Don Reno Finds Success as a Bluegrass Banjo Innovator and Bandleader

12/16/19 • 2 min

Down the Road on the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina

While Earl Scruggs is often credited as the originator of bluegrass banjo, he was actually an innovator within a broader tradition of three-finger banjo playing. Predating bluegrass, it was made famous by banjo players from the hills and mountains of the Carolinas, all of whom had their own personal takes on the style. In addition to Scruggs, these pioneers included Wade Mainer, Smith Hammett, Snuffy Jenkins, and Don Reno.
In 1948, when Don Reno heard that Earl Scruggs had left Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, he took his banjo to a concert that the band was giving in North Carolina, and without invitation or warning, joined them on stage. Monroe welcomed him, and for the next year Don toured as a Blue Grass Boy.
Though playing banjo for the Blue Grass Boys was in many ways a dream gig for a young musician, leaving that band cleared the way for Reno to form the band in which he would find the greatest success, his partnership with fellow Carolina mountain musician and veteran Red Smiley.

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Mary Jane Queen Preserved a Family Tradition of Songs and Stories

In Jackson County, North Carolina, the Queen family has long played, sung, and shared the music of their native home. The matriarch of the Queen family was Mary Jane Queen. Her father, James Sylvester Prince, born in 1876, was known as a great banjo player. Mary Jane also absorbed many old songs from her singing grandmothers, and one of her brothers was said to be the first person in the Caney Fork section of Jackson County to own a guitar. Though the old music was always in Mary Jane Queen’s memory, it wasn’t until later in life, after she’d raised eight children and become a widow, that she began to focus on singing and sharing the old songs that she’d grown up with.

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Young Presley Barker Dazzles on the Flatpicked Guitar

The Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina and southwestern Virginia have produced legendary bluegrass and old-time guitarists. Presley Barker is the newest member of the lineage of virtuosic flatpickers inspired by Doc Watson. Presley first started to learn the guitar in 2012, when he was only seven years old. It didn’t take long for the traditional music community in his native North Carolina mountains to take note.