If you discount the first two King releases (King 500 and King 501) — four songs that were recorded north of Cincinnati in a small Dayton sound studio under assumed names, since the two artists involved, Merle Travis and Grandpa Jones were already under contract to WLW — The Delmore Brothers were the first “proper” artists to be signed to King Records.
Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity
Edited by Charles K. Wolfe,
who also contributed an introduction, postscript & discography
More importantly, from an historical perspective, Alton Delmore makes the following assertion in his memoir, Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity:
“I helped to start a recording company there in Cincinnati.”
Delmore then recounts, in his final written chapter, the series of events that led to his critical involvement in the fledgling “hillbilly” label’s earliest days as a seasoned professional musician, whose network of friends included top names in the country field. As Tony Rounce points out in the liner notes to Ace UK’s 2005 anthology, Fifty Miles To Travel, when the Delmore Brothers signed to King in early 1944, “they were already into their third decade as stars of radio and record.” Furthermore, columnist Fred Emery, writing in the January 2, 1945 edition of Greenfield, Indiana’s Daily Reporter, pronounced WLW’s Alton Delmore to be “one of radio’s top song writers,” who had recently reached “the really astounding total of 400 songs that have been recorded, and more than 200 of which have been published” (i.e., 20 songs per annum, on average). King’s founding would took place during a time when Alton was part of WLW’s on-air talent — though before his conscription into the US Navy during the latter part of World War II.
Prior to joining the staff of WLW, Alton Delmore, in partnership with his brother, Rabon, had been one of the leading acts on WSM’s Grand Ole Opry, where The Delmore Brothers first began performing in 1932. In a matter of months, the brothers had “made a decidedly favorable impression” and earned a reputation for “adding a different and altogether appealing note to the Grand Ole Opry,” enthused Tulsa’s Radio News-Guide, in their June 16, 1934 edition. Throughout the 1930s, the Delmore Brothers played numerous live shows with other top Opry acts, including Uncle Dave Macon, DeFord Bailey, Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith, Roy Acuff, and Pee Wee King‘s Golden West Cowboys.
1938 newspaper ad snippets
Just after the duo’s departure from Nashville seven years later in 1939, Alton and Rabon would be described as “radio’s most popular singing brothers” and “the first-ranking act on the WSM Grand Ole Opry” in Reidsville, North Carolina’s Reidsville Review newspaper in the run-up to a live performance. Fan mail for the duo “ran into thousands of letters weekly coming from every state, Canada and Mexico,” reported the Review, who also postulated that the Delmores just possibly “might be the only crooning hill-billies” in the newspaper’s March 9, 1939 edition.”
In August of 1942, American Federation of Musicians president, James Petrillo, called a musicians’ strike and subsequent recording ban that held until September, 1943 (for Decca) and November, 1944 (for Columbia and Victor). Consequently, all of the musical artists contacted by Alton Delmore on Syd Nathan’s behalf at the time of King’s founding were no longer under contract, “it being just after the Petrillo ban, and most of us guys who had made records were free to sign with any company we liked and would give us the best promotion.”
By this point in the chronology, Alton had already formed a quartet with Rabon, Merle Travis, and Grandpa Jones that Merle had named The Brown’s Ferry Four (“after the song I had written by that title”). Travis, under Alton’s tutelage, would learn to both read and write music in fairly short order (“about two weeks”), and soon after being introduced to the Williams Brothers (featuring a young Andy Williams), Merle “was doing some writing and arranging for them and they all liked it very much,” Alton remembers.
“Brown’s Ferry Blues“
Bluebird 78
(1934)
Around this same period just prior to King’s founding, Alton had found a publisher for his songs: American Music of Hollywood, California, represented by Sylvester L. Cross. The lead sheets that Alton had written for a folio of songs originally recorded during their Decca years, however, proved insufficient for Cross, who insisted that copies of the duo’s original Decca releases instead be sent to the arranger for official transcription.
The resulting need to obtain second-hand copies of Delmore Brothers 78 sides was what led Alton to Decca’s Cincinnati distributor, Paul Cohen, who then hit upon the idea of Syd Nathan‘s record shop at 1351 Central Avenue (“in the Negro section of town”) as a likely location for these out-of-print Decca discs. Despite the store’s “dusty and filthy” conditions and “littered” floors, Nathan, indeed, ended up having “exactly the ones I needed” recalled Alton, who then flagged down the proprietor, “all stained with the dyes of different colors of the pictures that he had been developing” as a side business.
