Pain in My Heart · Lonesome, Sad and Blue

The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers had been on the radio for more than a decade before they made a record. Bass player Ezra Cline organized the band in 1938 with his cousins Ireland “Lazy Ned” Cline on banjo and Ray “Curly Ray” Cline on fiddle, and they worked on WHIS in Bluefield, West Virginia. In 1949 Bobby Osborne (guitar) and Larry Richardson (banjo) joined. In March 1950, with Ray Morgan on fiddle and Ezra on bass, that lineup recorded four songs at the WHIS studio for Cozy Records of Davis, West Virginia. Osborne and Richardson wrote and sang all four, and they came out on two 78s: “Pain in My Heart” with “Lonesome, Sad and Blue” (Cozy 232/233, October 1950), and “Don’t Forget Me” with “Will I Meet My Mother in Heaven?” Flatt & Scruggs covered “Pain in My Heart” later that year, and Coral reissued the Fiddlers’ record in April 1952.

Osborne and Richardson left in the summer of 1951. Ezra rebuilt the band around guitarist and lead singer Paul Williams, and it signed with RCA Victor. The first session took place on 14 May 1952 at Brown Radio Productions in Nashville, with Williams, Curly Ray Cline, Ray Goins on banjo, Charles “Rex” Parker on mandolin and Ezra on bass. It produced “You Broke Your Promise” and “Nobody Cares (Not Even You)” (RCA Victor 20-4857). From January to November 1953 the band was based in Detroit, on WJR and the Big Barn Frolic. On 4 August that year it recorded at RCA Victor’s Chicago studio, with Charlie Cline back on banjo and Ezra’s in-law Albert Punturi on mandolin. That date produced “Honky Tonk Blues,” “Dirty Dishes Blues,” “You’re No Good” and two instrumentals, “Lonesome Pine Breakdown” and “Five String Rag” (RCA Victor 20-5526).

By November 1953 the Fiddlers had moved to Pikeville, Kentucky, and radio station WLSI. Ray Goins came back with his brother Melvin on guitar, and James Roberts played mandolin at the last two RCA sessions, both at Thomas Studios in Nashville. On 21 February 1954, with Charlie Cline added on fiddle, they recorded “Baby, You’re Cheatin’” and “Some Kinda Sorry.” On 26 September they cut “No Curb Service,” “A New Set of Rules” and “Windy Mountain,” which became the band’s signature song. It was sung by the Goins brothers and Curly Ray and coupled with Barney Vandergriff’s “There’s Just One You,” and it came out in January 1955 on RCA Victor 20-5979.

The Goins brothers had left by the middle of 1955. They came back in the early 1960s, and that lineup (Melvin on guitar, Ray on banjo, Curly Ray on fiddle, Ezra on bass) recorded for Starday at its studio in Madison, Tennessee. A session on 24 May 1961 produced “Lonesome Pine” and “Eatin’ Out of Your Hand” (Starday 564). Another in May 1962 produced Carter Stanley’s “Little Glass of Wine” (Starday 597), and a third, on 24 November 1962, produced “Coal Dust Blues” and “Hello Mr. Banjo” (Starday 614). The same years brought four Starday albums, one of them with Hylo Brown. That group broke up in 1964. Ezra kept a part-time band going in Pikeville until 1968, and Curly Ray Cline went on to spend twenty-six years with Ralph Stanley.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.