Red Allen and Frank Wakefield first played together in Dayton, Ohio. Allen, born Harley Allen in 1930 in Pigeon Roost Hollow near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, settled in Dayton in 1949. Wakefield, born in Emory Gap, Tennessee, in 1934, moved there with his family in 1950 and switched to the mandolin at sixteen. In 1952 Allen took the teenage Wakefield into his first band, the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys, and they toured together for three years. Allen spent 1956 to 1958 with the Osborne Brothers, making his first records with them, and afterwards he and Wakefield were reunited in Allen’s Kentuckians. By 1960 both were living and working in the Washington, D.C., area.
Their first single under the joint name was made for Starday. In November 1961 they recorded at Starday Sound Studio in Nashville with Don Reno on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle and John Palmer on bass, and Starday 572, “Trouble Round My Door” (by Wakefield and Allen) with “Beautiful Blue Eyes,” was issued that December.
Most of their Washington-era recordings were made at Wynwood Studio in Falls Church, Virginia, including the 1963 Rebel single “Little Birdie” with “Faded Memory” (Rebel F 242-45). The traditional “Little Birdie” was cut on 2 October 1963 with Bill Emerson on banjo, Billy Baker on fiddle and Tom Morgan on bass; Allen sings the verses and the chorus tenor, Wakefield the chorus lead and Emerson the baritone. On “Faded Memory,” a song by Allen and Wakefield, Wakefield sings lead and Allen tenor. In April 1963 at Wynwood they also recorded Allen’s “Don’t Lie to Me” and Wakefield’s “Lonesome Weary Heart,” with Robby Robinson on banjo and Jim Cox on bass, sides Rebel issued in 2004 on Keep On Going: The Rebel & Melodeon Recordings.
Wynwood was also where they made the Folkways LP Bluegrass (FA 2408, 1964), credited to Red Allen, Frank Wakefield and the Kentuckians and recorded in September 1963 with Pete Kuykendall on banjo and Tom Morgan on bass. Two more sets of 1963 tapes came out decades later: duets recorded at Wakefield’s home in Bethesda, Maryland, on 11 April 1963, issued by Acoustic Disc as The Kitchen Tapes in 1994, and The WDON Recordings, 1963, issued by Patuxent in 2014.
By January 1965 Allen’s Kentuckians had Wayne Yates on mandolin, and in the mid-1960s Wakefield was playing with the Greenbriar Boys. The two recorded together again in New York in April 1971, with Don Stover on banjo, and those sessions were issued in Japan on the Red Clay label in 1976. Allen died in Dayton in 1993, and Wakefield in April 2024.
Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.
Tracklist
- 1 Little Birdie alt version 2:34
- 2 Faded Memory
