Mountain Rosa Lee · Eight More Miles to Louisville

Don Reno and Red Smiley first recorded together as sidemen. Reno had played banjo with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys from 1948 until July 1949, then joined Tommy Magness and the Tennessee Buddies in Roanoke, Virginia, where Smiley was already singing and playing guitar. On 6 March 1951, at King’s studio at 1540 Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati, the Magness band cut four sacred songs, issued that year on King’s Federal label as by Tommy Magness and His Tennessee Buddies.

Syd Nathan then recorded the pair under their own names. Their first session, on 15 January 1952 in the same studio, produced sixteen sides with Chuck Haney on mandolin, Gopher Addis on fiddle and Jay Haney on bass. It included “I’m Using My Bible for a Roadmap” with “Hear Jerusalem Mourn” (King 45-1045, March 1952), “Tennessee Cut-Up Breakdown” and “Crazy Finger Blues.” By the time the first record came out the band had broken up and Reno had gone back to Arthur Smith in Charlotte, but King kept recording them. A January 1953 date in Charlotte, produced by Smith with Red Rector on mandolin and Jimmie Lunsford on fiddle, gave them “Choking the Strings” and “I’m the Talk of the Town.”

Mack Magaha on fiddle and John Palmer on bass first appear at the session of 8 November 1954 in Cincinnati, which produced “Barefoot Nellie,” “Reno Ride,” “Trail of Sorrow” and “Double Banjo Blues.” In 1955 the four reformed as a touring band, with Carlton Haney as manager. Their session of 27 August 1956 produced “Country Boy Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Cumberland Gap” and “I Know You’re Married (But I Love You Still),” which the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame calls their most popular composition. Reno later recalled that Nathan put an instrumental on the back of each single, and that disc jockeys used those instrumentals as theme songs.

In 1957 they went to Nashville to record for Dot, with Mac Wiseman producing. On 15 April, at Bradley’s studio, Hank Garland played lead guitar, and Magaha, Benny Martin and Gordon Terry played fiddle on “Sawing on the Strings” and “Sweethearts in Heaven” (Dot 45-15588). “Where Did Our Young Years Go” and “Cotton-Eyed Joe” followed from an August date. They were back at King in November 1958, now with a studio band of Steve Chapman on guitar, Reno’s son Ronnie on mandolin, Ray Pennington on drums and Magaha on fiddle. That band’s session of 26 October 1959 filled King singles for more than a year, among them “Money, Marbles and Chalk,” “Dark as a Dungeon,” “Mountain Rosa Lee” and “Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die.”

“Amazing Grace” and “Mansion in the Sky,” cut in April 1963, came out on King 45-5921 in August 1964. Smiley’s poor health took him off the road in February 1965, but King went on issuing singles from its backlog until 1967. The partnership resumed once more in 1971, when Smiley recorded with Reno and Bill Harrell for Rome Records, not long before his death in January 1972.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.