Acoustic Disc:
Osborne Brothers & Red Allen Note

Here is Neil's note, which is included in the downloadable project, available for purchase from Acoustic Disc for $20.00, at: https://acousticdisc.com/product/the-osborne-brothers-and-red-allen-the-osborne-brothers-and-red-allen-live-download/

Released for the first time, here are two shows the Osborne Brothers and Red Allen played on June 30, 1957, at New River Ranch. Built in 1950, this country music park in Rising Sun, Maryland, 50 miles north of Baltimore, held shows every Sunday from early spring to late fall, and booked a lot of bluegrass acts. Flatt & Scruggs, Reno & Smiley and even the Monroe Brothers played there.

During the 1950s, Allen and the Osbornes, young Kentuckians who’d moved to southwest Ohio with their families during WWII, grew up in Dayton’s vibrant musical scene, described in Bartenstein and Ellison’s Industrial Strength Bluegrass (University of Illinois Press, 2021). They’d performed with bands in the bars, on radio and on records since the early fifties. In July 1956 they began their recording career together in Nashville. Their first MGM single, Bobby’s “Ruby,” was released in September, just as they joined the cast of the World’s Original Jamboree at WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia. Their dynamic new bluegrass sound was turning heads.

Guitarist and lead singer Red Allen was a powerful singer, a master at postwar country hits like Kitty Wells’ “After Dark” and Hank Williams’ “Mansion on the Hill”. Bobby Osborne had invented a virtuosic mandolin style that marked him as a bluegrass original. His high, pure, strong high tenor voice, heard both on solos like “Little Maggie” and in the many duets he and Red performed like ”In the Pines,” was widely considered the best in the business. His younger brother Sonny began his career at 14 playing banjo on the Grand Ole Opry with Bill Monroe. A strong vocalist – his baritone parts anchored trios like “Love and Wealth” and “Down Where The River Bends” – he was an innovative banjoist whose brilliant breaks sparked applause here.

They opened the first show with their latest MGM recordings, including “Ho Honey Ho” -- on which Bobby plays second banjo – and followed with a wide variety of country and older traditional numbers. An audience that included popular bluegrass musicians from the Baltimore bar scene, responded enthusiastically to these performances. Whoever taped this show – it might have been Mike Seeger -- was part of the nascent bluegrass-as-overdrive milieu of the era. Copies of tracks from this show have been circulating in the bluegrass underground tape scene ever since. It’s great to have it all now in one place. Thanks, Acoustic Disc!
    — Neil V. Rosenberg