Bobby Osborne. Photo: Stacie Huckeba

Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry member Bobby Osborne died today (June 27) at age 91.

The Opry confirmed his death. Opry VP/Executive Producer, Dan Rogers, shared, “Bobby Osborne was among the last of his generation of bluegrass pioneers. What a profound loss for the Opry family and bluegrass music fans around the world. Mr. Osborne’s legacy will live forever on this stage we love and wherever his style is emulated. Thank you to Bobby Osborne for more than 70 years of music and memories.”

Bobby Osborne. Photo: Les Leverett, Courtesy of Grand Ole Opry Archives

Even into his 90s, the tenor singer and mandolin player performed regularly on the Grand Ole Opry with his band The Rocky Top X-Press.

Robert Van Osborne Jr. was born in Kentucky in 1931 and grew up in the Dayton, Ohio area. He was inspired to become a bluegrass singer after seeing a show by Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys in 1947. He began performing on WPFB in Middletown, Ohio two years later.

He spent several seasons with The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, then graduated to Jimmy Martin’s band. Following a brief stint with The Stanley Brothers, Bobby Osborne joined the Marines for combat duty in Korea. He was wounded and was discharged in 1953.

At this point, he joined forces with younger brother Sonny Osborne (1937-2021). They honed their skills working for Jimmy Martin, Charlie Bailey and Red Allen. The bluegrass classic “Once More” was recorded by Allen with the Osbornes in 1958.

The Osborne Brothers recorded on their own for RCA and MGM during this period. From the start, the act’s calling card was Bobby’s sky-high tenor lead singing. In fact, Monroe once said that there were only three great tenors in country music — himself, Ira Louvin and Bobby Osborne.

Brother Sonny soon garnered industry recognition for his cutting-edge approach to banjo playing and for arranging the group’s complex harmony vocals. Around 1963, Sonny made contact with Doyle Wilburn of Nashville’s hit-making Wilburn Brothers. Wilburn got the brothers a contract with Decca Records, arranged for them to join the Grand Ole Opry (1964) and signed them for publishing and booking.

The Osborne Brothers. Photo: Les Leverett, Courtesy of Grand Ole Opry Archives

This coincided with the modernization of the band. Sonny electrified his banjo, and the act added drums and electric bass to The Osborne Brothers sound. As a result, the group scored hits on the country hit parade and toured with mainstream pop and country acts.

Their charted favorites included “Roll Muddy River” (1967), “Rocky Top” (1968), “Tennessee Hound Dog” (1969), “Ruby Are You Mad” (1970), “Midnight Flyer” (1973), “Blue Heartache” (1973) and “I Can Hear Kentucky Calling Me” (1980).

“Rocky Top” was named one of the state songs of Tennessee in 1982. It is performed in Knoxville every time the University of Tennessee Vols score a football touchdown. In 1992, the Osbornes’ rendition of the Karl & Harty classic “Kentucky” led to a similar honor from the Blue Grass State.

By then, the Osbornes had ditched electrified instruments and reverted to acoustic bluegrass. They recorded for labels such as CMH, Sugar Hill and Pinecastle.

The Osbornes were also recruited to play on records by others. They have backed Conway Twitty, Carl Smith, Charley Pride, Wade Ray, Jethro Burns and Mac Wiseman. They also collaborated with jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton.

Bobby Osborne. Photo: Chris Hollo, Courtesy of Grand Ole Opry Archives

The brothers mentored such future stars as The Grascals and Dale Ann Bradley. They also performed with the 1997 bluegrass/hip-hop fusion act The GrooveGrass Boyz.

Bobby’s mandolin performance of “Ashokan Farewell” appeared on the all-star Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza album, which won the IBMA Instrumental Album and Recorded Event awards in 2000.

The Osborne Brothers are believed to be the first bluegrass act to play on a college campus (1960) and to be invited to perform at The White House (1973). They were elected to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 1994 and were presented with a National Heritage award by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1997.

Brother Sonny Osborne underwent rotator-cuff surgery, which caused him to quit playing and to retire from the road in 2004. This is when Bobby formed The Rocky Top X-Press and became a solo Opry star. He was joined in the new group by his guitarist son Bobby Osborne III.

The new band recorded for Rounder and Compass. In 2021, Osborne had a late-career bluegrass hit with a version of Merle Haggard’s “White Line Fever.”

Sonny Osborne passed away in October of 2021 at age 83.

Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Jesse McReynolds. Photo: Courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry archives

Bluegrass Hall of Fame inductee Jesse McReynolds, the oldest cast member of the Grand Ole Opry, has died at age 93.

Jesse & Jim McReynolds. Photo: Courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry archives

He was noted for his revolutionary, complex “crosspicking” style of mandolin playing as well as for his years of recording and performing in the star brother duo Jim & Jesse. His guitarist-singer older brother Jim McReynolds was born in 1927 and died on New Year’s Eve in 2002.

Jesse McReynolds was born July 9, 1929 near Coburn, Virginia. Jim & Jesse’s grandfather was fiddler Charlie McReynolds, who recorded as a member of The Bull Mountain Moonshiners at the famed 1927 Bristol Sessions where Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family were discovered. Their coal-miner father, Claude, was also a fiddler. Mother Savannah played guitar, banjo and harmonica and taught them to sing gospel songs in harmony.

The brothers established their performing partnership in 1947, following Jim’s hitch in the Army. They began their broadcasting career on WNVA in Norton, Virginia. During the next few years, they held radio jobs in Johnson City, Tennessee; Lexington, Kentucky; Charleston, West Virginia; Augusta, Georgia; Waterloo, Iowa; Wichita, Kansas and other towns. During their first dozen years as professionals, Jim & Jesse performed on 14 radio stations in 10 different states. They had their first recording session in 1951.

