Customer Reviews

1956-1968

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The sticker price on this set may make you blow a gasket, but the truth is that this comprehensive set includes about 8 albums worth of music, and it's all goooooood. I don't mean a little bit good, I mean REAL goooooood.

If you have to ask "who are the Osborne Brothers" this set is maybe not for you, but here's a bit of history. Sonny and Bobby Osborne grew up in Bluegrass country. When tenor singing, mandolin playing Bobby went off to the Korean war Sonny was hired as a teenager to play banjo with none other than the master tenor-singing mandolin player: Bill Monroe. When Bobby returned he and Sonny formed a partnership that has made them Bluegrass Royalty over the last 40 + years. The format of the band has changed little. There are a few devastatingly effective essential components of the OB sound: Bobby sings a wonderfully clear tenor with a Pavorotti-like range (who knows how many "high B's" he's sung since the late 60s with only their Zillion performances of their mega-hit "Rocky Top". Bobby also plays competent mandolin. Sonny sings the harmony part beneath Bobby and over these decades has played some of the most innovative (and always appropriate....) banjo ever heard. The vocals are always rounded out by a guitarist with a fine voice, and over the years that person has included legends like Mac Wiseman, Red Allen, Jimmy Martin then in later years sidemen of remarkable ability like Dale Sledd and Paul Brewster (currently singing that wonderful high harmony to Ricky Skaggs.)

Besides the required bass playing the Osborne's have experimented over the years with things like "plugged in" instruments and percussion. (Anathema to bluegrass purists.) Their recordings have been augmented with piano, steel guitar and fiddle.

The years covered here are VINTAGE. "Rocky Top" is only the tip of an iceberg that is over 100 songs deep and includes a number of recordings that are now considered "standards". "Pathway of Teardrops", "Yesterday's Gone", "My Favorite Memory" and "Send Me The Pillow You Dream On" have since been covered by stars like Alison Krauss, The Whites, The Cox Family and Rhonda Vincent - but these original Osborne recordings not only stand up well beside the "rising stars", the truth is that these recordings shine with a spectacular gleam that the "new stars" can only hope to approach.

In the historical context of Bluegrass I would personally place the Osborne Brothers slightly behind Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs. The recordings contained within this box set are the main reason I feel that way.

Enjoy.

These guys did their own thing, and in this reviewer's opinion, their pickin' and singin' abilities will never be topped or repeated.

An amazing transformation can be heard in this collection. In the beginning, they are young, raw, and experimental. As time progresses, you can sense them getting ever closer to finding their place in the sun, which reaches its pinnacle on the last CD, where their biggest hit can be found--Rocky Top.

Being done against the backdrop of the "Nashville Sound", as it was known then, the marriage of the two (the Nashville session players & the Brothers) is wholly unique. Further, I would argue that they were on the same arc, both of them rising, peaking, and descending at the same time. Call it one of those divine alignments of the stars (and the influence of Dr. Snapp).

This is actually only the midpoint of their journey however. More & better things were to follow, but you'll have to get the second box set to experience that.