Six Months Ain’t Long · Darling Corey

The Monroe Brothers were Charlie Monroe, who sang lead and played guitar, and his younger brother Bill, who sang tenor and played mandolin. They grew up on the family farm near Rosine, Kentucky. After their parents died they followed older brothers north to the Chicago area, where Bill worked in a Sinclair oil refinery and danced in a square-dance troupe on WLS. Charlie, Bill and their brother Birch first played on local radio as a trio. When Birch dropped out, Charlie and Bill went on as a duo, first on stations in Iowa and Nebraska. In 1935 they moved to the Carolinas and made Charlotte’s WBT their base, on a program sponsored first by Texas Crystals and then by the Crazy Water Crystals company.

All of their records were made for RCA Victor’s Bluebird label in Charlotte, in six sessions produced by Eli Oberstein between 17 February 1936 and 28 January 1938. Each session yielded ten sides, sixty in all, and the brothers are the only musicians on every one. The February and June 1936 dates were held in the Southern Radio Corporation building at 208 South Tryon Street. From February 1937 the sessions moved to the Hotel Charlotte on West Trade Street.

Their first release, Bluebird B-6309, paired the gospel song “What Would You Give in Exchange” with “This World Is Not My Home” and came out in the spring of 1936. It sold well, and on 3 August 1937 the brothers recorded three more parts of the song, issued on B-7122 and B-7326. Bluebird put out thirty-one Monroe Brothers records between 1936 and June 1938. Most were hymns and gospel songs such as “Drifting Too Far from the Shore” and “He Will Set Your Fields on Fire,” but they recorded secular material too: “Nine Pound Hammer Is Too Heavy,” “Darling Corey,” “New River Train” and “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” Two records had another act on the flip side. “Where Is My Sailor Boy” was coupled with the 1931 “The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers in Texas” (B-6762), and “On the Banks of the Ohio” with Uncle Dave Macon’s “Fame Apart from God’s Approval” (B-7385).

The brothers quarrelled and split in 1938. Their last Bluebird single, “Rollin’ On” with “Little Joe,” appeared that June. Charlie went on to lead the Kentucky Pardners. Bill formed the short-lived Kentuckians in Little Rock and then, in Atlanta, the first Blue Grass Boys, who joined the Grand Ole Opry in October 1939. In 1975 RCA gathered thirty-two of the sixty sides on the double album Feast Here Tonight.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.