After examining the stack of discs for purchase, Nathan then asked the customer his identity. Upon learning he was speaking with one of the actual Delmore Brothers, Syd refused payment and offered the following explanation, as recounted in Alton’s memoir:
“I don’t want any money for these records. I used to use your records on my juke box route down in Florida and you have made me plenty of money, so I guess it’s about time for me to pay back for some of those things you did for me while I was working for a living.”
Nathan then spoke about forming a record company and, according to Alton, made the following business proposal:
“I don’t know how you and Rabon are fixed, but I want you to help me with the company. I can’t start it by myself, but if you boys will sign up with me and the new company, I can give you most anything you want, that is, in royalties.”
But how will you get the money to start a record company, Alton inquired. Nathan affirmed that he did not have the start-up capital himself (“that’s why I’m making these pictures”), but that he could get it if he could produced some “abstract results” — by that, he meant if he could get someone like Alton to go along with him.
Exactly how, Alton asked, would he be useful to Nathan, who replied that he wanted Delmore primarily as “a recruiter for talent.” The new label’s line-up would be centered around some of the more popular acts on the roster of WLW, “the Nation’s Station.”
Brown’s Ferry Four, Roy Lanham & Little Jimmy Dickens –
WLW’s new “Midwestern Hayride” variety show
Billboard
As Alton recalled in his memoir:
“He told me that if we would agree to work with him we never would have to worry again about working on a radio station. It sounded like a very good deal for Rabon and myself, if we could get something going for ourselves for once. He mentioned the names of some of the ones he wanted to record for him and our company. It was supposed to be our mutual deal, with me getting the talent and leaving the money part up to him. He wanted Grandpa Jones, Cowboy Copas, and the Carlisles, Bill and Cliff, to start with and then he said we could get going nicely. All of them were real close friends of mine and I knew I could get them and they would believe me, if I told them that Syd was on the level.”
To Alton, the task before them seemed “as impossible as the verse in the Bible about turning a mustard seed into a mountain.” But from his initial encounter with Nathan, Alton believed Syd to possess an “intelligence and knowledge” that “certainly did belie his appearance.” Nathan, clearly, was “nobody’s dumbbell,” nor was he one of the “many phonies” Alton had encountered in all his years in show business.
When told of Nathan’s record label proposal, Rabon was initially dubious, but after meeting Nathan in person, “he changed his mind,” wrote Alton, “for old Syd has a personality that won’t quit.” Thus, with an oral commitment in place, Alton then proceeded to leverage his relationships with his WLW musical peers on behalf of the untested and unabashedly country label. Alton even tried to lure Bob Wills and Roy Acuff to King, “but they were under long time contract.”
*
History Spotlight:
WLW‘s Powel Crosley, Jr.
“Anything but a big shot“
Alton writes in the beginning of his memoir’s final chapter —
“It was far different at WLW than it was at WSM. We always did like the gang at WSM but we couldn’t make any money there, just barely a living. But at WLW they paid us a good salary and we also got paid for all personal appearances. It was the best job we ever had, where we had to work for a boss.”
Alton uses the example of Ma and Pa McCormick to illustrate the decent and principled treatment accorded them by the station’s founder, Powel Crosley, Jr., who also owned the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, beginning in 1934. The McCormicks had initially been turned down at their first audition by one of WLW’s managers, yet somehow were able to finagle an appointment directly with Mr. Crosley, according to Alton. Upon hearing them perform, Crosley was said to have declared Ma and Pa McCormick to be “what the American people wanted,” and soon after, remembers Alton, the duo “started the whole ‘Top of the Morning Show,” the program that would kick off WLW’s daily broadcast schedule at 5:30 a.m. as musical companionship for the nation’s farmers, whose workday had already begun.
Several years later, “when they were both getting older,” wrote Alton —
“Mr. Crosley gave them a lifetime job on the station and told them he didn’t want them to make their programs anymore because they had done enough to enjoy themselves the rest of their days on earth.”
While no doubt grateful to Crosley for the magnanimous gesture, the McCormicks respectfully requested they be allowed to continue working as WLW performers. Their program would endure for years, even with the passing of Pa McCormick — once Ma McCormick “got used to the absence of her life mate,” Alton wistfully noted.
