Earl Taylor and His Stoney Mountain Boys

Earl Taylor was born on 17 June 1929 at Rose Hill in Lee County, Virginia. The band’s first recordings, made in 1958 with Sam Hutchins on guitar, Walter Hensley on banjo and Vernon McIntyre on bass, appeared on the Folkways album Mountain Music Bluegrass Style (1959); they included “Short Life of Trouble,” “White House Blues,” “Fox Chase,” “They’re at Rest Together” and “Sally Ann,” with Taylor also playing harmonica. In the spring of 1959 the same four, with Curtis Cody on fiddle, recorded seventeen songs and instrumentals for United Artists, issued that September as Folk Songs from the Blue Grass: among them “Cripple Creek,” “Ruby,” “John Henry,” “Flint Hill Special,” “The Children Are Cryin’,” “Prisoner’s Song,” “Pretty Polly” and “Molly and Ten Brooks.” In April 1959 the band played at Carnegie Hall in New York, and its “Fire on the Mountain,” “Rolling in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” and “Mule Skinner Blues” were issued on Alan Lomax Presents Folk Song Festival at Carnegie Hall.

A 1962 session, probably at Wynwood Studios in Falls Church, Virginia, with Jim McCall on guitar, Hensley on banjo, Billy Ray Baker on bass and Scott Stoneman on fiddle, produced “Calling Your Name” and “Stoney Mountain Twist” for Rebel. On 30 January 1963 Ken Nelson recorded the band in Nashville for Capitol’s Bluegrass Taylor Made, with Frankie Short on guitar, Hensley and Vernon McIntyre Jr. on banjo, Vernon “Boatwhistle” McIntyre on bass and Benny Martin on fiddle; it included “Uncle Pen,” “Little Maggie,” “Earl’s Breakdown” and “Bury Me Beneath the Willow.”

From the mid-1960s Taylor shared the billing with Jim McCall on a run of albums for Rural Rhythm, beginning with 20 Bluegrass Favorites, recorded around 1966 with the McIntyres on banjo and bass and Paul Mullins on fiddle, and continuing with further volumes of Rural Rhythm Presents Earl Taylor and Jim McCall. In February 1969 Taylor recorded Bluegrass Touch for Vetco at Lange’s studio in Azusa, California, including “Six Months Ain’t Long,” “Molly and Tenbrooks” and “Knoxville Girl,” and on 5 May 1976 he brought a new edition of the Stoney Mountain Boys to Jewell Recording in Cincinnati for the Vetco album Body and Soul. Taylor died on 28 January 1984.