Joe Isaacs and the Sacred Bluegrass was the southwestern Ohio bluegrass-gospel band of banjo player and singer Joe Isaacs and his wife Lily, the group that grew into the Isaacs. Born in Big Hill, Kentucky, in 1947, Isaacs played banjo and guitar with Larry Sparks, Frank Wakefield, the Stanley Brothers and the Greenbriar Boys before he married Lily in May 1970; the death of his brother Delmer in a car accident that December turned the couple to gospel music, first as the Calvary Mountain Boys and then as Sacred Bluegrass, with a weekly television program out of Hamilton, Ohio. As the children Ben, Sonya and Becky grew up they joined the band, which became the Isaacs in 1988 and went on to a Dove Award (Bridges, 1998) and a career as one of the most successful family groups in gospel music.