Well regarded as “anything but a big shot,” Crosley impressed Alton as “a plain person who had a lot of business sense.” In Alton’s estimation, Crosley’s humble bearing “was one reason the station, although maintaining a lofty level in the broadcasting industry, was always down to earth in a lot of ways that one would never know, unless they worked on the station like we did.”
“We had many happy days while on WLW and I could tell without asking that all the other entertainers felt the same way we did. The bosses who ran the business end of the station didn’t feel puffed up about working on a station of that caliber and everybody felt at home. When they got on the air they felt the same way, and I can truthfully say that there were no big shots working and throwing their weight around. It just didn’t happen there. And it was a big surprise to us, for we had felt the huff and puff of many bosses on other stations.“
Alton sighs that he “could write a book about what happened on WLW,” and at one point states he “had several unique experiences while at WLW that seem somewhat unbelievable now in the light of what has happened since then.” Heartbreakingly, Delmore’s manuscript breaks off before he can recount the story, as he had intended, “in chronological fashion.”
500,000 watt transmitter control console
“only one of its kind in existence“
WLW Studio A
top floor
*
After Nathan dipped his toe into the water with that initial pair of “surreptitious” King releases from late 1943, Alton would write in his memoir that, “Grandpa Jones made the first record [King 502], and we made the second [King 503].” King, in fact, had issued the label’s first six singles simultaneously, as advertised in Billboard‘s 1944 Musical Year Book, with all releases ready to ship on December 1, 1944:
King’s First 6 Single Releases
Billboard
What many folks may not realize is that the first four King singles (i.e., King 502 through King 505) were re-recorded and reissued at least once, however, using the same matrix number. Thank goodness 78 RPM and its contributors are on hand to help break down the complicated recording (and publishing) history behind King 503, “Prisoner’s Farewell” b/w “Sweet Sweet Thing“ by The Delmore Brothers:
- First recorded January, 1944 in Dayton, OH (1st version).
- Re-recorded later in 1944 – also in Dayton, OH (2nd version).
- Re-recorded again early 1945 at King’s Cincinnati headquarters [pre-King Studios] (3rd version).
- All versions used the same matrix numbers (i.e., 1772 “Prisoner’s Farewell” + 1774 “Sweet Sweet Thing”).
- 2nd and 3rd version have “Sweet Sweet Thing” as A-side and “Jim Scott” as composer (like “Jean Ruhe” – a pseudonym for Alton Delmore, who was “under contract to Sylvester Cross, owner of the American Music publishing company,” so says The Delmore Brothers’ Complete Sessionography).
King 503
“Prisoner’s Farewell” b/w “Sweet Sweet Thing”
2nd version
As Alton recalled about the new label’s early days, “I worked along with Syd, writing songs for the talent and helping any way that I could.” By way of illustration, the following chart compiles all the Delmore Brothers’ songwriting efforts during King’s formative years under a handful of different pen names.
Delmore Brothers During King’s First Years
songwriting contributions
In January of 1946, the Delmore Brothers traveled to the West Coast, where taping sessions at Radio Recorders in Los Angeles would include musical support from Merle Travis (guitar), Louis Innis (guitar), and Roy Starkey (bass) on “Hillbilly Boogie” and five other songs. “Hillbilly Boogie,” observes Charles K. Wolfe in the postscript chapter of Alton’s memoir, is significant for being “one of the first successful attempts to translate into a country idiom the boogie woogie blues fad which had swept the nation in the mid-1940s.”
Billboard
other ads here
The Brown’s Ferry Four — Alton and Rabon Delmore (vocals), Merle Travis (guitar & vocals), Louis Innis (guitar & vocals), and Roy Starkey (bass) — also recorded their first sides in March of 1946 during this West Coast run at Radio Recorders, including “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.” The Brown’s Ferry Four returned to Radio Recorders later that October to tape a dozen more sides, including “Rockin’ On The Waves” and “There’s A Light Guiding Me.”
“Will The Circle Be Unbroken“
b/w
“Just A Little Talk With Jesus“
On October 2nd of that same year, Roy Lanham (electric guitar), Homer Haynes (guitar), Jethro Burns (guitar & mandolin), and Wayne Raney (harmonica) accompanied the Delmore Brothers at Cincinnati’s Herzog Studio for a fruitful recording session that produced sixteen sides, including “Boogie Woogie Baby” and “Freight Train Boogie.” Released in Autumn of 1946, “Freight Train Boogie” would end the year as that week’s second most-played juke box folk record in the nation. The following week, Billboard‘s January 4, 1947 issue included its “First Annual Music-Record Poll,” which judged “Freight Train Boogie” to be in a four-way tie for the #24 most-played juke box folk disc of 1946.
