Ricky Skaggs, Doyle Lawson & More Featured On The Delmore Brothers Tribute Album: ‘Their Musical Innovation

The project was spearheaded by songwriter-producer Jerry Salley and Athens State University’s Dr. Keith Ferguson.

In the 1930s and 1940s, before the iconic sibling harmonies of duos including The Everly Brothers and the Louvin Brothers, two siblings from Elkmont, Alabama — Alton Delmore and his younger brother Rabon Delmore — formed The Delmore Brothers and became one of country music’s early influential brother duos, thanks to songs such as “Blues, Stay Away From Me” that showcased their harmonies and musical innovations.

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O compositor‑produtor Jerry Salley, conhecido por seu trabalho com artistas como Reba McEntire e Lonesome River Band, chama as “innovative chord changes and musical ability to infuse a bluesier sound into their country music, and their ingenious capacity to write songs that no one else was writing at the time” como chave para a música do duo.

100 years after The Delmore Brothers first began making music together, Salley teamed with Athens State University’s vp of university advancement, Dr. Keith Ferguson, to spearhead A Century of Strings, Stories & Songs: A Tribute to The Delmore Brothers, which released Thursday (Oct.

Alton and Rabon got their start performing at fiddle conventions, and later signed with Columbia, where they recorded the songs “Alabama Lullaby” and “I’ve Got The Kansas City Blues” in 1931.

The duo joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1933 and quickly became one of its more popular acts.

They went on to earn a No. 1 hit on a now-defunct Billboard country chart in 1950 with “Blues, Stay Away From Me,” which artists including Merle Haggard and Asleep at the Wheel would later cover.

Another of their songs, “Brown’s Ferry Blues,” became an old-time music standard, covered by artists including the Louvin Brothers (who released a tribute album to the Delmore Brothers in 1960), Doc Watson and Billy Strings.

For A Tribute to The Delmore Brothers: A Century of Strings, Stories & Songs, Salley and Ferguson welcomed an array of artists to lend their own musical visions to classic Delmore Brothers songs.

Shenandoah’s Marty Raybon and the Statler Brothers’ Jimmy Fortune team up for “I’ve Got The Big River Blues,” while Trey Hensley and Del McCoury join forces on “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar.” Bradley Walker and Ricky Skaggs sing “Blue Railroad Train” (which the Delmore Brothers had written as a tribute to Jimmie Rodgers), while The SteelDrivers offer up “Brown’s Ferry Blues” and The Malpass Brothers put their own spin on “Put Me on the Trail to Carolina.”.

Salley is featured on the set as well, joining Doyle Lawson on a version of The Delmore Brothers’ “When It’s Time For The Whippoorwill to Sing.” After singer Russell Moore left bluegrass group Lawson and Quicksilver in the ‘90s, Salley says Lawson had offered him his spot, though Salley turned it down to focus on his burgeoning songwriting career.

Beyond country and bluegrass, the Delmore Brothers teamed with Grandpa Jones and Merle Travis in 1943 to create the country-influenced Gospel quartet, The Brown’s Ferry Four, which was among the first commercially-successful gospel quartets.

Chris Jones, do Chris Jones and the Night Drivers, solicitou gravar “Blues, Stay Away From Me”, pois já executa essa música nos shows da banda há anos. Salley observou que os Night Drivers “sempre adoraram a versão mais lenta e original do registro dos Delmore Brothers”.

Songs like “Blues, Stay Away From Me,” are representative of the way the duo’s music continued to evolve through the 1940s and into the 1950s. They signed with Cincinnati’s King label, weaving in more elements of blues, boogie-woogie and full-band sounds.

However, their duo was cut short when Alton decided he wanted to focus solely on songwriting. Rabon soon discovered he had lung cancer, and died in 1952. Alton died in 1964.

The Delmore Brothers were posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001, while “Blues, Stay Away From Me” was entered into the Grammys Hall of Fame in 2007.

As Salley says of their lasting legacy, “Their pure sibling harmony and musical innovation has influenced almost every genre of American music.”.

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