Wayne Lewis

He was born in Sandy Hook on 17 March 1943. After several years of playing music part-time, he took his first full-time job in 1974 with Ralph Stanley, and then spent a year with Lillimae and the Dixie Gospelaires.

In May 1976 he replaced Bob Jones in the Blue Grass Boys. His first sessions with Monroe, in October 1976 at Bradley’s Barn in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, produced by Walter Haynes, went onto Bill Monroe Sings Bluegrass, Body and Soul (MCA, 1977), with Lewis singing the lead on “My Sweet Blue-Eyed Darlin’”; the July 1977 sessions for Bluegrass Memories included his lead on “My Florida Sunshine,” and he played guitar on Bill and James Monroe’s duet album Together Again (1978). The live album Bean Blossom ’79 (MCA, 1980), recorded at Monroe’s festival in June 1979, has him singing the lead on “The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake” and “Little Cabin Home on the Hill.” On 7 August 1980 he played with Monroe, Butch Robins, Kenny Baker and Mark Hembree in a concert at the White House, and he was on guitar for the instrumental album Master of Bluegrass (1981) and for Bill Monroe and Friends (1983), whose guest singers included Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Because Monroe spent much of that decade making records with guest singers and instrumentals, Lewis sang relatively few leads on record for so long a stay; he also sang on gospel numbers such as “Precious Memories” and “I’ll Fly Away” at a concert taped in 1982 at Cathedral Caverns, Alabama. His last sessions with the band, in March 1986, were for Bluegrass ’87, and Tom Ewing took over in May 1986; Lewis came back as a stand-in for a few weeks in the spring of 1988.

While with Monroe he made albums of his own: Bluegrass Traditions (Old Homestead, 1978), with Butch Robins, Bobby Osborne, Kenny Baker and Randy Davis; Lonesome & Blue (Old Homestead, 1980), recorded at Cumberland Sound in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with Bobby Osborne on mandolin and Baker on fiddle; and Bluegrass Old and New (Atteiram, 1983), with Jesse and Jim McReynolds, Blake Williams, Baker and his son Kenny Lewis on electric bass. After the Blue Grass Boys he led the Wayne Lewis Band and sang and played guitar with the Cumberland Highlanders, on albums such as Cumberland Mountain Home (Rural Rhythm, 2000), and as of 2011 he was co-hosting their television series on RFD-TV.