The Tradition

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…

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…

[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…

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…

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…