Osborne Brothers - Pawn Shop '2016

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Dirt Rich
02. 21 Summer
03. Stay A Little Longer
04. Pawn Shop
05. Rum
06. Loving Me Back [feat. Lee Ann Womack]
07. American Crazy
08. Greener Pastures
09. Down Home
10. Heart Shaped Locket
11. It Aint My Fault

The Osborne Brothers were one of the most popular and innovative bluegrass
groups of the post-war era, taking the music into new directions and gaining a
large audience. Among their most notable achievements are their pioneering,
inventive use of amplification, twin harmony banjos, steel guitars, and drums --
they were the first bluegrass group to expand the genres sonic palette in such a
fashion.
Bobby and Sonny Osborne were born in Hyden, KY, but raised in Dayton, OH. As
children, their father instilled a love for traditional music. Bobby picked up
the electric guitar as a teenager, playing in various local bands. A few years
after his brother began playing the guitar, Sonny picked up the banjo. In 1949,
Bobby formed a duo with banjoist Larry Richardson. The pair was hired by a West
Virginian radio station and stayed in the state for a while, eventually hooking
up with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. During their stay with the Fiddlers, they
helped change the groups sound to bluegrass and made four singles for Cozy
Records. Bobby Osborne left the band in the summer of 1951, forming a band with
Jimmy Martin that fell apart shortly after its inception. After making a
one-shot single, New Freedom Bell, with his siblings Louise and Sonny, he joined
the Stanley Brothers for a short while before being drafted into the Army.
Sonny spent some time with Bill Monroes Blue Grass Boys in the early 50s,
appearing on several sides on Decca Records. He also cut some covers of popular
Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs songs for the budget label Gateway. After Bobby
returned from the Army, he and Sonny formed a band. Initially, they supported
Jimmy Martin on his RCA session while they had their own spot on a Knoxville
radio station. In 1956, they joined the Wheeling Jamboree; they would stay with
the radio program for four years. In March of that year, Red Allen joined the
brothers -- four months after his arrival, they recorded their first session for
MGM Records. For the next year, they toured and recorded, steadily gaining a
large audience. In the spring of 1958, Once More became a number 13 hit on the
country charts. Its success helped push the band into the mainstream.
Shortly after the success of Once More, Allen left the band, and the Osbornes
filled his vacancy with a string of musicians and vocalists, including Johnny
Dacus and Benny Birchfield. The duo stayed with the Wheeling Jamboree and MGM
Records into the early 60s. The Osbornes became the first bluegrass act to play
a college campus in 1960, when they played Antioch College in Yellow Springs,
OH. That appearance ushered in a new era for bluegrass, creating a new, younger
audience for the music.
The Osbornes left MGM in 1963, signing with Decca Records. On their mid-60s
records for Decca, the duo began experimenting more with their music, adding
piano, steel guitar, and electric instruments to their music. Their
adventurousness made them more accessible to a mass audience, as their string of
late-60s and early-70s hit singles proves. Although their experimentation
angered many bluegrass traditionalists, the Osbornes were the only bluegrass
group to consistently have country hits during this time, even if all their
singles were only minor hits.
In 1975, the Osbornes left Decca but continued to play the Grand Ole Opry and
bluegrass festivals across America. Later in the 70s, the duo returned to a more
traditional sound. Throughout the 80s and 90s they stuck to this sound, playing
concerts and festivals frequently and recording albums for CMH, RCA, Sugar Hill,
and Pinecastle. Forty years after their formation, the Osborne Brothers remained
an active act in the mid-90s.

Related artists