Deep River · Over Yonder Stands Little Maggie

Bill Emerson and Cliff Waldron joined forces in the Washington, D.C., area in 1967. Emerson, born in 1938, had helped Charlie Waller found the Country Gentlemen in 1957 and left them in 1958; from 1962 to 1967 he played banjo with Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys, apart from a spell with Red Allen in 1964–65. Waldron, a guitarist and lead singer, was born in Jolo, West Virginia, in 1941 and moved to Washington in his early twenties, where he played with groups including the Southern Ramblers and the Page Valley Boys. The two began working together professionally when Emerson took over Buzz Busby’s Bayou Boys. At first they called their band the Lee Highway Boys, but before long the billing became Emerson & Waldron.

The Lee Highway Boys name survives on their first single, Rebel F 281, issued in June 1968. On “Over Yonder Stands Little Maggie,” a setting of the traditional “Little Maggie” credited on the label to Emerson, Waldron sings over Emerson’s banjo and Ed Ferris’s bass, probably with John Duffey on mandolin. The other side, “Deep River,” was a new song by Paul Williams and Sam Humphrey, cut at Unity Recording Studio in Washington. Waldron sang lead, Emerson tenor and Mike Auldridge baritone; Auldridge also played dobro, Bill Poffinberger fiddle and mandolin, and Ferris bass. It was the first recording of the song, and Rebel used it again on the duo’s second album.

Rebel issued three Emerson & Waldron LPs. New Shades of Grass (SLP 1485, 1968) came from sessions at Roy Homer’s studio in Clinton, Maryland, and at United Recording in Washington, with Duffey, Tom Gray, Billy Baker, Garland Alderman and Poffinberger among the sidemen. It set Emerson instrumentals such as “Indian Hill” and “Fast Freight” beside Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter.” The second single, “Proud Mary” with “Faded Love” (Rebel F 290, August 1969), came from the Unity sessions with Auldridge, Poffinberger and Ferris that also filled Bluegrass Country (SLP 1489, 1970). That album carried their “Fox on the Run,” the first bluegrass recording of the song. A third LP, Bluegrass Session (SLP 1493), followed in 1970, with Duffey back on mandolin.

In 1970 Emerson rejoined the Country Gentlemen, replacing Eddie Adcock, and Waldron carried on with his former bandmates as the New Shades of Grass. In 1973 Emerson left the Gentlemen for the U.S. Navy, where he built Country Current, the first military band devoted to bluegrass and country music, and served for twenty years. Rebel collected the partnership’s recordings on The Best of Emerson & Waldron (CD 1123) in 1997. Emerson, elected to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2019, died in August 2021; Waldron died in July 2024.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.