Lost Highway · You’ll Never Know (how Much It Hurts)

The Osborne Brothers and Red Allen billing covers little more than two years of records. Bobby and Sonny Osborne had made six sides with Jimmy Martin for RCA Victor in November 1954. Back in Dayton, Ohio, early in 1956, they formed a new group with the Kentucky-born guitarist and singer Harley “Red” Allen and the fiddler Art Stamper. That February the group cut a set of instrumentals at the Gateway studio on Spring Grove Avenue in Cincinnati, with Allen on rhythm guitar and Les Bodine on bass. Gateway issued them on EPs credited to Sonny Osborne and His Sunny Mountain Boys.

Tommy Sutton, a local disc jockey, helped the brothers to a contract with MGM. The trio’s first session for the label was on 1 July 1956 at the RCA Victor studio on McGavock Street in Nashville, with Wesley Rose and Jim Vienneau producing, Ernie Newton on bass, and both Tommy Jackson and Art Stamper on fiddle. Allen sang lead on “Ruby, Are You Mad?” with Bobby on tenor, and MGM paired it with “My Aching Heart” that August. “Who Done It” and “Teardrops in My Eyes,” the second written by Allen and Sutton, came from the same date. A session on 29 December 1956, with Gordon Terry on fiddle, supplied “Down in the Willow Garden” backed with “Ho, Honey, Ho” in February 1957, and “Wild Mountain Honey” backed with “Della Mae” that August.

For the sessions of 17 October 1957 and 13 February 1958 the band added Buddy Harman on drums, first with Shot Jackson and then with Jimmy Crawford on dobro. “Once More,” from the October date, put Bobby’s lead at the top of the trio, with Sonny and Allen singing beneath him. This high-lead arrangement became the Osbornes’ trademark. Issued in November 1957 as the flip of “She’s No Angel,” it reached No. 13 on the country chart in 1958, the brothers’ first chart entry. The February 1958 session was the trio’s last. It moved to the Bradley Film and Recording Studio on 16th Avenue South and produced “Love Pains,” “It Hurts to Know” and “Lost Highway.”

Allen left the group in April 1958, but MGM kept issuing the recordings. In January 1959 the label collected the trio sides on the LP Country Pickin’ and Hillside Singin’. “Lost Highway” came out as a single in June 1959, backed with “You’ll Never Know (How Much It Hurts),” which the brothers had cut that January with Ray Edenton on guitar in Allen’s place. The Osbornes recorded for MGM until January 1963 and for Decca from that August. Allen went on to record with the mandolinist Frank Wakefield: for BMC in Dayton in 1959, for Starday in Nashville in 1961, and for Rebel in 1963.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.