Rex Gosdin
Rex Gosdin was a bass player, tenor singer and songwriter from Alabama who, with his older brother Vern Gosdin, played in the Southern California bluegrass band known as the Golden State Boys and then the Hillmen, alongside Don Parmley and Chris Hillman. As the Gosdin Brothers the two sang on Gene Clark’s first solo album in 1967 and had a country hit that year with “Hangin’ On,” and Rex went on to make singles under his own name until 1983.
He was born in Woodland, Alabama, on 19 May 1938. In 1959 he and Vern made their first record as the Gosdin Brothers, “A Lonely, Lonesome Street,” cut in Nashville for the Cullman label.
In California the brothers formed the Golden State Boys with the banjo player and baritone singer Don Parmley, and in late 1963 the teenage mandolinist Chris Hillman joined; the band became the Blue Diamond Boys and then the Hillmen. Rex played string bass and sang tenor above Vern’s lead and Parmley’s baritone. The producer Jim Dickson recorded the band at World Pacific Studios in Hollywood, and the brothers wrote four of the songs, “Goin’ Up,” “With These Chains,” “Roll On Muddy River” and “Prisoner’s Plea,” and shared the credit for the instrumental “Blue Grass Chopper” with Hillman and Parmley. The band broke up in 1964, when Hillman left for the Byrds, and the recordings stayed unissued until Together Records released them as The Hillmen in 1969.
The brothers stayed in Dickson’s circle. He produced their 1966 single for World Pacific, “Love at First Sight,” and in November 1966 they added their harmony vocals to the sessions for the former Byrd Gene Clark’s first solo album, released by Columbia in February 1967 as Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers. Hillman produced a Gosdin Brothers single for Edict in December 1966. In July 1967, at Gary S. Paxton’s studio in Bakersfield, they recorded “Hangin’ On” for Bakersfield International, which reached number 37 on Billboard’s country chart. Capitol then took them on, releasing the album Sounds of Goodbye in September 1968, with covers of “Catch the Wind,” “Louisiana Man” and “Bowling Green,” and singles such as “Till the End” into the early 1970s. Their last single together came out on Metromedia Country around 1973.
Rex then recorded on his own, mostly with Paxton producing: “Has Anyone Seen My Margie” and “Sarah Lee” for Metromedia (1973), “How Can Anything Sound That Good” for GRC (1975), recorded at the Sound Pit in Atlanta and co-produced by Gosdin, “We’re Making Up for Lost Time” (1979), a duet with Tommy Jennings, “Just Give Me What You Think Is Fair,” for Sabre (1980), and finally “That Old Time Feeling” for Sun in 1983. He died on 23 May 1983.
