ADAMS, BILL (TRADITIONAL GRASS)        
Bill Adams played bass for the Traditional Grass.

ADAMS, BILL (WYSO)         
Bill Adams was a DJ at WYSO working the “Rise When the Rooster Crows” show and the “Saturday Night Request Show” off and on for a number of years beginning in 1975.  He also was active in OKI, emceeing a lot of their shows.

ADAMS, SCOTT “SCOTTY”        
Mandolin player and son of Bill Adams of the Traditional Grass, Scotty Adams started young, playing in bluegrass bands around the Dayton area.  He appeared with Muddy River, the Allen Brothers, and the Allen-Lilly Band.  In recent years he has played and recorded with various bands around the Cincinnati area.       

ADKINS, “HOBO” JACK    
A somewhat mysterious character, “Hobo” Jack Adkins originally recorded for Acme  and some small labels of his own in Kentucky.  He moved to Cincinnati and started the Adco Record label which was active for several years. He also cut some records for Starday and Nashville.

ALDRIDGE, BRIAN    
Brian Aldridge is the son of banjo player Howard Aldridge.  In 2006 he was singing and playing guitar with the Dry Branch Fire Squad.  Prior to joining that band, he played the Dayton area bars and helped found the group Timely Arrival, with which he played for seven years.

ALDRIDGE, HOWARD         
A highly regarded banjo player from the Springfield, Ohio, area, Howard Aldridge did some fill-in work with Bill Monroe in the 1960s and played with various bands around the Dayton-Springfield area.

ALLEN, ARLEY “RED”  (1930-1993)  
Born near Hazard in Harlan County, Kentucky, Red Allen (christened “Arley” and later known as “Harley”) came to Dayton, Ohio around 1949 or 1950, and with Frank Wakefield and others began playing the West Third Street bars.  He had a driving raw lonesome-sounding voice that fit well with bluegrass music, and his rhythm guitar playing was on the money.  After recording three singles for Cincinnati’s Kentucky Records, he hooked up with the Osborne Brothers.  Through Dayton DJ Tommy Sutton, they secured a recording contract with MGM Records and became members of the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia.   While working there, they developed the high lead style of bluegrass harmony.  After Allen and the Osbornes split in 1958, he returned to Dayton and cut a single on Les Bodine’s  BMC label with Frank Wakefield and Red Spurlock as the Redheads.  He and Frank then moved to the Washington, D.C., area and began performing as Red Allen and the Kentuckians.  During this period, he recorded on Starday, Rebel, Melodeon, County, and Folkways.  At one point, he worked with Earl Scruggs , filling in for Lester Flatt for several months.  After the Kentuckians broke up, he went to Lexington, Kentucky, and worked with J.D. Crowe and the Kentucky Mountain Boys.  Still later, he recorded with his sons, the Allen Brothers, on Lemco, King Bluegrass, and Folkways.  In 2005, he was inducted into the IBMA Hall of Honor.

ALLEN, GREG  
Greg and Harley Allen were probably the most interested in bluegrass of the four sons of Red Allen. They eventually talked the other two into forming the Allen Brothers.  Greg is the banjo player.

ALLEN, HARLEY (1956- )  
Lead singer and guitar player for the Allen Brothers, Harley Allen began his professional career at the age of 16 .  Later, he and Mike Lilly organized the Allen-Lilly Band which  had a polished and exciting traditional sound.  Harley began writing songs and finally moved to Nashville to be closer to the action.  The move paid off as he began to get his songs recorded by name country artists like Alan Jackson, Blake Shelton, Garth Brooks, Allison Krauss, and others.

ALLEN, LEE (1946-)  
A singer firmly entrenched in the Stanley Brothers tradition, Lee Allen performed around Dayton with his band, the Dew Mountain Boys, in the early to mid 1970s, recording two LPs and four singles on Jack Lynch’s  Jalyn label and two LPs and two singles on Old Homestead.  Worthy of note is his tribute to an old friend, “In Memory of Roy Lee Centers,” issued on Old Homestead.

ALLEN, NEAL (    -1974)     
Mandolin player for the Allen Brothers when they first started, Neal Allen showed great promise as a songwriter before his untimely death.  One of his best songs was “Singer,” about the life of his father, Red Allen.

ALLEN, RONNIE          
The oldest of the Allen Brothers, Ronnie Allen started as a rock musician but changed over to bluegrass at the urging of his brothers when they formed their band.  Ronnie plays electric bass.

ALLEN, STEVE
Steve Allen was a knowledgeable DJ at WYSO in Yellow Springs in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s.

