Jesse McReynolds—The Next Chapter

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine

June 2004, Volume 38, Number 12

When the career of the legendary bluegrass brother duo, Jim & Jesse, came to a halt after 55 amazing years with the death of Jim McReynolds on January 31, 2002, the bluegrass music community and Grand Ole Opry fans worldwide grieved over the death of one brother, and worried about what might lie ahead for the other. Tragically, Jim’s wife Arreta, had died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack on December 19th, days before her husband passed away from the cancer that silenced one of the smoothest high tenor voices in any genre of music. Jim’s younger brother, Jesse, was fighting prostate cancer during the same period of time.

Thankfully, Jesse’s illness was caught early enough to affect a cure. “I’m doing fine right now,” Jesse assures his fans. “Everything’s A-one. I went through several weeks of radiation treatments in Atlanta [in 2002], but everything’s down to zero now. I’m feeling good. I work a lot.”

Physical challenges aside, the emotional trauma of losing both a brother and a business partner after such a long, successful run had to be a heartbreaking shock. “I started thinking about the whole concept of life. It’s short if you live to be a hundred, really,” Jesse smiles quietly. “You’d better take the time to enjoy it, and make the best of it.”

After a few months of admittedly feeling “not very energetic or positive about anything,” the creative genius that is Jesse McReynolds rose like a phoenix from fate’s ashes, with a renewed spirit and musical vision. After the release of the collection that turned out to be Jim & Jesse’s last album in 2003, “Tis So Sweet To Be Remembered” (Pinecastle Records), Jesse recorded an instrumental album with young fiddle wizard Travis Wetzel, and organized a new version of the Virginia Boys for summer 2003 gigs and Opry appearances.

In addition to a busy tour schedule for 2004 that includes dates in Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Illinois, Missouri, North Dakota. Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, New York, Michigan. Minnesota, West Virginia, and Tennessee, the energetic 73-year-old mandolin player/ heartfelt vocalist also has four album projects pending release.

The McReynolds/Wetzel album, tentatively titled “Bending The Rules,” is expected to be released this year on the OMS label. In addition to jazzed up standards like “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “El Cumbanchero,” “Limehouse Blues,” and “Alabama Jubilee,” the recording also includes several originals from Jesse: “Witch Grass,” “Blowing Up A Storm,” “Waltz Of Joy,” “Night Runner,” “Okeechobee Wind,” and the title cut.

The debut album from Jesse McReynolds & the Virginia Boys for Pinecastle Records will feature the new lineup. “I’ve got a good band,” Jesse states matter-of-factly. “Actually, I’ve got the best band I’ve had in a long time. It’s all acoustic. Kent Blanton is playing bass. I figured I’d get some of the best musicians I could. I’ve got to prove that I can do this by myself, you know,” he laughs quietly. “I’ve got Bobby Hicks playing fiddle, and Daniel Grandstaff playing banjo—he’s a young man from up in East Tennessee who’s doing good. And my grandson Luke is my number one, right-hand person. He plays mandolin and takes care of the bus. He fronts the show sometimes. He takes the band out and does some shows himself.”

The tenor/guitar spot on the new album will be filled by Tennessee Gentlemen veteran Donnie Catron, Charles Whitstein of the Whitstein Brothers, and Paul Brewster of Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder. In stage shows, Jesse is tenored by either Charles or Donnie in duets, but more often a powerhouse vocal trio features Jesse on lead, Charles on tenor, and Donnie on high baritone, sailing up in the stratosphere above them both.

In a recent interview backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Ida Whitstein, Charles’ wife, noted, “It was two years in November that Robert [Charles’ brother] passed away, and up until this point Charles hasn’t listened to any music—especially duet music. We still don’t have any pictures up [in the house] of the brothers, together. He’s just not been ready.”

After Robert’s death. Charles quit playing music completely. “He sold his mandolin and he said. ‘That was another life, and now this is my life and I’m going to have to deal with it,’” Ida said. “Jesse has been wanting him to sing with him and they recorded some together, in the past. They decided they really needed each other— not only as music partners, but we’ve been friends with Jim and Jesse for 25 years or so.”

“Charles and I have so much in common, since we’ve both lost our brothers,” Jesse agrees. “I’m a lead singer and he’s a tenor singer, and I think we can help each other out a lot. I think he’ll be a good asset to the band.” Charles decided to give the new gig a shot, although he was understandably nervous about performing on guitar. Like Jesse, he had been the mandolin player in his brother duo. “I played guitar some at home, and for gospel things at church, but never anything more than a few chords. But Jesse’s been after me,” Charles laughs. “He seemed to think I could play it. I’m doing pretty good; I’m getting my confidence up,” Charles smiles. “It’s just that we have so much in common, and we kind of draw strength from each other,” he adds quietly. “We’ve always loved Jim & Jesse’s music anyway, and it’s just sort of a humble thing. It’s a pleasure to work with a legend like Jesse…It’s fun being in the studio with him now, just kind of creating things and still keeping it bluegrass,” Whitstein continues. “I’m really having fun with it.”

