Bobby Osborne Remembers How It Was

Abstract

In an interview conducted by the chairman of the International Bluegrass Music Association, Bobby Osborne tells how he grew up in Thousandsticks, Kentucky in the 1930s. In 1942 his family moved to Dayton, Ohio. Bobby and his brother Sonny played music, and while teenagers appeared on Middletown’s WPFB Jamboree. Bobby earned a Purple Heart as a Marine in Korea. In the early and mid-1950s the Osborne Brothers played with Red Allen at bars in Dayton and at the Wheeling Jamboree, and recorded such bluegrass hits as “Once More” and “Ruby, Are You Mad.” At Antioch College in 1960 they played the first campus bluegrass concert in history. Doyle Wilburn arranged their Grand Ole Opry audition and a Decca contract with producer Owen Bradley.