The Tradition

Queries  Q: Can you tell me who the pickers and singers were on the 1950s recordings of the Country Pardners? Jerry Steinberg, Salem, Virginia. A: The Country Pardners was a short-lived group that came together in 1955 and disbanded two years later. Bill Price, a mandolin player/tenor singer from North Carolina was the founder and…

Mourning the Loss of a Legend  Photo By Scott Simontacchi The world of bluegrass music mourns the loss of one of its iconic figures with the death of Bobby Osborne. He passed away on June 27 at the age of 91 just four days after his friend—and another legend of the genre—Jesse McReynolds, died. For…

C.J. Lewandowski of the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys says that at fifteen years old, when he met Bobby Osborne, one of his heroes, he would never have dreamed of the friendship that would develop between the two musicians. Over the years that followed, Lewandowski, also a mandolin player, learned from Osborne—music lessons and life lessons. In…

Inventor—Entrepreneur—Musician—Songwriter—Community Servant—Mentor—Conservationist—Humanitarian Wayne Jerrolds grew up in a small farming community known as Burnt Church in the southern part of rural Hardin County, Tennessee (about 115 miles east of Memphis).  Savannah, Tennessee is the nearest town to this community.  When he was a young boy, Wayne and his brothers worked in the fields.  They cut…

Queries  Q: Do you know much (or anything) about the Armstrong Twins?  I recently heard a track on a radio program from an old LP. I know that Floyd died in 1994; I have made many attempts to discover when Lloyd died. I met Lloyd at IBMA Louisville in 1997 and we had a long…

One day in 1953, Earl Scruggs answered a knock at the door of his suburban Nashville house. Standing there was a sixteen-year-old kid with a banjo and a grin as wide as the Mississippi River. It was Doug Dillard, and he wanted to know if Scruggs would sell him a set of “Scruggs tuners,” a…