Terry Smith

He was born on 15 June 1960. His father, Pat Smith, was a square-dance fiddler, and his mother, Hazel Smith, became known as a country music journalist, publicist and songwriter. At five Terry was playing mandolin with his father and his older brother, Billy, as the Smith Family, and he soon switched to bass. He was at the first bluegrass festival, in Fincastle, Virginia, on Labor Day weekend 1965, and played at the early festivals at Camp Springs, on the road where his mother’s family lived. The brothers appeared on Arthur Smith’s television show on WBT in Charlotte, and with their cousin Alan O’Bryant they played as the Camp Springs New Grass Boys. In Nashville the three formed Blue Haze, with the fiddler Mike Hartgrove.

In 1978 he made his Grand Ole Opry debut with Jimmy Martin & the Sunny Mountain Boys, and through the 1980s he played the Opry every week with Wilma Lee Cooper & the Clinch Mountain Clan. In 1989 he joined the Osborne Brothers, and for thirteen years, until 2002, he played bass and sang in their trio; with them he toured Europe on a bill that included Bill Monroe. In the same period he and Billy worked as a country duo for CBS Records in 1989 and 1990, and their video of “Blues Stay Away from Me” reached No. 1 on CMT. The brothers also sang on records by Vern Gosdin, Mike Henderson and Ken Mellons, wrote for Major Bob Music, and toured West and Central Africa for the State Department.

As Billy & Terry Smith they recorded two albums for Red Clay, in 1992 and 1999, and in 1996 two for K-Tel, a bluegrass tribute to the Grateful Dead and a tribute to Bill Monroe. For the second, on 21 February 1996 at the Tracking Station in Nashville, they recorded “Mule Skinner Blues,” “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” with Monroe on mandolin, Charlie Cushman on banjo and Robert Bowlin on fiddle; Monroe sang the lead on “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and the tenor on the last chorus of “Walk Softly,” and it was the last recording session of his life. The brothers’ songs were taken up by IIIrd Tyme Out: Billy, Terry and Mark Irwin wrote “Grandpa’s Mandolin,” the title song of its 1993 Rebel album, and the band also recorded their “I Can’t Stay Here Anymore,” “Snow Angel” and “Whippoorwill.”

After the Osbornes he was a founding member of the Sidemen, who played weekly at the Station Inn, and from 2002 he spent a couple of years playing the Opry with the Mike Snider String Band. In February 2004 Terry Eldredge, Jamie Johnson, Jimmy Mattingly and Dave Talbot asked Smith and Danny Roberts to join their new band, the Grascals, which played one of its first shows at the Station Inn that month with Bobby Osborne as guest. Its first album, for Rounder, included “Viva Las Vegas” with Dolly Parton, and the band became Parton’s opening act and her bluegrass band; Smith was part of Dolly Parton & the Mighty Fine Band in 2004 and 2005. With Smith on bass and singing baritone, the Grascals were the IBMA’s Emerging Artist of the Year and won its Song of the Year for “Me and John and Paul” in 2005, were its Entertainer of the Year in 2006 and 2007, and were nominated three times for the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. The Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America named him Bass Player of the Year in 2022.

In April 2025 the Grascals announced that he would retire at the end of May, after twenty-one years with the band; his last show in North Carolina was the Big Lick Bluegrass Festival near Oakboro on 11 April.