Wayne Crowe

The brothers grew up in Clayton, Georgia, and learned from their father, Charles “Junior” Crowe, a banjo player whose band, the Sunshine Melody Boys, won a talent contest that took them to the Grand Ole Opry in 1960. Their first paid job, when Josh was about ten, earned them eleven dollars at the opening of a department store. Early on they played with Oliver Rice and the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys, Wayne on banjo and Josh on bass.

In 1975 they joined Raymond Fairchild, moving to Maggie Valley, North Carolina, where he was based, with Wayne now on bass and Josh on guitar. The trio toured nationally, became regulars on the Grand Ole Opry and won SPBGMA’s award for Best Instrumental Band. Wayne played bass and sang with Josh on the Crowe Brothers’ albums with Fairchild on banjo: Sing “Always True” (Skyline, 1981), Sing “The Gospel Way” (Skyline, 1984), The Winds Are Blowing in Maggie Valley (Atteiram, 1986), recorded in Gallatin, Tennessee, with Jesse McReynolds on mandolin and Glen Duncan on fiddle, and Jesus Is Coming (Atteiram, 1988), with Buddy Spicher. He also played bass on Ralph Stanley & Raymond Fairchild (Rebel, 1989), recorded at Maggard Studio in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, with Curly Ray Cline on fiddle.

When the partnership with Fairchild came apart, Wayne left the music business for a time, retiring in 1993 by his brother’s later account, while Josh carried on with David McLaughlin and then his own band. The brothers came back together in the mid-2000s. Brothers-N-Harmony (Rural Rhythm, September 2008), with Steve Thomas, Randy Kohrs, Buck White, Ronnie McCoury and others, opened with “Cindy Mae,” which reached No. 1 on several bluegrass charts, including SiriusXM’s; Bridging the Gap (Rural Rhythm, 2011) produced another No. 1 in “He Could Pick the Hound,” and Forty Years Old followed on Mountain Fever in October 2014. Wayne played a bass he built himself. After more than fifty years of playing professionally, the brothers dissolved the band, playing their last show at the Boxcar Pinion Forever Bluegrass Festival at Mountain Cove Farms in Chickamauga, Georgia, on 2 May 2026.