Larry Jefferson

He was born in Anderson on 27 November 1942 and lived there all his life. His first recorded band was Randall Collins, Curtis Blackwell & the Dixie Bluegrass Boys, a fixture of the early festival circuit. In April 1970 in New York they recorded Shadows of Time for County Records, with Blackwell on guitar and lead vocals, Collins on fiddle, Al Osteen on banjo, Sam Cobb on bass and Jefferson on mandolin and harmony.

Charlie Moore started a new Dixie Partners in 1970, and Jefferson was in it from the first: late in 1969, at Ralph’s Studios in Demorest, Georgia, he played mandolin with Moore, Osteen, Cobb and the fiddler Charles Hutson on “Lorena Go Home” for the Country Jubilee label. He sang tenor on “I’m Leaving Detroit” and on the gospel album Gospel Time with Charlie Moore, both made for Vetco in Cincinnati in January 1972 with Butch Robins on banjo and Paul Mullins on fiddle. On 2 January 1973, in Ray Davis’s studio in Glen Burnie, Maryland, he was the mandolin player when Moore recorded with Don Reno, with Jimmy Arnold on banjo, Johnny Dacus on fiddle and Henry Dockery on bass; Wango issued the songs as Bluegrass Legends Together.

Through the rest of the decade he recorded with Moore for Old Homestead, mostly at the label’s studio in Brighton, Michigan. On The Fiddler (1975) he sang and played mandolin on “The Legend of the Rebel Soldier,” and he is also on Tennessee Mountain Fiddle and the two volumes of Country Music Memories, cut in late 1975 and early 1976. In July 1976, at Music Lab in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, he sang tenor and played mandolin on Wheeling, with Osteen back on banjo and Chubby Anthony on fiddle.

After Moore died in 1979, Jefferson kept playing around South Carolina, often with Al Osteen, and in 1981 he joined the band Northern Border. “The Prisoner’s Song” became his signature number when he was called up at local festivals, and he was known for helping young players learn the music. He died in Anderson on 27 August 2016, aged 73.