#2 Most-Played Juke Box Folk Record
Billboard‘s Dec. 28, 1946 chart
Rabon (left) & Alton (right) in King ad
Billboard
By the time World War II had ended, Alton and Rabon were both in Cincinnati, but only Alton was on staff at WLW. Alton tried to intercede on his brother’s behalf with the radio station’s management, but was told “under no circumstances” would Rabon be rehired, according to Wolfe. At this point, Alton found himself at a crossroads and had to decide whether to continue alone at WLW or reunite the Delmore Brothers and relocate elsewhere. Ultimately, the Delmores would choose to leave Cincinnati for Memphis radio station, WMC, after a brief stint in Indianapolis at WIBC.
One year after the duo’s arrival in Memphis, The Commercial Appeal newspaper reported in its June 25, 1947 edition that “Freight Train Boogie” and “Hillbilly Boogie” were among the “hottest numbers” on American juke boxes and likewise racking up sheet music sales:
“Freight Train Boogie,” written by Alton and Rabon Delmore under the names of Jim Scott and Bob Nabors, has sold more than 200,000 records as recorded by the Delmore Brothers personally. “Hillbilly Boogie,” written by the brothers under their own names, has sold 175,000 discs as recorded by them. In addition, Red Foley of Grand Ole Opry and Johnny Tyler have recorded the latter number for other record companies.
Alton highlights in his memoir the critical role he played in getting King’s initial talent roster signed to the label. However, as Nathan’s enterprise grew bigger and bigger, “the talk about my contract for the 10 percent of the company began to take a semblance of a legend or something that happened in the long lost past, but was obsolete for the present.” Even more distressing, the contract signed by both Delmore brothers “was not half as good as we had with Decca and RCA,” wrote Alton. When concerns were raised about remuneration, Syd advised Alton to keep mum, since “if the rest of the guys know what you sign for, they will sign for less, too, and you will benefit because you are a stockholder yourself.”
Yet, the Delmore Brothers never owned a piece of King — “we were not stockholders then and never have been and never will be.” To Alton, worse than King’s low-paying agreement was discovering that “the rest of the artists that signed got better contracts than we did!”
“It was not our idea to beat the other artists out of anything but since I was helping start the company, I signed at his own terms.“
“Sydney Nathan got his start from our name,” wrote Alton, who felt played as a pawn, once the realization set in that his earnest efforts on behalf of the label’s early years ended up only profiting others:
“No wonder Syd could convince those guys putting up the money, when he could get someone to make records for him for practically nothing at all, and, besides this, people with names in the record field.“
Alton would kick himself mightily for having “fell for that line.” Though he would take a small measure of comfort from knowing he was hardly the first to have gotten short shrift in the cold hard world of commerce, “I just miss the money,” Alton admitted. “It is a sin to be trusting in the line of any kind of business,” Alton would declaim in his memoir, and add this rueful observation:
“You don’t get rich by working. You get rich by scheming, and I never have been a schemer.“
Song Folio
Lois Music Publishing
(image courtesy of DelmoreBrothers.com)
By 1949, King Records was ranked sixth in annual sales among 1,500 record makers in the US, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer‘s Jack Ramey, who reported the label to be “selling 20,000 hillbilly, sepia, spiritual and folk records a day.” King’s manufacturing output of 6,000,000 records per annum, noted Ramey, was being carried out by the label’s 375 staff, “working a single shift of employees 45 hours a week.”
Despite feeling mightily double-crossed by Syd Nathan, the Delmore Brothers continued to record for King Records, all the way up until Rabon’s tragic passing on December 4, 1952. The Delmores’ recording sessions with pioneering A&R producer Henry Glover — frequently with Wayne Raney and Lonnie Glosson on harmonica — would produce such enduring recordings as “Blues Stay Away From Me” (written in response to an arrangement by Glover that had been thieved by Andy Gibson and turned into “The Hucklebuck” for Paul Williams, an R&B smash), “Blues You Never Lose” and “I Let The Freight Train Carry Me On,” the latter track propelled by Zeke Turner‘s lead guitar lines.
