The Bluegrass Cardinals

Don Parmley was born in Monticello, Kentucky, on 19 October 1933. He learned clawhammer banjo from his grandfather at about 12 before taking up the three-finger style of Earl Scruggs, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry, and he worked with Carl Story and Hylo Brown before serving in the Army during the Korean War. He then settled in Southern California, where he was a founding member of the Hillmen, also known as the Golden State Boys, with Vern and Rex Gosdin and, from late 1963, the young mandolinist Chris Hillman. Television work led to a job on The Beverly Hillbillies: from 1964 he played the show’s incidental banjo music through its nine seasons, while Earl Scruggs played the theme. When Hillman left for the Byrds, the Hillmen broke up.

The Cardinals’ first engagement was a fifteen-week stand at Busch Gardens. Their debut album, The Bluegrass Cardinals (Sierra Briar, 1976), recorded in October 1975 with Bill Bryson on bass and Dennis Fetchet on fiddle, drew enough attention that the Parmleys moved east to Virginia in 1976, and the band was soon a regular on the festival circuit. The IBMA’s citation calls the debut one of the earliest bluegrass records to use a cappella gospel singing. Rounder issued Welcome to Virginia (1977), with Warren Blair on fiddle and John Davis on bass.

Five albums for CMH followed, beginning with Livin’ in the Good Old Days (1978) and including Cardinal Soul (1979), with David Ratcliff on mandolin, Ernie Sykes on bass and Bobby Hicks guesting on fiddle, the gospel album Sunday Mornin’ Singin’ (1980), with Norman Wright on mandolin and Tim Smith on fiddle, and Where Rainbows Touch Down (1981). In the mid-1980s the band made three albums for Sugar Hill: Cardinal Class (1983), with Wright, Mike Hartgrove on fiddle and Davis on bass; Home Is Where the Heart Is (1984), on which Larry Stephenson took over the mandolin; and Shining Path (1986), with Dale Perry on bass. The Parmleys then started their own BGC label with On Stage in Nashville, recorded at the Station Inn in April 1987 with Glen Duncan as a guest fiddler. Graham came back for New and Old Favorites (1990), with Barry Berrier on bass, and Families of Tradition, which teamed Don and David with Del, Ronnie and Rob McCoury and the fiddler Warren Blair, was the IBMA’s Recorded Event of the Year in 1991.

David Parmley is still on What Have You Done for Him? (1992), recorded at Doobie Shea Studio with Bobby Hicks on fiddle and Graham or Herschel Sizemore on mandolin, but by My Kinda Grass (1994) Greg Luck was singing and playing guitar. David’s new band, Parmley, Vestal & Continental Divide, was the IBMA’s Emerging Artist of the Year in 1995. Don kept the Cardinals going until he retired in 1997; Mountain Girl (1996) was the last of their BGC albums. Over the years the band had also included Hartgrove, Stephenson, Wright, Bryson, Berrier, Blair, Don Rigsby and Ernie Sykes, and it played the White House and the Grand Ole Opry.

Don Parmley died on 30 July 2016, at 82; David had returned to the stage that year with a band he called Cardinal Tradition.