayfield Brothers were offered a recording contract but turned it down because of the business of the family’s Green Valley Ranch. In the summer of 1951, Bill Monroe’s guitarist, Carter Stanley, left the band, and Monroe, who had heard of Mayfield, offered him the vacant slot as guitarist in the Bluegrass Boys. At the time he joined the Bluegrass Boys, Edd Mayfield was described as “a handsome, tough-as-barbed-wire cowpuncher, who literally grew up on a ranch, who could ride hard, lasso accurately, and literally toss and tie up a bull. . . and had the wiry strength of a gymnast.  On October 28, 1951, Mayfield made the first of his nineteen recordings with “Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys”, but he left the group within a year and was replaced by Jimmy Martin. In 1954, when Martin had left the band, Mayfield rejoined the Bluegrass Boys. A few months later he again quit.  In early 1958, Mayfield returned to Monroe for the last time. He contracted leukemia, became ill while on the road with the band, and, within three days of being stricken, died at a hospital in Bluefield, West Virginia. He was thirty two. Services for Mayfield were held at the First Baptist Church in Dimmitt. Burial was in Castro County Memorial Cemetery. Mayfield was married to the former Jo McLain and the couple had two sons, Freddie and Carl. After Mayfield’s death his sons were raised by his brother Smokey.”

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Leon Morris. Born February 18,1935. This bio from the internet: “DC Bluegrass Union.”

Leon Morris, originally from Canada, was an early bluegrass artist in the Washington DC area. He performed as a guitarist, singer sideman on a number of early studio projects — including some early solo recordings by Frank Wakefield (along with Winnie Winston and David Grisman on the Silver Belle label).  By the early 1960s, Leon had partnered with Buzz Busby, and their band released a string of 45 rpm singles until Buzz wound up back in jail for substance abuse problems. In the 1970s and 1980s, Leon led his own Leon Morris & Associates based in Northern Virginia. The band release at least one album on the Old Homestead label and toured extensively in the U.S. and Canada.

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Wayne Yates. April 9, 1933 – December 11, 2008. Born in Manassas, Virginia.

Wayne (mandolin) and his brother Bill (bass) formed the Yates brothers and the clinch mountain ramblers in 1960. Red Allen joined the brothers in 1963 and changed the name to Red Allen and the Kentuckians, soon recording on the Melodean and County labels. Wayne formed Wayne Yates and Company in 1980. Wayne and Bill recorded the CD “It’s Never Really Over” in 2001.

This from John Lawless on the internet announcing Bill’s death:

“Wayne Yates, originally from Manassas, Virginia, and his brother Bill, formed The Clinch Mountain Ramblers bluegrass band in the Washington D. C. area in the late 1950s. The Ramblers, which included, legendary banjo player Porter Church, recorded a few sides for the Nashville based Kash label.  To earn some extra money they also teamed up with Patsy Stoneman who had left the famous Stoneman family band to strike out on her own.  It was during that  period that a recently relocated Red Allen, fresh from Dayton, Ohio, started playing as a regular member of The Clinch Mountain Ramblers

“Red was fresh from his breakup with the Osborne Brothers who had placed more than a couple of hits on the country music charts. It wasn’t long before Red arrived that he took over the band. They first started playing as Red Allen and the Yates Brothers but soon changed the name to the Kentuckians, Red’s original band name.

“As the mandolin playing member of the Kentuckians, Wayne helped record two landmark albums.  One for the Washington based Melodeon label and a second for the fledgling County record label. With the addition of the Yates Brothers, Red had the ability to sing Osborne style harmonies once again. These recording were well received by the fans who remembered Red with the Osbornes as well as by a new audience which was coming to bluegrass music from the folk music explosion that was taking place in the nation.  These albums are currently available on the Rebel, Lonesome and Blue CD released a few years back.

After two albums Wayne left the band to concentrate on his day job.  His brother Bill would go on to fame with Jimmy Martin and the Country Gentlemen, among others, but Wayne preferred to stay at home.  In the 1970s and early 1980s   Wayne could be found sitting in with local bands at any of a number of popular bluegrass music venues in the Washington D. C. area. Although not wanting to give up a steady income from his day job, he remained a part of the local bluegrass scene for years.

“Just a few years back Bill and Wayne reunited to record a new CD which should still be available. Wayne will be remembered as a well respected pioneer in the Washington D. C. music scene.”

Eddie Adcock shared a few words in Wayne’s memory… “In the Washington DC era of my youth I spent quite a bit of time ‘running around’ with Wayne Yates and his brother Bill, and I’ll always remember that experience fondly…even though we sure got into a lot of scrapes together!  One thing I remember most about Wayne, though, is that he would rather sing than eat.  He was a fine singer, and he could sing all the parts – lead, baritone and tenor.  Wayne was a mainstay on the Washington DC bluegrass scene for a long time, when for good reason DC was known as ‘The Bluegrass Capitol’. Wayne Yates was a big part of it all.”