ANDERSON, RAY       
Ray Anderson was a musician, DJ, songwriter, minister, and label owner.  In his early days he recorded on Dixie Jamboree and Cozy Records before coming to Cincinnati and cutting a local hit on Kentucky Records with “Stalin Kicked the Bucket” as well as sacred songs on Kentucky and its sister label, Big 6.  He worked as a DJ at WCHO in Washington Court House, Ohio, where he also recorded on the Mountaineer label.  He went to WWVA in Wheeling and joined the Osborne Brothers.  Although he never appeared on any of the Osborne Brothers records, they did back him on some singles on the Mountaineer label.  After leaving the Osborne Brothers, he became a minister and eventually founded G.R.S. Records in Richmond Dale, Ohio, which specialized in gospel recordings.

BAKER , JOHNNY      
Son of Kentucky fiddler Kenny Baker, Johnny Baker played guitar for the Dry Branch Fire Squad after the departure of Chris Montgomery.  He had a lonesome sound that blended well with Ron Thomason on their duets.

BAKER, CLARENCE                           
Clarence Baker has been a guitarist and singer in a lot of bluegrass and country bands around Dayton.  Most recently, he has been part of the Legends of Bluegrass.  He has a lot of feeling in his voice and a seemingly endless repertoire of old songs.

BARGER, AUDREY (      -c. 1992)                     
Audrey Barger was born in Hyden, Kentucky, later coming to Ohio, and eventually living near Oxford in the early 1980s.  At that time she was devoting full time to her music, playing shows around the southwestern Ohio area and recording two self-produced LPs as the Audrey Barger Band.

BARTENSTEIN, FRED  (1950-)               
Born in southwestern Virginia, Fred Bartenstein grew up loving bluegrass and mountain style music.  He learned to play guitar as a young teenager and selected Harvard for his college education because Boston had an active bluegrass scene.  After college he decided to work in Dayton, Ohio, for the same reason.  He quickly became immersed in that scene playing with Jack Lynch and later helping to form the Dorsey Harvey Band, that played around Dayton for seven years, with Fred singing lead and playing guitar.  Fred emceed numerous bluegrass festivals and elevated standards of professionalism and punctuality.  While still in college, he edited and built the “Muleskinner News” into a great bluegrass magazine.  Fred has worked as a bluegrass DJ at stations in the East and at Dayton area stations WYSO, WBZI, and WONE.  Since 2002, he has locally produced “Banks of the Ohio:  Music From the Homeplace of Bluegrass” for the International Bluegrass Music Museum.  The program on bluegrass history is available on broadcast stations, the world wide web, and satellite in Africa, Asia, and Europe.  He has done market research on bluegrass, performed organizational work for the IBMA, and developed an analysis of the first 60 years of professional bluegrass recording artists which he calls “Bluegrass Generations.”  In 2006 he is the Chairman of the Board of Bgrass, Inc., a non-profit corporation dedicated to preserving the history of bluegrass music in southwestern Ohio.     

BIRCHFIELD, BENNIE         
Bennie Birchfield has the reputation of being able to sing all the harmony parts in bluegrass and sing them well.  He played or recorded with Earl Taylor, Jim McCall, Paul Mullins, and, most notably, with the Osborne Brothers.  When he married country singer Jean Shepherd, he became her band leader and harmony singer and put his solo career on hold.

BLANKENSHIP, BERNIE  (1944-2003)          
Born in West Liberty, Kentucky, Bernie Blankenship was a guitar-playing vocalist in the Stanley Brothers’ style.  He was living in Dayton, Ohio, in 1980 when he cut an album on Middletown’s Central label.

BODINE, LESLIE E. “LES”  (c.1910-1969)  
Les Bodine was a country DJ for 42 years.  He worked at WSMK, WHIO, WONE, and WING in Dayton.  At country and bluegrass music’s lowest ebb in the late 1950s, after rock and roll hit, Les played the only country and bluegrass music in Dayton, daily from 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., on WING.  He moved to WGIC in Xenia and later turned WBZI-FM in Xenia into an all-country station in 1967.  His DJs were local music personalities like Herbie Smith, Jack Bartley, Chad Chester, and Al Freeders.  On his early morning show, Les always talked about having his coffee and a cream horn.  As a musician, Les was at WONE when it went on the air in 1948, playing with Lew Wampler and the Midwesterners.  Later, he had his own band and did barn-dance-type shows on WING and at the Labor Temple on Wayne Avenue.  In the 1950s, Les had a music store in Dayton and started his own record label, BMC Records, that recorded Red Allen, Red Spurlock, and Frank Wakefield as “The Redheads” and also Glenn and Vivian Watson.

