The Osborne Brothers

Bobby was born on 7 December 1931 and Sonny on 29 October 1937, both near Hyden in Leslie County, Kentucky. In the early 1940s the family moved north to Dayton, Ohio, where their father played guitar in the style of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Bobby began on WPFB in Middletown, Ohio, in 1949, and spent several years with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, recording “Pain in My Heart” with them for Cozy in 1950; when Jimmy Martin joined the Fiddlers in June 1951, Bobby switched from guitar to mandolin. Sonny was a banjo prodigy. Home recordings he made with his sister Louise came out on the Kitty label as “Lou and Sonny Osborne,” and in July 1952, at 14, he recorded with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys for Decca. He also cut sides under his own name for Gateway in Cincinnati, among them “Sunny Mountain Chimes,” issued in May 1953.

Bobby, meanwhile, had gone into the Marines and served in Korea, where he was wounded and received the Purple Heart. After his discharge late in 1953 the brothers played together for the first time, in Knoxville on 6 November 1953. They teamed with Jimmy Martin, and at their only session together, for RCA Victor in Nashville on 16 November 1954, the three recorded six sides, among them “20/20 Vision.”

Early in 1956 the brothers formed a trio with guitarist and singer Red Allen, who stayed until mid-1958. Their first MGM session, on 1 July 1956, produced “Ruby, Are You Mad,” a romp with two banjos, and it led to a place on the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling that October. “Once More” reached No. 13 on the country chart in 1958 and set out how their trio worked: Bobby’s lead on top, Sonny’s baritone below it and Allen’s tenor lowest of all, the reverse of the usual bluegrass stack. Their MGM sessions, produced by Wesley Rose and Jim Vienneau, used drums from October 1957 and steel guitar from early 1958, and the label went on issuing their singles until 1963.

In March 1960 they played Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a date often cited as the first bluegrass show on a college campus, and universities and clubs in the Northeast followed, along with the Newport Folk Festival. With the Wilburn Brothers as mentors they signed with Decca in 1963, holding their first session for the label that August with Harry Silverstein producing. By 1964 they had moved to Nashville, and on 8 August of that year they joined the Grand Ole Opry. From 1966 most of their sessions took place at Bradley’s Barn in Mount Juliet, Tennessee.

It was there, on 16 November 1967, with Dale Sledd on guitar and Hal Rugg on steel, that they recorded Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s “Rocky Top.” Issued at the turn of 1968, it sold some 85,000 copies within days and reached No. 33, and in 1982 it became an official Tennessee state song. The Bryants also wrote “Tennessee Hound Dog” for them. In all the brothers had 18 charting singles, including “Up This Hill and Down” and “Midnight Flyer,” and in 1971 the Country Music Association named them Vocal Group of the Year. Two years later they played at the White House.

To hold their own on country package shows they used pickups, electric bass and drums, to the dismay of bluegrass purists. They took the pickups off in 1974, the year they left Decca/MCA, and by 1991 they were fully acoustic. Later albums came out on CMH between 1976 and 1980, then on Sugar Hill and Pinecastle. Sonny pushed for a Bluegrass Trust Fund to help musicians in emergency need, and in 1994 the brothers entered the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.

Rotator-cuff surgery ended Sonny’s playing in the mid-2000s, and he died at home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, on 24 October 2021, aged 83. Bobby formed the Rocky Top X-Press with his son Bobby Jr. and led it until his death in Gallatin, Tennessee, on 27 June 2023, at 91.