Bill Bolick: Half of the hillbilly Blue Sky Boys
Hyfler/Rosner
Bill Bolick: Half of the hillbilly Blue Sky Boys
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Bill and Earl Bolick, known as the Blue Sky Boys, were among
the greatest of the many brother acts of the hillbilly music
scene of the 1930s. Their astonishingly beautiful and
complex harmonies remain great treasures of the genre.
Influenced by earlier duet acts such as Karl and Harty, and
by the emotionally charged hymns of the Holiness movement at
that time flourishing in the American South, they tapped
into a rich vein of folk song and ballad, and evolved a
repertoire that continues to form the basis of much of
today's bluegrass and "old-time" music. Their vocals,
anchored by Earl's thumb-pick guitar work and adorned by
Bill's mandolin runs, influenced not only later brother acts
such as the Louvins and the Everlys, but also the country
rock pioneers of the Sixties.
Natives of North Carolina, the Bolicks' parents were "lint
heads", working in the local cotton mills, and the brothers
could reasonably have been expected to follow them. Instead,
encouraged by their father's interest in hymn-singing, they
turned to music. Bill learned to play the guitar and, having
taught it to his younger brother, eventually took up the
mandolin.
By 1935, Bill Bolick was working professionally alongside
Homer Sherrill and Lute Isenhour out of Asheville, North
Carolina, in an outfit that gained a regional following as
the Crazy Hickory Nuts, sponsored by the Crazy Water Crystal
Company. The group split following a dispute with the Crazy
Water executive J.W. Fincher, but within months Bolick and
Sherrill, this time joined by Earl, were back in Asheville,
performing as the JFG Coffee-sponsored Good Coffee Boys.
They moved on to the Atlanta radio station WGST,
successfully working for a while as the Blue Ridge
Hillbillies, but in 1936 the Bolicks and Sherrill parted
company. Returning to North Carolina the brothers headed for
Charlotte, where Fincher had arranged a recording session
for the Hillbillies prior to their bust-up. Although RCA
Victor's A&R man, Eli Oberstein, had received notice that
they weren't to record, he afforded them an audition and,
after just a verse and chorus of "Sunny Side of Life",
decided to let them cut 10 sides. Bill was 18 and Earl just
16 years old.
The numbers they recorded included not only "Sunny Side of
Life", which they had learned from an old hymnal, but also
their classic version of Karl Davis's "I'm Just Here to Get
My Baby Out of Jail" and "Midnight on the Stormy Sea", a
song popularised by the blind duo Mac and Bob. Oberstein
suggested they change their name to prevent confusion with
other acts and the Bolicks settled on the Blue Sky Boys -
"blue" from the neighbouring Blue Ridge Mountains and "sky"
because the area was known as "The Land of the Sky".
The Blue Sky Boys then took a break from performing while
Bill recovered from a tonsillectomy, and when they once
again took up music it was as members of J.E. Mainer's
Mountaineers, a situation engineered by Fincher that proved
unsatisfactory to all. They reformed the duo and went back
to Charlotte for a second recording session. Over the next
few years they cut a series of classic sides, including
"Can't You Hear That Nightbird Crying?" (1936), "Katie Dear"
(1938) and "Are You From Dixie?" (1939).
Both brothers served during the Second World War and on
returning found that tastes were changing. Although they
continued to come up with classics - "Kentucky" and "Garden
in the Sky" (both 1947) among them - RCA began to pressure
them into using an electric guitar, a situation neither was
prepared to accept. It was that, coupled with public
indifference, that led them to disband in 1951. Bill joined
the postal service, while Earl worked for Lockheed.
Although the Blue Sky Boys must have thought themselves
forgotten, in 1962, on the back of the folk boom, Starday
issued an album of radio transcriptions, rekindling an
interest that resulted in two further discs for the label:
Together Again and Precious Moments. A 1965 album on Capitol
of a concert recorded at UCLA was followed 10 years later by
an LP of new recordings for Rounder. In April 1975 the Blue
Sky Boys gave their last concert together at Duke
University, before retiring. Earl Bolick died in 1998.
Paul Wadey
William Bolick, singer and mandolinist: born Hickory, North
Carolina 28 October 1917; married 1957 Doris Wallace; died
Hickory 14 March 2008.