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William “Bill” Yates. September 15, 1921 – April 18, 2010.  By Frank Overstreet

The majority of bass fiddle players start on another instrument. They become a bass player in order to join a certain band, or perhaps their family band needed someone to play that instrument. Bill Yates admits he can play a little on the guitar but his first instrument was the bass fiddle. Bill’s talents on the bass fiddle, and his ability to sing lead and all the harmony parts have allowed him to be a professional bluegrass musician for well more than forty years. Bill will be recognized for his contributions to bluegrass music on February 3, 2002, when he will be inducted into SPBGMA’s Preservation Hall Of Greats during the SPBGMA Awards show at the Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.

Bill Yates was born April 30, 1936 in Big Rock in the Appalachian coal country of Southwest Virginia. His father worked as a coal miner until that work slowed down, then the family moved to a farm in Carharpin, Virginia, (near Manassas), in 1942 where they were sharecroppers. The family’s entertainment was singing around the farm, in church, and listening to the Grand Ole Opry on a battery operated radio. After the second year of share cropping, Bill’s dad earned $135 from harvesting the crops. He went to Arlington, Virginia and purchased a car, a Kay mandolin and a Harmony guitar. The Yates family was very talented. Bill’s father, his brothers, Wayne and Jim were musicians. Bill learned to play the bass fiddle by listening to records. Bill’s parents, Martha and James Yates are deceased.

The next move for the Yates family was to an area that would have a great impact on Bill’s future. “In 1943, dad went to Washington, DC to apply for a job as a streetcar operator,” Bill recalled. “We then moved into the town of Manassas, Virginia, but with dad working in Washington, DC, we soon moved to Falls Church, Virginia. Having always been interested in bluegrass music, my brother Wayne and I attended places where bluegrass was performed.  Bill joined the Air Force in 1952 and served overseas in Japan and Korea for sixteen months. He returned to the United States and was discharged in 1956.

A group that was to become quite well known in bluegrass music led Bill and his brother Wayne into the music business. “The Country Gentlemen formed their band on July 4, 1957, and played a club in Baileys Crossroads, Virginia,” Bill said. “We used to go and listen to the Country Gentlemen and this is what led to Wayne and I into forming our own band, The Yates Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Ramblers. Little did I know that ten years later I would become a member of the group that influenced me so much.” The original members of The Yates Brothers & the Clinch Mountain Ramblers were Bill Yates, bass, Wayne Yates, mandolin, Bill Emerson, banjo and Ferrell Brown, guitar. The group played different clubs in the DC area. A friend, disc jockey Eddie Matherly, liked the band and booked them with various country acts. Other well-known musicians that worked with The Yates Brothers & The Clinch Mountain Ramblers included Bill Harrell, Leon Morris, Smiley Hobbs, Buck Ryan, Porter Church and Don Miller. The Yates Brothers & Bill Emerson single record on the KASH label included the songs, “Please Keep Remembering,” written by Bill Harrell, and “Love’s Chance Again,” written by Lola Emerson. The Kentuckians recorded an album for Pete Kuykendall, Melodeon 7325, Solid Bluegrass Sound Of The Kentuckians, with Red Allen, guitar, Bill Emerson, banjo, Wayne Yates, mandolin, Bill Yates, bass and Chubby Wise, fiddle. From the Melodeon 7325 album, a single record with the songs, “Flowers By My Graveside” and “Hello City Limits” was released on the Glenmar label. They also recorded County 704, The Kentuckians.  Bill Yates’ list of musicians that influenced his music includes Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, Stanley Brothers, Reno & Smiley and of course, The Country Gentlemen.

A few band changes resulted in Red Allen joining the band. “We continued as the Clinch Mountain Ramblers until we went to work on the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia,” Bill continued. “We then changed the name of the band to Red Allen and the Yates Brothers since Red had previously worked the Jamboree. We played on the WWVA Jamboree for 1 1/2 years. Bill Emerson left the group to go work for Jimmy Martin. Not long after, Wayne left and the group was renamed The Kentuckians. During this time, we recorded the Melodeon 7325 album and the County 704 album. Bill Emerson called me about playing bass for Jimmy Martin. After getting the job, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee. I played bass with Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys for six years and recorded three sessions with him. I played bass with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys for about seven months before joining The Country Gentlemen.”

Bill’s first show with the Country Gentlemen was in December of 1969. He moved back to Northern Virginia and traveled the roads with the Country Gentlemen for the next 20 years. During his years with the Country Gentlemen, Bill did a lot of the behind-the- scenes work that keeps a band together. Driving and maintaining the bus, helping to arrange and select songs were just a few of the necessary items Bill handled for the band. Bill was also a full partner in the Country Gentlemen with Charlie Wailer, Doyle Lawson and Bill Emerson.