 Donnie Catron, who appears with the Virginia Boys when his own group doesn’t have a conflicting date, has one of those high range, soaring tenor voices—powerful and chillingly beautiful at the same time—that stops listeners dead in their tracks and jump starts the pulse into “exaltation gear” the first time it’s heard. After just two appearances on the Opry with Donnie, Jesse said he was getting phone calls and e-mail messages from fans asking, “Who is this guy?”

A consummate entertainer onstage with the late Troy Castleberry’s Tennessee Gentleman, neither band members or fans knew what to expect from Donnie next. During the 1980s, he was probably one of the few men in bluegrass who could do an absolutely convincing impression of Dolly Parton’s “Love Is Like A Butterfly” in full, figure-enhanced costume.

As far as material goes with the new band, Jesse says, “Our road show is pretty much the same as it was before—a lot of Jim & Jesse songs, and we’re doing some songs like ‘Faded Love’ and some Bob Wills things. Bobby’s so good at playing that,” he credits. “He also plays ‘Fiddle Patch,’ like Dale Potter did it…I think, if somebody in the band can do something outstanding, I want to see him do it!” Jesse grins. “It’s amazing what they can do. We cut a version of ‘Faded Love’ (on the new album) and Donnie sang it. I modulated from D to C, so I could sing it, and then I let him sing the high lead in C. He said, ‘I can sing it in D if you want me to.’ And I said, ‘By golly, I never heard it done there, without any effort!”’

When asked backstage at the Opry last September about playing with McReynolds, legendary fiddler Bobby Hicks stated simply, “He’s a hoss. I enjoy playing with Jesse. I can play whatever I want to when I want to, and he’s a hoss. I love the new gig very much. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing it,” he emphasizes. “I’m retired if I want to be, but I’m not. I’m just having fun.”

“Retirement” and “touring less” are words that Jesse has mentioned to his wife (Joy) and friends off and on during the past few years—but they’re not something anyone really believes he will do anytime soon. He’s simply got too many ideas in his head and too many things to do. “Jim used to say, ‘What’s the matter with that boy? He’s got so many ideas!”’ recalls Charles Whitstein.

A typical day in the life of Jesse McReynolds, Grand Ole Opry star, and Bluegrass Hall Of Honor member involves “working around home,” he says. “I’ve got me a little shop out back. I had it paved the other day with concrete.” Earlier that morning McReynolds poured new pavement in his driveway, and then managed to smash a finger in his wood shop, working on another project. “I built a door a couple of days ago,” he adds. “I’m always doing something. And then. I’m trying to record, too. In fact, I had to cancel one recording session today because I had to go downtown to pick up some [publicity] pictures I had made and go by the Gibson Showcase. They’re supposed to be building me a mandolin.” Two new F-style instruments—a blonde one and a dark one for Jesse and his grandson—will have the double J cowboy boot Jim & Jesse logo inlaid in the fingerboards, rather than plain mother-of-pearl dots.

The challenge and the creative possibilities of managing a solo career are something else that is energizing Jesse these days, ‘I’ve got some things that I want to do and I can make my own decisions about it and call my own shots,” Jesse points out. “Jim and I got along good, but he didn’t agree with everything I wanted to do—the way I wanted to do it,” he grins. “I’m not trying to say he was wrong, because we had a good career for 55 years. But the Jim & Jesse days are over. It’s like seeing your own obituary in the newspaper.”

A hundred years from now, what does Jesse hope music historians remember about Jim & Jesse? “Well, I’m really proudest that we stayed together longer than any other brother team did,” he says. “I don’t know of any other brother team who worked together that didn’t break up somewhere along the line.”

How did they do it? “We were just ordinary people,” Jesse explains. “We sort of did our music and business the way we wanted to. We never actually had a manager or someone to tell us what to do. Our mother and father were quiet people and they got along good, and everybody in our family did. If some disagreement came up, we would sort of back off and let it work itself out, rather than fight it out. That worked for us pretty good.”

The town of Coeburn, Va…eight miles from Jim & Jesse’s homeplace in Carfax, hosted a July 4th celebration to honor Jim last summer, and Jesse McReynolds & the Virginia Boys performed. “Jim and Arreta, we buried them both back there [at the homeplace] in the middle of the winter,” Jesse said. “I couldn’t even go because I had the flu a second time. We had the funeral, but I didn’t go back to Virginia then. I hadn’t been back there in two years—it’s pretty depressing to go back where you grew up. Jim tried to keep it up; he worked a lot out there. We have some cousins too who look after it a little bit, but if nobody lives there, a house will deteriorate pretty fast. My youngest son, Randy, has got a job as the pastor of a church near Bristol. He might do something with it; I don’t know.

“A lot of people want to go up there to the cemetery, and the only way up there is to walk,” Jesse continues. “It is grown up so bad. and it is snakey and dusty. The only time I’d want to go up there would be in the winter time. When we grew up there, there were a lot of snakes there—copperheads. I told them that someone needs to go in there with a bulldozer and clean the place out and bury some snakes.” he smiles. “I don’t think I’ll go there. I told Joy when I die, ‘Put me in a mausoleum, ‘til the weather gets better, anyway. Don’t take me up there.’”

