The Tradition
Notes & Queries – April 2024
Q: I thought I knew everything the Osborne Brothers had ever done, but a friend said they had their own television show sometime in 1950s-1960s. She said her mother had watched them; her mother passed away last spring at 100. My friend insisted that was true. I suggested that maybe she was thinking of a…
A True Gentleman
The 86-year-old didn’t play music as a child, but picked it up a little later in life. In 1959, after a stint in the Navy, he came to Danville, Virginia, and decided to take up music in his spare time. “Old friends that I went to school with were plunkers. I wanted to be a…
Remembering Earl Scruggs at 100
[Editor’s Note: In our January, 2024 issue we ran an article about the new Earl Scruggs exhibit at the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, North Carolina. Part of that exhibit includes information from a 17,000 word document that Earl had written about his life. In our previous article, we included a few excerpts from that…
Notes & Queries – March 2024
Q: What ever happened to the person who wrote all of the songs on Reno & Smiley’s Civil War album? – Jerry Steinberg, Salem, Virginia A: The songwriter in question was Dr. Albert J. Russo, a doctor who practiced medicine in the Salem/Roanoke, Virginia, area for 39 years. His proximity to Reno & Smiley’s headquarters…
Fifty Years of Old & In the Way
The Long Strange Trip of Spud, Dawg, Red, Mule and Vassar Jerry Garcia’s burning ambition as a young musician was to play banjo in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. He never made it, and had to satisfy himself with being the leader of one of the most successful and beloved bands in rock music, the…
David Allen “Dave” Freeman
(May 22, 1939 – December 25, 2023) “Dave (Freeman) single-handedly built a company that encompasses record labels, wholesale distribution and mail order to the public. He has made a fair amount of money doing it, but every dollar has been made absolutely fairly and squarely. He brought to this music the thoroughgoing integrity, dedication and love…