Alton and Rabon Delmore came from Elkmont, in north Alabama. Their first record was a single Columbia session in Atlanta on 28 October 1931, which produced “Got the Kansas City Blues” and “Alabama Lullaby.” In 1933 they won a place on the Grand Ole Opry, and that December they began a long run with Victor’s budget label, Bluebird. At the first Bluebird sessions, in Chicago on 6 and 7 December 1933, it was just the brothers’ two voices and two guitars. Those dates produced “Brown’s Ferry Blues,” issued in April 1934, and the July 1934 pairing of “I’ve Got the Big River Blues” with “Blue Railroad Train.” By 1936, the Opry reported, they were the most popular act on the show.
Most of the later Bluebird sessions took place in hotel rooms in the Carolinas. At the Hotel Charlotte on 17 February 1936, Arthur Smith played fiddle behind them on “The Nashville Blues” and “It’s Takin’ Me Down” (Bluebird B-6312). The same day the three recorded as the Arthur Smith Trio, including “There’s More Pretty Girls Than One.” In 1938 and 1939 they recorded at the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Rock Hill, South Carolina, with Smiley O’Brien on guitar, Joe Zinkan on bass and Chuck Maudlin on fiddle. Their last Bluebird date, in February 1940 at the Kimball House in Atlanta, produced “Back to Birmingham.” Arguments with Opry management over bookings had taken them off the show by 1939.
They moved to Decca in 1940. On 11 September 1940, at Decca’s studio in the Pythian Temple in New York, they recorded “Old Mountain Dew” and “In the Blue Hills of Virginia” (issued that November), and also “She Won’t Be My Little Darling” and “Broken Hearted Lover” (December 1940).
After a stretch of moving from station to station they settled at WLW in Cincinnati. There Alton formed the Brown’s Ferry Four gospel quartet with Merle Travis and Grandpa Jones, and the brothers signed with the local independent label King, owned by Syd Nathan. On their King records, blues and boogie went into the mix. “Midnite Special” came out in 1945. At a January 1946 session at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, with Travis on guitar, they cut “Hillbilly Boogie” and “Midnight Train.” “Freight Train Boogie,” issued in October 1946, came from a Cincinnati date with Wayne Raney on harmonica, Roy Lanham on electric guitar and Jethro Burns. On 6 May 1949 Zeke Turner played guitar, with Raney and Lonnie Glosson on harmonicas, on “Blues Stay Away from Me,” issued that August on King 803. A session on 5 October 1950 with Tommy Jackson on fiddle produced “Life’s Too Short” and “Blues You Never Lose.”
Their last session together was on 29 August 1952. Rabon had lung cancer and died that December, a day after his thirty-sixth birthday. King went on issuing their records into 1953. In 1959 it put out “Blues Stay Away from Me” again, with overdubs.
Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.
Tracklist
- 1 Freight Train Boogie alt version 2:45
- 2 Somebody Else's Darling
