Bashful Brother Oswald

Bashful Brother Oswald (born December 26, 1911 as Beecher Ray Kirby , † October 17, 2002 ) was an American country musician who made the resonator guitar ( Dobro ) famous. He played with Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys and was a member of the Grand Ole Opry . He was an instrumentalist on the resonator guitar, the banjo and the guitar , as well as a singer .

Although he only released a few solo recordings, he played on numerous records as a session musician . He also appears on the 1972 triple album Will the Circle Be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band , on which they play with a number of traditional country musicians.

biography

The early years

Beecher Ray Kirby was born in rural Sevier County , Tennessee , in the Great Smoky Mountains , part of the Appalachian Mountains . His father played American folk music on the fiddle and banjo. As a child, Beecher learned the guitar and banjo and sang gospel . As a teenager, he played at square dance events.

In the late 1920s, Kirby walked the path of many Americans from the Appalachians and headed for work in the northern United States. In Flint , Michigan , he worked on the assembly line at Buick . However, his job fell victim to the Great Depression of the 1930s. He resumed making music and played at informal square dance parties held in the homes of acquaintances from the southern states. At one such party he met a Hawaiian guitarist named Rudy Waikiki.

Kirby remembered it like this: It was the first time I'd heard someone play something like my style. He was a real Hawaiian boy from the islands and he played like that, and I loved it. I went to the parties just to see him play. Then I went home and took my guitar and tried to do the same. I just played a regular guitar, so I had to make the strings a little higher with a screw under the strings

When Hawaiian music became popular in America through musicians like Sol Hoopii , Kirby bought his first resonator guitar , a model from National (he later switched to competing Dobro ), and went with that fashion. He played in bars, cafes and beer gardens. He attended the 1933 Chicago World's Fair , where he played in clubs and garnered fans. Some of the clubs were owned by Al Capone .

Return to Tennessee

Kirby moved to Knoxville in 1934 in search of a more regular job . Under the stage name Pete Kirby, he played the resonator guitar with local bands, including Roy Acuff's Crazy Tennesseans, which later became the Smoky Mountain Boys. Acuff went to the Grand Ole Opry in 1938 , and Kirby became a member of the Opry along with Acuff's band on New Years Day 1939.

In the Acuff band, Kirby was heralded as the Bashful Brother Oswald , and he played the role of the elder brother of the banjo player Rachel Veach , ensuring in the eyes of the audience that the unmarried Veach was supervised by a family member. Kirby played his new stage personality as a clown character with a soft, wide-brimmed hat, worn dungarees , oversized shoes and a roaring laugh.

On the nationwide broadcasts of the Opry, Oswald's playing on the resonator guitar on pieces like Old Age Pension Check was a sensation. The instrument, developed in the late 1920s, was still fairly new. Oswald and the Acuff band appeared in the Hollywood film Grand Ole Opry ( Republic Pictures ), which gave the instrument greater prominence. People couldn't understand how I was playing it and what it was all about, and they always wanted to come over and see it

Oswald was also a singer - his tenor voice can be heard on Acuff's hits Precious Jewel and Wreck on the Highway .

The later years

Oswald began his career as a soloist and session musician in the 1960s.

His first album named after him was released in 1962 on Starday Records . He went to Rounder Records in 1970 , where he recorded half a dozen albums up to Carry Me Back in 1999.

He played with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on Will the Circle Be Unbroken , a tribute to traditional old-time Nashville musicians that also featured Acuff, Maybelle Carter , Earl Scruggs , Merle Travis , Vassar Clements and others. Kirby appears here as a soloist in The End of the World and his own composition Sailin 'to Hawaii .

Oswald was the only member of the 1939 Smoky Mountain Boys who was still there at the time of Acuff's death in 1992. With his former bandmate Charlie Collins , Oswald formed the musical comedy duo Os and Charlie , which was a permanent feature of the Opryland theme park and in the Grand Ole Opry itself.

He played on the 1994 album The Great Dobro Sessions , which featured other Resonator guitarists such as Mike Auldridge , Jerry Douglas , Josh Graves , Rob Ickes , Tut Taylor and Gene Wooten .

The Gibson Guitar Corporation , owner of the resonator guitar brand Dobro , launched a model called "Brother Oswald" in 1995, which has since been discontinued.

Oswald died on October 17, 2002 at his Madison, Tennessee home at the age of 90.

Single receipts

1. ↑ That was when I first heard someone play something like my style. He was a real Hawaiian boy, from over in the islands, and he was playing this way and I loved it. I'd go to them parties just to watch him play. Then I'd go home and get my guitar and try to do the same thing. I was just playing a straight guitar and I had to raise the strings up, put a nut under the strings.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bashful Brother Oswald , Brad's Page of Steel, accessed November 13, 2010.
3. ↑ Mark Humphreys: Bashful Brother Oswald. In: Paul Kingsbury (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Oxford University Press, New York, p. 30.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Humphreys, p. 30.
5. ↑ People couldn't understand how I played it and what it was, and they'd always want to come around and look at it.
6. ^ Dobro legend Beecher Bashful Brother Oswald Kirby: 1911–2002 ( Memento of May 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), Gibson Guitars, accessed on October 9, 2007.
7. ↑ Brother Oswald ( Memento October 28, 2008 on the Internet Archive ), Gibson Guitar Corporation, read October 9, 2007 (no longer on the web)