Looking back, Jesse says that the two performers who influenced him most in his early years were Bill and Charlie Monroe. “I’d say Charlie probably influenced me as much as Bill did,” he says. “Charlie played around our hometown a lot. He had such a personality—he was one of the greatest emcees and entertainers. He’d laugh all the time and joke. He wasn’t serious like Bill was.” It’s interesting how different siblings can be. “Well, Jim thought I was crazy sometimes,” Jesse admits. “He said the older I get, the crazier I get. Oh, we got along all right,” he laughs. “I just went ahead and done my thing, and he done his. But Bill & Charlie, and the Delmore Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys—all the brother teams were a big influence on us. And, of course, we started out around the same time as the Louvins did. We used to learn all their songs.”

Jesse also grew up hearing the Morris Brothers, with Mainer’s Mountaineers. “Somebody could write a good book about Wiley and Zeke Morris, if there was anyone left who really knows about them,” Jesse says. “They were the fightinest things. I never saw them do their act on stage; it was before I got in the business. But there were four of them and they would actually get into fighting and bring blood onstage—and people would think it was a good act! I’d like to find somebody to write a book about that,” he laughs. “It should be called Hell Among The Brothers.”

Despite their different personalities, Jesse said he and his brother communicated well—and usually non-verbally. “I could ask him a question and I’d just look at him and get the answer. He didn’t have to say anything. Most of the time he wouldn’t,” Jesse smiles. “He would say more by just looking at you, or turning his head.”

Occasionally Jesse says he would try to “pull things” on his older brother, just to try to trick him. “I wrote a song. ‘[I’ll Love] Nobody But You’ as a rock song; that’s when Elvis Presley came out,” Jesse recalls. “We were practicing some songs to record and were going to do some stuff for Starday, and every song I brought out, Jim didn’t like. He never complimented me much on my songwriting,” Jesse smiles wryly. “He said, ‘Why don’t you write something simple?’ So just as a joke, I went into: I’ll never love anybody but you, baby, baby…’ And he liked it! So we recorded it that way…l meant it as a joke, and that ended up being the first song we ever sung on the Opry in 1962.”

The new band album “New Horizons” (Pinecastle PCR1135) released this spring includes songs like “New Partner Waltz,” a Louvin Brothers classic that pairs Jesse with Charles Whitstein; two Dan Seals compositions, “Showboat Gambler” and “I Won’t Be Blue Any More”; the previously mentioned new version of “Faded Love”; and a slowed down, minor lonesome cover of “In The Pines”—the latter two featuring Bobby Hicks on the fiddle. A ‘death row’ lament made famous by Hank Williams, “My Main Trial Is Yet To Come,” is included, along with an original. Jesse wrote “The Anniversary Song” especially for the new record and hopes to release it as a single, tied with a wedding anniversary card promotion. A definite high point on the album is a duet with John Prine on “Paradise,” the man who wrote the hit song Jim & Jesse recorded in the ’70s. In fact, the recording session last year was a first time meeting for McReynolds and Prine.

In addition to the band release and the Travis Wetzel project, Jesse and Charles Whitstein are recording a tribute to brother duos, with songs from the

Wilburn Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, the Stanley Brothers, the Whitstein Brothers, Jim & Jesse, and the Morris Brothers.

The fourth CD to be released this year will feature live cuts from vintage Jim & Jesse Martha White radio shows, drawn from tapes of shows in Montgomery, Ala., in 1962 and Wichita, Kans., in 1950.

The 11th Annual McReynolds Memorial Bluegrass Music Spectacular, held in Gallatin, Tenn., this past February was a star-studded event held in memory of Jesse’s late son, Keith, which this year benefitted legendary banjo player Bobby Thompson—known to many for his extensive studio work in Nashville and on the television show Hee Haw!

Along with developing a unique way of playing the mandolin (the crosspicking, or split string method that duplicates the sound of a banjo roll on the mandolin), Jesse McReynolds is a formidable songwriter. More than 200 compositions include classics like “Dixie Hoedown,” “Drifting And Dreaming,” “Hard-Hearted,” “Just Wondering Why,” and “Border Ride,” among others. He has a box of several more songs that he is intent on recording in the years to come. Jesse is singing better than ever—although there is a more soulful, lonesome, retrospective tone that can be heard on vocals like “In The Pines,” “You’ll Find Her Name Written There,” his own “America On Bended Knee,” and even “Paradise.”

During the past 73 years. Jesse McReynolds’ accomplishments have been many, but there is an urgency combined with his creative drive these days. He knows how quickly those years have gone, and how precious each moment, each note played, has been. He doesn’t appear to take either the time or the music for granted.

If there is any one message Jesse McReynolds would like to relay to his fans at this juncture of his career, he says, “I just thank them for staying with us, for supporting us all these years as Jim & Jesse, and I hope they’ll accept what I’m doing from here on out. I’m going to keep doing it as long as I’m able. The way I feel now, I feel like I’m ready to start again.”

Nancy Cardwell is the Special Projects Coordinator with the IBMA in Nashville. Originally from the Missouri Ozarks. she grew up in a family bluegrass hand and has written about music/entertainment for the past 22 years.