The Tradition

A Banjo Master Gone Too Soon James Robert “Jim” Mills (December 18, 1966 – May 3, 2024) was one of the most celebrated bluegrass banjo pickers from the last forty years. His early resume included stints with several regional bands such as Summer Wages and the Bass Mountain Boys while later entries observed high-profile jobs…

Q: Chubby Collier played some awesome hardcore fiddle on several Charlie Bailey songs that I like extremely well. I believe he was from far southwest Virginia. I wonder if he recorded on more songs; I can’t think of any. Can you come up with anything about him? I’d love to learn as much as I…

Photos Courtesy of the Earl Scruggs Center Collection [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…

Bluegrass Music Loses Another Banjo Legend Photo by Dan Miller Benjamin Rolfe “Ben” Eldridge (August 15, 1938 – April 14, 2024) was a co-founder of the Seldom Scene and served as the group’s banjoist and longest-tenured member; he logged a total of 44 years with the band from 1971 until 2015. As an instrumentalist in what…

“I’ll Be True to the One I Love” – The Rest of the Story In the June 2001 “Notes & Queries,” Walt Saunders fielded a question from a reader who was seeking the title of a song for which they recalled only a verse of lyric. The song was identified as “I’ll Be True to…

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…