Harley Allen Jr.

He was born Harley Lee Allen on 23 January 1956 in Dayton, where his father had settled among the Appalachian families who brought the music north, and from the age of twelve he played with his brothers Greg, Neal and Ronnie. As the Allen Brothers, and as Red Allen and the Allen Brothers, they made records through the 1970s, among them Allengrass for Lemco, Sweet Rumors and Clara’s Boys for Rounder, Are You Feeling It Too for Folkways and Red Allen Favorites for King Bluegrass. In April 1971 Harley, Greg and Neal sang harmony behind their father on his reunion album with Frank Wakefield, which was issued in Japan in 1976. Neal died in 1974, and in 1975 Harley joined J. D. Crowe’s Kentucky Mountain Boys.

Back in Dayton, he formed the Allen-Lilly Band with the banjo player Mike Lilly in 1982 and was its lead singer and guitarist for three years. Its one album, Suzanne (Folkways, 1985), recorded in Cincinnati in 1984 with Red Allen producing, has Harley singing lead and tenor and playing guitar and mandolin on his own title song and on Bill Monroe’s “Used to Be,” the Louvin Brothers’ “Seven Year Blues” and Bob Dylan’s “Ain’t Me Babe.” His first solo album, Across the Blue Ridge Mountains, came out on Folkways in 1983. In the late 1980s he played mandolin in the Big Dogs, with Tony Trischka, David Grier, Debbie Nims and Andrea Zonn, a band heard on Live at the Birchmere (Strictly Country).

In 1989 he moved to Nashville to work as a solo artist and songwriter, and over the next two decades he wrote for country stars and bluegrass bands alike. “The Little Girl” was a number one for John Michael Montgomery, “Awful, Beautiful Life” for Darryl Worley and “Between the Devil and Me” for Alan Jackson, and Dierks Bentley recorded “My Last Name,” Blake Shelton “The Baby,” Joe Nichols “I’ll Wait for You” and Gary Allan “Tough Little Boys.” In bluegrass, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris recorded his “High Sierra,” the Del McCoury Band “Keep Her While She’s There” and “Never Grow Up Boy,” Alison Krauss “It Doesn’t Matter,” Rhonda Vincent “In Your Loneliness” and “When Love Arrives,” and Ricky Skaggs “A Simple Life.” The Grascals’ recording of his “Me and John and Paul” was the IBMA’s Song of the Year in 2005, the year BMI named him its Songwriter of the Year. He made two more solo albums, Another River (Mercury, 1996) and Live at the Bluebird Cafe (2001).

On the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack he sang harmony with Pat Enright behind Dan Tyminski’s lead on “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” credited to the Soggy Bottom Boys; the recording won the Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals and the soundtrack the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2002. He won another Grammy for his part in the Louvin Brothers tribute Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’, and sang on the bluegrass tributes to the Moody Blues, Moody Bluegrass (2004) and Moody Bluegrass Two... Much Love (2011). He died at his home in Brentwood, Tennessee, on 30 March 2011, at fifty-five.