BOSWELL, TERRY  (c.1953-1999)       
Terry Boswell was highly thought of by the musicians around Cincinnati during the 1990s.  She could play both rhythm and lead guitar and sing lead or harmony.  A great example is her harmony with Eddie Cunningham on “He Will Set Your Fields On Fire” on the CD “Bluegrass Sunday: Live At the Comet.”  She made a lot of appearances as a single around Cincinnati and also worked in various configurations with Katie Laur.

BOWMAN, REBECCA ISAACS “BECKY”  (c.1975-)     
Becky is the youngest of the three Isaacs children.  She sings, writes songs, and plays rhythm guitar with the group.

BOYD, TOMMY 
Tommy Boyd is best known for his very tasteful resonator guitar and banjo playing and harmony work with Larry Sparks, from the mid 1970s into the early 1980s.  He appeared on some of Larry’s best LPs on King Bluegrass, County, Lesco, Rebel, Acoustic Revival, and June Apple.  He played on sessions around the Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati areas with Mac Wiseman, the Allen Brothers, Jack Casey, and others.  After disappearing from high visibility for several years to pursue a financial career in Chicago, he resurfaced in the mid 2000s as banjoist with the Dry Branch Fire Squad.

BRACKETT, NEAL B                
Neal Brackett played bass for Larry Sparks in the early 1970s, appearing on at least one of Larry’s Old Homestead LPs.

BRADEN, PAUL F.     
Founder and long-time owner of radio station WPFB in Middletown, Paul Braden always had a place for bluegrass and traditional country music on his station, both live and recorded.  The station’s call letters were his initials, although Paul Mullins jokingly said that they stood for “We Play For Briars.”

BRADLEY, RUSSELL          
Russell Bradley was Sheriff of Greene County, Ohio, for 30 years, from 1957-1987.  He and his deputies would have a fund-raiser each year for the benefit of the Greene County Youth Activity Fund.  It took the form of a country and/or bluegrass show at the Greene County Fairgrounds, featuring bands such as the Country Gentlemen and the Johnson Mountain Boys.  The old Sheriff knew who his constituents were, and he packed the grandstand for his shows. 

BRANDENBURG, RAY        
Ray Brandenburg made his home in Indiana and played banjo on the recordings of Joe “Cannonball” Lewis which were made in Cincinnati.

BROCK, CARLOS  (1934-)           
Born in Hyden, Kentucky, Carlos Brock came to Dayton, Ohio, in 1950 with his family.  With his brother Lonnie, he put together a band with Noah Crase and began playing the Dayton bars in 1952 as the Brock Brothers.  Carlos was also in a band with Sonny Osborne and Enos Johnson that recorded around 50 songs for Gateway and Kentucky Records in Cincinnati.  Later, Carlos, Lonnie, and Sonny played around Dayton as the Brock Brothers and Sonny Osborne.  In 1954, Noah Crase and Carlos got jobs playing with Bill Monroe, where Carlos stayed until late 1955.  He then joined the Country Pardners, with Bill Price and Bobby Simpson, and cut some records for RCA Victor before going into the Army.  After his release from service, he and his brother went into construction in Florida.  Later on, he and Lonnie and their brother Bobby and sister Greta performed as the Brocks.  In more recent years, Carlos has performed with Vince Combs and with the Legends of Bluegrass.

BROCK, LONNIE         
Carlos Brock’s older brother, Lonnie Brock played banjo and performed in the Dayton bar scene with Carlos as the Brock Brothers, and later on with their sister Greta and brother Bobby as the Brocks.

BROWN, FRANK “HYLO”  (1922-2003)        
Hylo Brown acquired his nickname from Smokey Ward at WPFB in Middletown because of his wide vocal range, which he demonstrated by singing “The Prisoner’s Song” in two separate octaves.  He was born in Johnson County, Kentucky, and came north to Springfield, Ohio, when his father got a job in a factory there.  Hylo got a job working in Bradley Kincaid’s band at WWSO, a station Kincaid owned, in Springfield.  Apparently both DJ Tommy Sutton and Bradley Kincaid liked a song that Hylo had written, and as a result Hylo got a contract with Capitol Records.  At his first session in 1954, he recorded “Lost To a Stranger,” a moderate hit and Hylo’s signature song.  He joined the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling and later became a featured singer in the Flatt and Scruggs show which eventually led to his own show for Martha White Mills including his band, the Timberliners.  In addition to Capitol, he also recorded for Starday, Rural Rhythm, Jessup, Atteiram, Vetco, Newland, Rome, and K-Ark before retiring in 1980.