Bill Yates recorded the following albums with the Country Gentlemen: One Wide River (Rebel SLP-1497), (1971), Sound Off (Rebel SLP-1501), (1971)The Award Winning Country Gentlemen (Rebel SLP 1506), (1972), Country Gentlemen (Self-Titled) (Vanguard VSD 79331), (1973), Remembrances & Forecasts (Vanguard VSD 79349), (1974), Yesterday & Today Vol 1 (Rebel SLP 1521), (1973), Yesterday & Today Vol 2 (Rebel SLP 1527), (1973),Yesterday & Today Vol 3 (Rebel SLP-1535), 1974), Calling My Children Home(Rebel SLP 1574), (1978), Joe ‘s Last Train (Rebel SLP-1559), (1976),Greatest Show On Earth (Sugar Hill SH-2201), Live In Japan (Seven Seas GXF 27 & 28), (2-LP), (1972) (Rebel CD 1104), Sit Down Young Stranger (Sugar Hill SH 3712), (1980), River Bottom (Sugar Hill SH 3723), (1981), Good as Gold (Sugar Hill SH 3734), (1983), Return Engagement (Rebel REB-1663), (1988), Live at McClure (Rebel SLP 1554-5), (2-LP), (1976).

Wayne and Bill decided to record an album in 1998 and formed their current band, The Yates Brothers with Bill on bass, Wayne and Leon Morris on guitars, Bill Emerson on banjo and Dave Propst on mandolin.

Bill Yates is truly a dedicated bluegrass music veteran. Bill will become the sixth member of the Country Gentlemen to be inducted into SPBGMA’s Preservation Hall Of Greats. He will be joining his friends, Charlie Wailer, John Duffey, Eddie Adcock, Doyle Lawson and Bill Emerson. Bill Yates is also a member of the Bill Monroe Blue Grass Hall Of Fame in Bean Blossom, Indiana.

Note: A very special thank you to Doyle and Suzanne Lawson, Bill’s sister, Ruth Brown and Bluegrass Photographer/Booking Agent Karen L. Jones. Their assistance and guidance was very important in the preparation of this article.

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Curtis Burch. From the internet

“Curtis Burch first got interested in music from his dad Curtis Sr. who taught him to play the guitar. His dad was a great rhythm guitar player that knew hundreds of songs. For many years they had a family band along with his brother Ricky. While Curtis was yet a teenager he had the honor of guesting with the Stanley Brothers, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, & the Osborne Bro’s. In 1971, Curtis moved to Nashville, Tennessee in search of a musical career. After doing odd jobs for George Gruhn and Randy Wood at GTR. he teamed up with Sam Bush, Courtney Johnson, and John Cowan to form the New Grass Revival.

“Curtis played with New Grass for 10 years. During that time, they made six albums and toured all over the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. They toured extensively with rock singer and musician, Leon Russell, which led to two albums and a video with him. They recorded and toured with others such as John Hartford, Buddy Emmons, Vassar Clements, Chuck Cochran, Garth Fundis, Rich Adler, Ronnie Dunn, Willie Nelson, John Starling with Lowell George and Bill Payne of Little Feat, Tut Taylor, Norman and Nancy Blake, and Kenny Malone, just to name a few. In 1987, Curtis performed with Doc Watson and Jack Lawrence on Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” show on The Disney Channel. That same year he toured with Leon Redbone.

“In 1993 Jerry Douglas & Tut Taylor produced “The Great Dobro Sessions” featuring Jerry, Tut, Mike Aldridge, Josh Graves, Rob Ickes, Oswald Kirby, Stacy Phillips, Sally Van Meter, Gene Wooten and Curtis Burch. This recording won a “Grammy” in 1995 and also won “Instrumental Recording” and “Event of the Year” at the 1995 IBMA in Louisville Ky.

“Also that same year Curtis & Tut Taylor were invited to the Dobro Fest. in Trnava, Slovakia. Curtis returned in 1997 to be awarded the “John Dopyera Award for Achievement and excellence in the art of Dobro playing.”

In 1996, 1997, 1998, 2005 & 2006 he was an instructor at Steve Kaufman’s guitar camp at Maryville, TN, college. And also at the 2005 Rocky Grass Academy in Lyons, CO.
“Curtis recorded with Norman Blake on the sound track CD for the movie O’ Brother Where Art Thou which won five Grammys. In 2005 Curtis recorded with Texas singer-songwriter Willis Alan Ramsey, co-produced by Jamie Oldaker (Eric Clapton’s drummer ) He is currently performing and recording with David Via of Virginia who is a great singer and original songwriter. Curtis freelances touring and recording with different performers including his wife Ruthie and brother Ricky. Curtis, Ruthie & Ricky recorded a live performance with the Bowling Green Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Reed in 2003 of 8 bluegrass songs and 2 New Grass Revival songs including two original pieces written for bluegrass band & Chamber Orchestra by Charles Smith of Western Kentucky University. He owes a lot of thanks to his father Curtis Sr. who taught him to play guitar when he was ten years old.”