Sep 18
A vist with Bobby Osborne…Part 2 of 3
Bobby OsborneBluegrassJournal.com’s Bob Dieterlen caught up with Bobby Osborne at the Franklin, KY Music Festival September 7th.
Bobby was gracious enough to sit down and talk about his music - past, present and future…along with a glimpse back into the genre’s glory days when radio stations used bands live over the air and he also shared a great story about the Osborne Brothers playing for First Lady Pat Nixon’s birthday celebration as the White House.
If you missed part 1 yesterday you can view it here.
Bob Dieterlen – Who were some of your influences when you first started playing? Who were you listening to back then?
Bobby Osborne – Ernest Tubb. I was just a little guy and I listened to the Opry and heard Ernest Tubb and liked his singing. I started singing his songs… and learnin’ his songs.
At that time my voice was kinda low… I was about 16 and then it [my voice] changed. I’d still sing his songs but I’d sing them 8 notes higher than he did.
Then I heard Earl Scruggs play “Cumberland Gap” on the Opry one night with Monroe. When I heard that it put me right into were I’m at now.
Bob Dieterlen – Before it was actually called “Bluegrass” music. Where you were brought up, was that what you were accustomed to? The mountain music or what you would consider country music back then. Is that something you were listening to?
Bobby Osborne – No I think Bill Monroe, before Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt and Chubby Wise came with him. Lester came along in 1954 and Earl came along in 1945. Well being that Bill was from the Bluegrass State of Kentucky, he’d already named his group The Bluegrass Boys.
When Earl came in with the three-fingered style, that just wrapped it all up. That terminated it as “Bluegrass” music. I think that’s were it started and so many of the rest of us… that liked it… liked that sound, we just all learned to play that music. And I never did give up with it. Just kept goin’.
Bob Dieterlen - Who was the songwriter when the Osborne Brothers first started? Was it you or your brother?
Bobby Osborne – When we first started, neither of us. The first song I wrote was “Pain in my Heart” and I wrote that way before he and I got together. I was workin’ with a guy in the lonesome pine fiddlers, in Bluefield, West Virginia and we got to record it up there on little old Cozy Records out of Davis, West Virginia.
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs picked it up later and it became one of the standards of Bluegrass Music. That’s the only thing I wrote until Sonny and Me got together and came to Nashville. I got into writing some songs then.
Bob Dieterlen – What year did you consider the start of the the Osborne Brothers as a group?
Bobby Osborne – When I got out of the Marine Corp. in 1953. We had a little four piece band in Knoxville and we’ve always tried to have a band of some kind since then.
Bob Dieterlen – Did you play any radio shows back then?
Bobby Osborne – Oh yeah, that’s all you played! Radio shows and go out at night and work schools, schoolhouses. Come right back and do the program the next morning.
Saturday nights we’d play a place where they did round and square dancin’. We’d go play places like that. Sunday they had a bunch of parks up through there and we’d do that. We worked seven days a week.
Bob Dieterlen – What was your first tour vehicle? What’d you travel around in?
Bobby Osborne – Oh Goodness…I think I…uh…I believe I had a 53 Buick.. I think. [ laughin’]
Bob Dieterlen – Ain’t that something. A hard road.
Bobby Osborne – Well you know that’s all we had to go with then. So you had to make the best of what you had and it wasn’t near as hard as it would be now.
Tomorrow we will be running Part 3 of this Interview.
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