BURKHARDT, CARL            
Carl Burkhardt was the owner of Rite Records in Cincinnati, the parent company for Kentucky, Gateway, Big 4, Big 6, Arc, Deresco, Worthmore, and others.  The operation started as a radio repair shop and record store at 3930 Spring Grove Avenue in the Knowlton’s Corner area of Cincinnati in 1940.  They began pressing records there but eventually moved to the Evendale area, where their building was across Interstate 75 from the GE Plant and could be seen from the highway.  In this location they added a studio, pressing plant, and printing presses, so they could do everything in house.  In 1955 a custom pressing division was opened to manufacture records for anyone who wanted to record and had the money to pay for it.  This continued until 1985, and in that span of time, Rite did custom pressing on approximately 21,000 different singles, most of which were country, bluegrass, or gospel.  During its existence, Rite produced 78 rpms, 45 rpms, and some LPs.

BURNS, ARKENISE
BURNS, ARTHUR
BURNS, JESSE “JUNIOR”           
The Burns Brothers played around the Dayton/Cincinnati area in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Arthur sang lead and played guitar, Jesse played bass, and Arkenise was a banjo player.  They had their own band and also worked with Jack Lynch.  They recorded with Estel Lee on Ark, with Harley Gabbard on Arvis, and as the Burns Brothers on Jalyn and Sunshine.

CADE, DANNY  
Danny Cade was ahead of his time for Dayton bluegrass, where he was best known as the fiddle player for Muddy River.  He marched to his own drummer and studied licks and styles outside of bluegrass and incorporated them into his playing. 

CAMPBELL, SID  (    -1987)          
Lead singer, guitar player, radio broadcaster, songwriter, Sid Campbell was headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, for many years.  Sid may have been best known for his long stint as the DJ on WOSU’s “Bluegrass Ramble,” which piped bluegrass into the area in an era when it was really scarce on the radio.  However, he also worked with Reno & Smiley, Don Reno, Red Allen, Earl Taylor, and the Nu-Grass Pickers, and fronted the house band at the Astro Inn in Columbus.  He wrote “This Morning At Nine” for the Country Gentlemen and “Unfaithful One” for Don Reno and Red Smiley.  His version of “Teardrops Falling In the Snow” on K & B Records rivals the original version by Molly O’Day.

CAMPBELL, TOM HARLEY          
Tom Harley Campbell of Dayton, Ohio, was an early bass player for the Hotmud Family.

CASEY, (CASEBOLT) JACK  (    -1999)                    
Born in Virgie, Kentucky, Jack Casey began his career as a guitar-playing bluegrass lead singer, but an auto accident forced him to give up the road.  In order to stay in the music business, he established Rome Recording Studio at 1414 East Broad Street in Columbus.  He engineered independent sessions but also started his own record labels: Rome and Starr.  He was able to attract name bluegrass musicians to Rome, including the Country Gentlemen, Hylo Brown, Eddie Adcock and II Generation, Reno & Smiley and Bill Harrell, and Lawrence Lane.  He also engineered sessions using southwestern Ohio musicians which were released on Rural Rhythm Records of California.  Jack Casey had an album of his own on Rural Rhythm and a handful of singles on Rome, Starr, Tag, Nugget, Early Bird,  and Starday.  The Dry Branch Fire Squad recorded material released on Rounder at Rome Studio, which was relocated to 3970 South High Street, Columbus, in 1991.

CENTERS, DANIEL BOONE        
Roy Lee Centers’ brother, Kentuckian Daniel Boone Centers played the Dayton, Ohio bars with Roy Lee and Fred Spencer in the mid-to-late 1960s.  They recorded a single on Wizard Records in 1966 as the Centers Brothers and Fred Spencer.  He also appeared on Jack Lynch’s Jalyn album and on the Vetco LP “Roy Lee Centers: The Early Years, Volume 1.”

CENTERS, ROY LEE (1944-1974)                    
Heavily influenced by the Stanley Brothers sound, Roy Lee Centers (he went by his middle name in the Lee Brothers) could sing almost like Carter and play banjo in Ralph’s style.  Originally from Kentucky, he came to Dayton and played in the East Side bars with Fred Spencer and Junior and Liz McIntyre as the Easterners.  He and Fred recorded on Jalyn with Jack Lynch as Jack Lynch and the Lee Brothers in addition to backing up other bluegrass artists on Jalyn.  He realized a dream in 1970 when Ralph Stanley hired him as his lead singer, but the dream was cut short by Roy Lee’s murder four years later in Jackson, Kentucky.

