Talmadge Lewis
Talmadge Lewis played fiddle and mandolin with the Lewis Family, the Georgia family band that sang gospel music to bluegrass accompaniment, from its start as the Lewis Brothers in 1947 until 1972. He then left touring to build a bus dealership in Augusta, Georgia. The Lewis Family was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2006.
He was born on 31 December 1934 in Lincolnton, Georgia, the sixth of eight children of Roy “Pop” Lewis. He became a fiddler when their older brother Wallace needed one for a square dance. Wallace bought him a fiddle in Augusta, and Talmadge played it at the dance the next week. In 1947 he, Wallace and Esley began playing locally as the Lewis Brothers, a group that played country music and fiddle tunes at square dances. When the rest of the family joined in 1951, the band became the Lewis Family and turned to gospel songs alone.
The family’s first recordings were made in 1953 at radio station WJAT in Swainsboro, Georgia, and issued on Sullivan Records in 1954. From April 1954 the group had a live Sunday television show on WJBF in Augusta. In 1956 Talmadge and Little Roy pooled $210 to buy a 1951 Gibson F-5 mandolin from Ed Hurt, a festival emcee who came to the studio where they filmed the show. The family signed with Starday in 1958. On its first Starday extended-play record, Born of the Spirit (1959), Talmadge is on fiddle with Wallace on guitar and Little Roy on banjo, and the sisters Polly, Janis and Miggie sing “I Shall Not Be Moved.”
Through the 1960s he played fiddle on the family’s Starday albums, from Singin’ Time Down South (1960) and Gospel Special (1962) to Shall We Gather at the River, cut at the Starday studio in Nashville in November 1966. He added mandolin on The First Family of Gospel Song (1965). In 1970 the band moved to Canaan Records of Waco, Texas, and he stayed on fiddle for Sing in Gospel Country (recorded in Nashville in October 1969), Lewis Country (RCA Victor Studio, August 1970), Best by a Country Mile (1971) and Just Us, made at RCA Studio B in 1972.
In 1972 he left the touring band to run Talmadge Lewis Motors, which grew into the Lewis Bus Line in Augusta. Entertainers came to him for their tour buses, and he became known as “Mr. Bus.” His fiddle is still credited on Country Sunday in Georgia, recorded at RCA Victor’s Nashville studio and released in 1973. The Lewis Family was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1992 and the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2006, with Talmadge counted among its classic lineup.
Talmadge Lewis died on 13 March 2026, at 91. At his funeral in Lincolnton, Little Roy & Lizzy and their band played.