“Blues Stay Away From Me,” which spent weeks in late 1949 as a Billboard Top 5 C&W/folk hit, would later be interpreted by a wide range of artists, including Lonnie Johnson; Otis Williams & His Charms; Owen Bradley Quintet; Merle Travis, Eddie Kirk & Tennessee Ernie with Cliffie Stone’s Band; Cousin Wilbur & Blondie Brooks; Les Paul & Mary Ford; Eddie Crosby; The Spotnicks; Rock-Ragge & His Four Comets; Merle Travis & Johnny Bond; Merle Haggard; Roy Clark; Wanda Jackson; Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps; Slim Whitman; Charlie McCoy; Paul Revere & the Raiders; Floyd Cramer; Doc Watson; Margaret Whiting; The Browns; The Sweet Inspirations; Ray Price; The Louvin Brothers; The Band; Doug Sahm; kd lang; Yo La Tengo; Jeff Beck; Jorma Kaukonen & Bela Fleck; The Notting Hillbillies; Asleep at the Wheel; and The Willis Brothers, among others.
Delmore Brothers In Concert
1949 newspaper ad snippet
Decades later, the Delmore Brothers would be singled out by the Country Music Hall of Fame as “perhaps the most musically sophisticated, most creative, and most technically proficient of all the duo acts.” Alton and Rabon Delmore also enjoyed distinction for being, as notes the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, “among the very few early traditional country acts to change with the times.” In the estimation of Ace UK’s Tony Rounce, the Delmores were “among the greatest ‘brother’ acts ever to grace the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.”
Rounce also informs us that, based on Ace UK’s extensive work with the collection of King masters, “an acetate exists for every single Delmore Brothers recording that was made for King between 1944 and 1950,” with the most unfortunate exception of “Freight Train Boogie,” whose acetate was found to have suffered irreparably from excessive corrosion. On the plus side, Rounce proudly announces that this Ace UK anthology is the first time that the master of “Blues Stay Away From Me” has been reissued “as it was captured on acetate back in May ’49.” Rounce puts a finer point on it with this additional historical insight:
We’re also delighted to bring you the hitherto unissued take 1 to demonstrate just how nearly right they got it the first time, and how on the money Glover was to push the musicians a little bit harder in his quest to produce an all-time classic.
Although prized for their pristine sound and cleaner reproduction overall, acetates would be discontinued at King by late 1950, notes Rounce, and that by March of the following year, the duo would begin recording on magnetic tape.
Best-Selling Retail Folk/C&W Records
Billboard
3 singles recorded in Cincinnati –
2 of them produced by Henry Glover
The Nation’s Big 5 Hillbilly, Folk & Western Juke Box Tunes
Cash Box
Dec. 31, 1949
Six consecutive weeks at the #2 & #3 positions, respectively
Most-Played Retail Folk/C&W Juke Box Records
Billboard
Jan. 14, 1950
Historic Legacy
An article entitled, “Alton Delmore Ranks At Top In Writing Of Hill-Billy Songs” in the June 13, 1939 edition of Waynesboro, VA’s News-Virginian pinpoints a key distinguishing feature of the Delmore Brothers’ artistry:
The singing and playing of the Delmore Brothers might be termed unique in that they are the only radio singers who make every sound with their guitars that they make with their voices.
Many guitar players do not play the melody when singing but simply chord their way through a number, and without their singing one would have to guess the name of the number they were playing. The Delmore Brothers play every note and do not chord their way through any number.
In 2002, the Delmore family — Alton’s daughters, Norma Delmore Weimer and Debby Delmore, along with Susan Delmore, widow of Lionel Delmore, Alton’s son — donated the typewriter used to write Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, plus the original typescript of the book, as well as “an old roll-up blackboard scroll” used by Alton to teach signing lessons at home and a Martin guitar, reported Kay Campbell in The Huntsville Times. Charlie Louvin and John Anderson both attended the induction ceremony.
Campbell’s article, additionally, acknowledged the kindness that had been extended years ago by Alton Delmore, who “was on the Grand Ole Opry committee looking for a new fiddler and picked Roy Acuff,” an up and comer. The young fiddling bandleader got a further boost when “Acuff toured with the Delmores for a while, opening their show,” informed Campbell.
- Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971
- Inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1989
- Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001
Discography
- Discography Part 1 & Part 2 @ Delmore-Brothers.com
- Delmore Brothers & Brown’s Ferry Four @ Discogs
- Delmore Brothers & Brown’s Ferry Four @ 78RPM
I T ‘ S * T R U E
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