CLARK, MANUEL D. Jr. “OLD JOE” also “SPEEDY”  (1922-1998)        
Old Joe Clark was born in Tennessee.  He started in the entertainment business as a ballad singer in the tradition of Bradley Kincaid, but was best known as an old man comedian/banjo player akin to Grandpa Jones’ act.  In 1946 he went to Renfro Valley with a group called the Lonesome Pine Boys, but ended up being the only one of the band that John Lair kept.  He worked as a DJ on WRVK in Renfro Valley and on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance.  In 1949, he came to WPFB in Middletown, Ohio and performed with Smokey Ward for about a year before leaving to work with Bill Monroe for two years and finally returning in 1952 to Renfro Valley, where he stayed until his death.  He recorded an LP on Cincinnati’s Vetco label and a 45 rpm EP and a single on the Ark label in Cincinnati, as well as singles on Lexington, Kentucky labels Sun-Ray and Rem.

CLYBURN, WAYNE   
Wayne is an engineer, banjo player, and co-host with Katie Laur of WNKU’s “Music From the Hills of Home.”  Wayne keeps Katie on her toes and provides a lot of bluegrass trivia that comes from his long-time love of bluegrass music.  He played banjo in Katie’s first band along with Don Parker and Tom Nutini but had to drop out because of his day job when Katie went full-time on the festival circuit.  Wayne was a member of the Walker Street Band in the late 1970s and early 1980s with Mark Rader, Bill LaWarre, and Joe Brashear.  Wayne is on the Board of Directors of Bgrass, Inc.

COMBS, VINCE  (1934-)                  
A mandolin player and high lead singer in the Bill Monroe style, Vince Combs was born in Knott County in eastern Kentucky and came to Dayton, Ohio, in 1955.  He organized a band in 1975 called the Miami Valley Boys (not the Jack Lynch group), who worked with Hylo Brown for about a year and a half beginning in 1979.  After that, Vince hooked up with a Cincinnati group called the Shade Tree Express.  When that group broke up, Vince organized his own group and named it Vince Combs and the Shadetree Bluegrass.  At one time that band included Vince on mandolin, Noah Crase on banjo, Art Stamper on fiddle, Red Spurlock on bass, and Carlos Brock on guitar.  Vince promoted an annual bluegrass festival at the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia for quite a few years, but that festival has since moved to Bean Blossom, Indiana.

COX, DAVID       
Born in Wolfe County, Kentucky, David Cox came to Ohio when his family moved to Middletown.  He played mandolin in Larry Sparks first band after Larry left Ralph Stanley and was included on Larry’s first LP on Hamilton-based Pine Tree Records.  He later played with an early and great lineup of the Appalachian Grass that also included Jim McCall, Vernon “Junior” McIntyre, and Katie Laur.

CRASE, NOAH 
The pioneer five-string banjo player in the southwestern Ohio area,  Noah Crase played a lot of the bars around Dayton as well as appearing at some of the outdoor bluegrass shows with Paul “Moon” Mullins.  Early on he recorded with Dave Woolum and was one of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys in the early 1950s.  He was later a member of the Valley Ramblers, the Nu-Grass Pickers, the Boys from Indiana, and the Legends of Bluegrass.

CROWE, J.D. (1937-)
While still in high school, banjo legend J.D. Crowe served a summer apprenticeship with Jimmy Martin at WPFB in Middletown.  After he graduated he went with Jimmy full time for five years and was part of one of the tightest bluegrass bands ever.  His banjo style is crisp, clear, and intricate.  After leaving Jimmy, he played for several years in the Red Slipper Lounge at the Holiday Inn in Lexington, Kentucky, a pretty upscale location for bluegrass at the time.  His bands, the Kentucky Mountain Boys and the New South, have been a training ground for the bluegrass elite, musicians such as Doyle Lawson, Red Allen, Tony and Larry Rice, Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Jerry Douglas, Jimmy Gaudreau, Bobby Slone, and Dwight McCall.  His first Rounder album, “The New South,” is one of the most influential bluegrass albums of all time.  He was part of the all-star Bluegrass Album Band and has been elected to the IBMA Hall of Honor.

CUNNINGHAM, EDDIE        
Eddie Cunningham is equally at home with country and bluegrass music.  He has played bluegrass with the Ohio Valley Rounders and the Comet Bluegrass All-Stars and country with the New Radio Cowboys.  He helped to start  “Bluegrass Sundays” at the Comet in Cincinnati, which grew in popularity until it spawned a CD featuring a lot of bluegrass performers from the Cincinnati area.  He also had a DJ show on WNKU called “Torch and Twang”.