The story of the music that appears at the end of this page starts circa 1966. A young Chicago based banjo player named Richard (Rick) Riman ventured with tape recorder in hand to Knoxville, Tenn. with a mission: to gather a collection of music played by Red Rector.
That collection recently surfaced at Mandolin Cafe headquarters as part of a different project we were working on.
There's a a story behind all of this worth telling. It's complicated.
Jazz mandolin great Paul Glasse got in touch with us awhile back, excited about finding a copy of cassette tape with music and conversation with the late bluegrass legend Herschel Sizemore — also the recording work of Riman. Better than the cassette, which had degraded over the years, Paul had the master — or so he thought — a Scotch 1/4" reel to reel tape marked: "Herschel Sizemore, Red Rector and Larry McNeely."
The Herschel Sizemore recording may yet surface, but was not on the reel to reel tape. That fact was confirmed by a company in Kansas City with expertise in working with this type of media and converting it for digital use. One listen to the Red Rector material and we decided it should be shared.
Back to Riman, who we connected with after a bit of a search, finding him on Facebook, now living in Colorado. He told us, "57 years after it happened, I recall I drove to Knoxville, found Red Rector in the phone directory, called and asked if I could make some tapes of him, in hopes of publicizing him to a larger bluegrass community. He said sure, come on down to the radio station where he and Fred Smith were performing on the Cas Walker Show (where Dolly Parton first performed on TV, in 1967; she commented later that she performed on TV, but her family was too poor to afford a TV of their own, so they never saw her). I taped some parts of the Cas Walker radio show as they performed it (clearly recall them performing Lester and Earl's 'I Don't Care Anymore'), and then sat down with Red in front of my Ampeg tape recorder and asked him to play his favorite tunes (which included 'Moon River' and a host of - his words - 'them old-time fiddle breakdowns'.
"My foggy memory is that Fred (of the duo Red and Fred) was playing guitar with Red that day. However, Bud Brewster, who played banjo on the radio show that day, is also a fine guitarist, so it might have been Bud. For what it's worth, Bud Brewster is the uncle (not the father, as sometimes reported) of Paul Brewster, who played guitar with both the Osborne Brothers and Rickey Skaggs.
"All the Knoxville musicians were open and friendly; no pretense or arrogance, even to a Yankee banjo picker. That's one of the many things I have always loved about bluegrass music and the people involved in it, as players and fans; the openness and accessibility they (almost) all share. Sure, there are a few soreheads who have an inflated sense of their own grandeur, but they usually wind up in rock 'n' roll, or in rehab (or both)."
We sent Riman a photo of the front and back of the reel to reel master and he confirmed: "that isn't my handwriting." So possibly a copy of the original, or a copy of a copy. Its the way it used to be.
Caveat: time has not been kind to the quality of the recording and it varies throughout with occasional bleed through from other tracks. So while not the best quality, we think it's worth sharing, and someone might appreciate it. It deserves to be saved and heard.
Red Rector circa 1966
The last part of the tape contains some banjo playing. We won't attempt to identify who it is but we'll go with it might be Larry McNeely whose name was on the master. Or not.
Back to Rector, there's a lot to listen to and his playing is decidedly brilliant for the time. A look back at a legendary figure through a different lens.
Take it away, Red.
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