Shorty Sheehan

He started out in his mid-teens at the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, then worked at various times with the Moonlight Drifters and the Tennessee Pals, and from 1942 with the Lonesome Pine Boys. By 1943 he was a regular at the Brown County Jamboree, where his Southern-style fiddling made him an immediate favorite.

In 1951 he played fiddle and bass with the Blue Grass Boys. On October 28, 1951, at Castle Studio in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel, he played string bass with Monroe on mandolin, Edd Mayfield on guitar, Gar Bowers on banjo and Gordon Terry on fiddle. They recorded Tex Logan’s “Christmas Time’s A-Coming,” with Owen Bradley adding vibraphone, and Monroe’s “The First Whippoorwill,” issued together on Decca 46386 that November. Though he was on bass that day, Shehan also helped Terry work out the fiddle part on “Christmas Time’s A-Coming.”

Shehan stayed in Indiana. With his wife, Juanita, he worked for many years as all or part of the Brown County Jamboree house band, and in the mid-1950s he starred on Hillbilly Heaven, a Saturday-afternoon show on WISH-TV. In 1961 Shorty and Juanita were still the house band at Bean Blossom, where the young Neil Rosenberg joined them. The folklorist Art Rosenbaum recorded the couple singing “Free Little Bird” and “Soldier and the Lady,” later issued on Art of Field Recording, Volume II (Dust-to-Digital, 2008). Shehan died in Indianapolis on August 1, 1983, at 59.