Jim Eanes
Best known for
Guitar
Jim Eanes was a Virginia-born guitarist and lead singer known as "Smilin' Jim Eanes" whose nine-month seat in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys (1948), Decca and Starday recordings with his Shenandoah Valley Boys, and 1970s seat with Red Smiley's Bluegrass Cut-Ups made him one of the most enduring traditional voices of postwar bluegrass.
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- Real name Homer Robert Eanes Jr.; born December 6, 1923 in Mountain Valley, Virginia (~15 mi from Martinsville); grew up in Martinsville.
- Father Bob Eanes was an old-time banjo picker; Jim learned guitar despite a childhood burn injury to his left hand.
- First professional job in 1939 (age 15) with Roy Hall's Blue Ridge Entertainers.
- Member of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys for approximately nine months in 1948 after Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs departed.
- Also worked with Flatt & Scruggs after their break from Monroe.
- Formed his own Shenandoah Valley Boys in 1951; recording debut for Decca; later signed to Starday in 1955 as "Smilin' Jim and His Boys."
- Signature song "Your Old Standby"; first all-bluegrass LP "Your Old Standby" (1967).
- Worked with Red Smiley & the Bluegrass Cut-Ups in the late 1960s, then took over the band as The Shenandoah Cutups when Smiley retired. Died of congestive heart failure on November 21, 1995.
