By Nancy Cardwell

Bluegrass Hall of Famer, National Heritage Award recipient and Grand Ole Opry star Jesse McReynolds celebrated 62 years in the music business and eighty years of life on July 9, 2009. Hundreds of friends, fans, and several former members of his Virginia Boys band turned out for Jesse’s birthday bash at the Pick Inn music park in Gallatin, Tenn., on July 10-11, 2009. The long list of performers included Curly Seckler, Jim Buchanan, Smokey Lonesome, Luke McKnight, the Chigger Hill Boys & Terri, Judy Carrier & Rens Vreeburg, and Buddy Griffin & Friends, among many others.

Strings of white lights were strung throughout the Pick Inn pavilion, candle lanterns hung in the boughs of surrounding trees, and there was cake. “Gosh, I had about six or seven birthday cakes,” Jesse says. “Everywhere I went on the road last summer, someone had a birthday bash for me.”

It’s difficult to imagine the face of bluegrass music without the inimitable brother duo from Carfax, Va., Jim & Jesse McReynolds. Their harmony was smooth and true, combining Jesse’s lead voice with Jim’s pure tenor overhead at hair-raising pitches. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder onstage for 55 years, dressed impeccably in western-cut tailored suits and neck scarves, looking slim and professional, jet-black hair combed back, and with a friendly smile on their faces. Backed by a succession of some of the finest musicians in bluegrass with their Virginia Boys, Jesse led the instrumental charge with his high energy, sometimes nearly combustible mandolin, utilizing the crosspicking and split-string styles he pioneered that few have successfully emulated.

After Jim passed away in 2002 from cancer, Jesse continues to appear on the Grand Ole Opry and tour nationally, in addition to staging events at the Pick Inn. Jesse’s current band includes three of his grandchildren. Sister and brother, Amanda Lynn and Garrett McReynolds, are the children of Jesse’s son Keith. Luke McKnight, who has been performing with his grandfather since age 14 in the Virginia Boys, is the son of Jesse’s daughter Gwen. Garrett plays guitar and sings tenor and Amanda sings high baritone or lead. Luke started out playing mandolin, occasionally surprising audiences with a little breakdancing. He plays electric bass in the current lineup, but is often featured on mandolin.

The band is as strong as ever with Gary Reece on banjo and Travis Wetzel on fiddle, but what really captures the listener’s attention is Jesse’s vocal trio with Amanda and Garrett. Their voices blend in the same graceful family harmony. The natural progression from duo to trio is pleasing audiences with a new, yet familiar sound. “The grandkids are doing real good,” Jesse says proudly. “They’re getting a different sound. Garrett is as close to Jim as anyone I’ve ever heard. He doesn’t try to sing like Jim. He just sings natural. I guess it’s just the family blend.”

In addition to appearing with the Virginia Boys (and girl), Jesse and the group are playing some dates with Bobby Osborne and his Rocky Top X-Press, billed as Legends Of The Bluegrass Hall Of Fame. Jesse and the grandchildren have a new album out called Family Harmony, and Jesse has just completed the new album Tribute To Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter—Some Grateful Dead Songs.

“I met Sandy Rothman, who is a former Blue Grass Boy,” Jesse says. “He traveled with Jerry Garcia a lot in the ’60s and they came from California and started going to bluegrass festivals. I found out that they admired our music, but they said they were too backward to come up and introduce themselves to us. He asked me if I’d ever considered recording any of Jerry’s songs. I got to listening to some of them and Joy, my wife, is a deadhead, I guess you’d say. She knew every song we did and had a collection of their albums. The first one was ‘Black Muddy River’ and I said, ‘Well, I think I can do that one.’ So, I tried a few more. I co-wrote one song with Robert Hunter. He sent me the lyrics, and I put the music to it.”

Eighty years is an impressive milestone. Jesse, whose mind is still as nimble as his fingers, remembers the details vividly that have shaped his music career. “I was trying to play a little bit,” he recalls. “Jim and I made a lot of music at home. Our brother-in-law, Oakley Greear, was a pretty good fiddle player and he taught us a lot. He had the first radio in the community, so everybody would go to his house on Saturday night and listen to the Grand Ole Opry.”

Jesse hadn’t settled on the mandolin just yet. “Really, I was trying to play a little bit of everything—guitar, fiddle—and I got a hold of a mandolin,” he recalls. “We just had to borrow instruments. The only thing we had around the house was fiddles. I probably would have been a fiddle player if I hadn’t gotten into singing and the duet thing with Jim.”

Jim and Jesse were apprehensive about singing in public. “We was from back in the mountains and we was just kind of bashful, I guess,” he explains. “I remember they had this contest in St. Paul, Va., which was where I went to school. They had different categories; the best duo, the best solo, the best guitar player. We went there when we were about ten or twelve. We hadn’t sung that much together, but we won a sack of flour, and it encouraged us. My brother-in-law would give us advice. He told us, ‘Your music is drowning out your singing. You’ve got to learn to get your singing out there.’ We learned to sing old gospel songs. We just started practicing and listened to records.”

In particular, the brothers were influenced by their grandfather, Charles McReynolds, a respected fiddler in the community who recorded as a member of the Bull Mountain Moonshiners at the historic RCA sessions held in Bristol, Va., in 1927. Jesse remembers his grandfather sitting by an open window in his cabin, playing the fiddle, the sound echoing through the hollow.

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