Mary Did You Know

Rhonda Vincent made her first single as a child. She grew up in Greentop, Missouri, singing with her family’s band, later called the Sally Mountain Show, and in 1970 she recorded “Mule Skinner Blues.” It came out as a 45 on the Ven-Jence label, with “Satisfied” on the other side. The Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America named “Muleskinner Blues” its Single of the Year in 1974.

Her solo albums began on Rebel with New Dreams and Sunshine in December 1988, followed by A Dream Come True (1990) and Timeless and True Love (1991). She then moved to Giant Records in Nashville for two mainstream country albums, Written in the Stars (1993) and Trouble Free (1996). Giant released “I’m Not Over You,” “What Else Could I Do” and “What More Do You Want from Me” as singles, but none of them charted. Vincent calls the Giant period her “musical college years.”

She went back to bluegrass with Back Home Again on Rounder in January 2000 and stayed with the label for ten years. The IBMA named her Female Vocalist of the Year every year from 2000 through 2006. Three of her Rounder singles made Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart: “You Can’t Take It With You When You Go” (No. 58, 2003), “If Heartaches Had Wings” (No. 48, 2004) and “I’ve Forgotten You” (No. 59, 2005). In 2006 Rounder released “Heartbreaker’s Alibi,” a duet with Dolly Parton.

Vincent left Rounder on 19 February 2010 and started her own label, Upper Management Music. Its first album, Taken, came out that September and went to No. 1 on the Top Bluegrass Albums chart. Her singles since then have come out on Upper Management, among them “Mama Tried” (2016), “One” with Daryle Singletary (2017) and “Like I Could” (2019). In 2023 and 2024 she released a run of familiar songs as singles ahead of the album Destinations and Fun Places (9 August 2024), starting with “The City of New Orleans” in August 2023. “Please Mr. Please,” a 1975 hit for Olivia Newton-John, followed in April 2024.

“Wagon Wheel” came out on 19 July 2024, twenty years after Old Crow Medicine Show recorded the song. It had been recorded about three years before its release and runs over seven minutes, with an a cappella section and Alison Krauss singing harmony throughout. Her touring band the Rage plays on it: Aaron McDaris on banjo, Zack Arnold on guitar, Mickey Harris on bass, Jacob Metz on reso-guitar and Adam Haynes on fiddle.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.