Vern and Ray With Herb Pedersen

Williams and Park both came from Arkansas but met only in California, in Stockton, around 1958 or 1959. By the time Pedersen joined them they were known to the Bay Area’s young bluegrass players, and Pedersen later named Scott Hambly, Mayne Smith, Neil Rosenberg, Butch Waller, Rick Shubb, Sandy Rothman, David Nelson and Jerry Garcia among those for whom hearing Vern and Ray live “was a revelation.” Williams recalled first meeting Pedersen at the Jabberwock in Berkeley, where he was playing with Waller and other local musicians, and the two older men went on to play with him for years.

Around 1967 all three moved to Tennessee to look for work. They played around Nashville and were semi-regulars on Eddie Hill’s early-morning television show on WLAC, which went out live from five in the morning, but the move did not pay, and they had left by 1969. Pedersen settled in the Los Angeles area, and Vern and Ray went back to Northern California, where they played together until 1974.

The 1968 recording comes from the San Francisco State folk festival, with Howard Courtney, also known as Howard C. Howard, on bass, as he had been a few weeks earlier at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. Park, who often broke strings, had to borrow a guitar from Merle Travis, who was on the same bill. The seventeen tracks mix fiddle tunes such as “The Leather Britches” and “The Buckin’ Mule” with Park’s “How Many Times,” Merle Haggard’s “The Bottle Let Me Down,” Ralph Stanley’s “Hard Times,” the Carter Family’s “Sweet Fern” and Bill Monroe’s “Orange Blossom Special.” Pedersen produced the CD, which was released on 23 May 2006 with notes by him and by the members’ sons and an interview with Williams. The three reunited in 1999 at the Wolf Mountain Bluegrass Festival in Grass Valley, California; Park died in 2002.