Benny Martin and Bobby Osborne
Benny Martin and Bobby Osborne is the credit for the tracks the fiddler Benny Martin recorded with the mandolinist and singer Bobby Osborne on 5 July 1979 for Martin’s double album Big Daddy of the Fiddle & Bow (CMH 9019). Osborne played mandolin and sang harmony on six of its nineteen tracks and sang lead on two of them, “I’ll Go Steppin’ Too” and “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke.”
Both songs went back to Martin’s time with Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys: he had played fiddle on their “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke” on 9 November 1952 and on “I’ll Go Stepping Too” in August 1953. Martin had been making albums for CMH since The Fiddle Collection in 1976, and Osborne, born in 1931 near Hyden, Kentucky, had been singing lead and playing mandolin in the Osborne Brothers with his brother Sonny since 1953.
On the July session Osborne’s mandolin was joined by Wynn Osborne on banjo, Joe Stuart on guitar, Jimmy D. Brock on bass and Robby Osborne on drums, with Martin on fiddle. Besides the two vocals they cut four instrumentals, Martin’s “East Nashville Robbery” and “Payday in the Army” and the fiddle tunes “1814” and “Golden Slippers.” The rest of the album came from sessions on 9 and 10 May 1979 with John Hartford on banjo and fiddle, Roy Huskey Jr. on bass and Buddy Harman on drums. Martin produced the set with the engineer Jack Linneman, and Paul F. Wells wrote the liner notes.
CMH later used the Martin and Osborne “I’ll Go Stepping Too” on its CD anthology 50 Years of Bluegrass Hits, Vol. 3. Martin entered the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2005, and Osborne, with the Osborne Brothers, in 1994.
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Benny MartinPlayed on recording with Benny Martin and Bobby Osborne
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Bobby OsbornePlayed on recording with Benny Martin and Bobby Osborne
