Rabon Delmore
Rabon Delmore (1916–1952) was a singer, tenor guitarist and songwriter from Elkmont, Alabama, the younger half of the Delmore Brothers. With his brother Alton he sang close, soft harmony over Alton’s flat-top guitar and his own four-string tenor guitar on the Grand Ole Opry from 1933 and on records for Columbia, Bluebird, Decca and King until 1952, and he shares the writing credits for “Brown’s Ferry Blues,” “Freight Train Boogie” and “Blues Stay Away from Me.” The brothers were elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001.
He was born on 3 December 1916 in Elkmont, in Limestone County, the tenth child of Charlie and Mary Williams Delmore, tenant farmers, and eight years younger than Alton. He first learned fiddle and standard guitar; Alton, having seen a tenor guitar in a vaudeville show, got one for him, and the pairing of the two guitars became the brothers’ sound. They were playing together by the time Rabon was about ten, and from the mid-1920s they sang as a duo at local events and fiddling contests.
Rabon was fourteen when Columbia recorded the brothers in Atlanta on 28 October 1931, “Got the Kansas City Blues” and “Alabama Lullaby.” In the spring of 1933 they passed an audition for the Grand Ole Opry and soon became one of its most popular acts. Their first Bluebird sessions, in Chicago on 6 and 7 December 1933, produced “Brown’s Ferry Blues” and “Blue Railroad Train,” both credited to the two brothers, and in February 1936 at the Hotel Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the fiddler Arthur Smith, they recorded their joint song “The Nashville Blues” and, as the Arthur Smith Trio, “There’s More Pretty Girls Than One,” with Rabon singing one of the three parts. Differences with the Opry’s management over touring took them away from WSM in 1938; they recorded in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1938 and 1939, worked radio in Raleigh and at WAPI in Birmingham, and in September 1940 began recording for Decca in New York, starting with “Old Mountain Dew.” During the Second World War Rabon worked at the Wright Aircraft plant near Cincinnati while Alton served in the Navy.
After the war the brothers recorded for Syd Nathan’s King label in Cincinnati, adding electric guitar, bass and harmonica. “Hillbilly Boogie” was cut in Hollywood in January 1946 with Merle Travis and Louis Innis on guitars; that October, also in Hollywood, Rabon and Alton recorded with Travis and Grandpa Jones as the gospel quartet the Brown’s Ferry Four. “Freight Train Boogie,” credited to both brothers, was recorded at the Herzog studio in Cincinnati on 2 October 1946 with Wayne Raney on harmonica, and “Blues Stay Away from Me,” credited to the brothers with Raney and Henry Glover, at King’s own studio on 6 May 1949. All three songs were widely recorded by others: “Blues Stay Away from Me” more than a hundred times, “Brown’s Ferry Blues” by the Louvin Brothers and Tennessee Ernie Ford among others, “Freight Train Boogie” by Red Foley and Don Reno and Red Smiley, and “Blue Railroad Train” by Doc Watson and the Tony Rice Unit.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s the brothers moved from station to station, from Memphis and Chattanooga to Del Rio, Texas, and finally Houston, where the act broke up. Rabon’s last session with Alton was at King in Cincinnati on 21 May 1952, where he sang and played tenor guitar, with Raney and Lonnie Glosson on harmonicas. He died on 4 December 1952, the day after his thirty-sixth birthday. Alton went on recording alone for King that August and later for independent labels, and died in 1964.
- 1971: Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (the Delmore Brothers)
- 1989: Alabama Music Hall of Fame
- 2001: Country Music Hall of Fame
- 2007: Grammy Hall of Fame, “Blues Stay Away from Me” (King, 1949)
- 2014: IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award (the Delmore Brothers)