Jesse & Jim McReynolds. Photo: Courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry archives

Following radio stints in Asheville, North Carolina and Versailles, Kentucky, Jim & Jesse were signed by Capitol Records and brought to Nashville to record in 1952. The fiddler on the sessions was James Loden, later to become Country Music Hall of Fame member Sonny James. The standout tune of these recordings was one of their trademark songs, “Are You Missing Me,” penned by The Louvin Brothers.

Jesse was drafted and entered the Army to serve in the Korean War. While he was home on leave in 1953, the brothers recorded “Air Mail Special,” “A Memory of You” and other tunes for Capitol.

With Jesse’s military service completed, the duo joined the cast of WWVA’s Wheeling Jamboree in 1955. But the team truly began to prosper the following year when the brothers moved to Florida. They broadcast for several years on WNER’s Swanee River Jamboree in Live Oak and became television stars with their own shows in Tallahassee and Pensacola. By the late 1950s, their programs were also being broadcast on TV in Montgomery, Alabama; Albany, Georgia; Dothan, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi.

Jesse McReynolds, Ricky Skaggs, Jim McReynolds. Photo: Courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry archives

Jim & Jesse recorded for Starday Records in 1958, then signed with Columbia’s Epic Records division on Music Row in 1962. This is the label where their biggest hits occurred.

Bluegrass music gained popularity on the folk circuit during this era. Jim & Jesse performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and 1966.

On the strength of such high-profile engagements and the major-label contract, the Grand Ole Opry invited Jim & Jesse to become members of the show’s cast on March 2, 1964. Throughout their Opry tenure—and indeed, throughout their career—the McReynolds brothers were widely respected for their courtly manners and gentlemanly ways.

Four months after their Opry induction, Jim & Jesse’s first charted single was 1964’s “Cotton Mill Man,” which also became a signature song. “Better Times A-Comin’” followed it onto the charts as a top 40 hit in 1965. Their eyebrow-raising LP Berry Pickin’ in the Country was also released in 1965. It contained their bluegrass arrangements of Chuck Berry’s rock ’n’ roll classics.

This record typified their willingness to experiment. Jim & Jesse also dabbled in Latin, electric country, gospel, cowboy and other genres. In 1969, Jesse McReynolds played mandolin on The Doors rock LP The Soft Parade.

The brothers scored their biggest country hit with 1967’s “Diesel on My Tail.” Other memorable Epic recordings included versions of Robert Mitchum’s “Ballad of Thunder Road” (1967), Tom T. Hall’s “Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman” (1968), Ray Pennington’s “Yonder Comes a Freight Train” (1968) and Hank Snow’s “Golden Rocket” (1970). They returned to Capitol and charted with Elizabeth Cotton’s folk classic “Freight Train” in 1971.

Jesse McReynolds. Photo: Courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry archives

Jim & Jesse veered into a harder-edged bluegrass sound in the 1970s. Their Virginia Boys band included such stellar alumni as Vassar Clements, Allen Shelton, Bobby Thompson, Carl Jackson, Vic Jordan, Glen Duncan, Randall Franks, Chick Stripling and Jimmy Buchanan. The group was wildly popular on the bluegrass-festival circuit for three decades.

The brothers launched their own syndicated TV series, The Jim & Jesse Show, in the early 1970s, They formed their own Old Dominion and Double J record labels and released a number of LPs, cassettes and CDs on these in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. In 1977, they created their own annual bluegrass festival and maintained it well into the 1980s.

They were nominated for a Grammy Award for the 1992 CD Music Among Friends. They were inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 1993. They received a National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1997.

The death of Jim McReynolds in 2002 marked the end of the 55-year run of the longest lasting brother duo in country history. Jim & Jesse were also notable for having the longest running fan club in the annals of country music.

Following his brother’s passing, Jesse McReynolds continued to tour, record and appear on the Opry. In 1990, he had been part of a recording and touring “supergroup” called The Masters that also included Josh Graves, Kenny Baker and Eddie Adcock. He created a new instrument called the mandolobro, which was tuned like a mandola and had a resonator-guitar body. It was featured on his CD Jesse McReynolds Introduces the Mandolobro.

His other solo albums included New Horizons (2004), Bending the Rules (2004), A Tribute to Brother Duets (with Charles Whitstein, 2005) and Dixie Road (2007). In 2010, he released a tribute album to the songs of The Grateful Dead.

He was variously dubbed “Mr. Mandolin” (for his innovative, virtuoso playing) and “The Ironman of Bluegrass” (for the 65+ years of his career). Solo and with his brother, Jesse McReynolds recorded more than 50 albums.

Jesse McReynolds was preceded in death by his parents, Claude Matthew McReynolds and Prudence Savannah Robinette McReynolds; loving first wife of 41 years, Darlene McReynolds; son, Keith McReynolds, brother, Jim McReynolds, sisters, Stella McReynolds and Virginia Greear and great grandson, Andrew Keith McReynolds.

He is survived by his loving second wife of 27 years, Joy Tipton McReynolds; daughter, Gwen McReynolds; sons, Michael K. McReynolds and Randy Q. McReynolds; eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Funeral Service will be 11:00 a.m. Wednesday, June 28 from the chapel of Alexander Funeral Home & Cremation Center with Brother James Bell and Randy McReynolds officiating. Entombment will follow in Sumner Memorial Gardens Mausoleum. Visitation will be Monday, June 26 from 4:00-8:00 p.m., Tuesday, June 27 from 2:00-8:00 p.m. and Wednesday, June 28 from 9:00 a.m. until the time of service.