Sid Campbell

In the 1960s and 1970s Columbus had a busy bluegrass scene, and Campbell was one of its local names, along with Landon Rowe and Ralph “Robbie” Robinson. The banjo player Dave Evans heard him there as a boy, and the Dobro player Danny Milhon played around the city with him.

His first session with Reno and Smiley was at King’s studio in Cincinnati on 27 and 28 June 1960, with Don Reno on banjo, Red Smiley on guitar, Ronnie Reno on mandolin, Mack Magaha on fiddle and John Palmer on bass. Over those two days the band cut instrumentals such as “Steel Guitar Rag” and “Tennessee Stomp,” vocal songs such as “Bringin’ in the Georgia Mail” and “Love, Please Come Home,” and Campbell’s own “Unfaithful One,” sung by Smiley with the two Renos in harmony. He stayed on second guitar through King sessions in April and June 1961, when the band recorded its Civil War songs written by Don Reno and Albert J. Russo, and in June and September 1962. In March 1964 he played rhythm guitar again when the band recorded the songs for Sing a Bluegrass Tribute to Cowboy Copas (King 914), among them “Tragic Romance” and “Too Many Teardrops.”

In 1967 he played Dobro and guitar for Hylo Brown and the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys at a session in Akron, Ohio, with Dale Brotherington on banjo, Roy Ross on mandolin and Charlie Ross on bass. The twenty songs, among them “What It Means to Be Lonesome” and “Trouble in Mind,” came out on Rural Rhythm in 1968. Under his own name he released a single in 1968 on K & B, “Teardrops Falling in the Snow” backed with “Christmas Stocking,” and an album, Faded Coat of Blue, on Pine Tree.

“Unfaithful One” outlived the King session. Bill Grant and Delia Bell recorded it in Dallas in February 1979, and in January 1983 the Bluegrass Album Band, with Tony Rice singing lead, put it on The Bluegrass Album, Vol. 3: California Connection for Rounder.