William Eugene "Red," Rector was born on December 15, 1929. In his time he was considered one of the greatest mandolin players in the world. As a mandolin player myself I can hear Red’s influence in many mandolin players although they may not realize it. Sam Bush had commented that when he was younger and trying to learn to play mandolin he would listen to Red on records and try to learn those breaks but he didn’t realize it was Red he was listening to until he was older. Reading through old articles I learned that Red had a few different names, Mandolin Wizard and The Red Flash to name a couple. Red passed away too soon at the age of 60 in 1990. When he passed away acalades from some of the biggest names in Bluegrass and Acoustic music poured in. Within those 60 years Red left a treasure trove of music.
There’s a pattern I’ve noticed when talking with folks that knew Red. They all complement his music but it never fails, they ALL talk about how kind and humble he was.
The following was written by Ernestine Parker Rector, Red’s Wife
Beginnings ~ The Young Years
By the time Red was nine years old he was listening to the music around Madison County. Many good musicians came from this area. He listened to his parents and their church music and also many good radio stations. Red persuaded his mother to buy him a guitar. She gave him a little Melody King guitar for his birthday when he was nine years old. During the next year his mother moved to Asheville where he could be closer to the music.
Red's best friends were Fred Smith, whose family also moved to Asheville, and Jim Lunsford. Jim's father was Blackwell Lunsford. He was the brother of Bascomb Lamar Lunsford. Red and Jim gained a great bit of knowledge of the music and old folk traditions from Bascomb and Blackwell. They attended such events as the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival at the Asheville Civic Auditorium. They had complete access to backstage areas with the musicians and dancers. During this time Red was twelve years old and Jim about two years older, and they already had a radio program for their band on WISE in Asheville.
Red had heard a mandolin for the first time on a recording in about 1941. It was "New River Train" by Bill and Charlie Monroe. He decided then he was going to learn to play the mandolin. Their band was the Asheville Mountain Boys consisting of Jim Lunsford on fiddle, Red Rector on guitar, Snooks Waddel on guitar and Dempsey Cothren on guitar. This was not a good balance so the band told Red he would have to play mandolin. He told them, "My mother just bought me this new guitar and I know she will not buy another instrument at this time." One of the band members loaned Red a mandolin and his guitar was passed to one of the others to play.
Blackwell Lunsford used to drive them to their shows. He had a 1931 Pontiac and they would tie two guitars on the fenders. The first show they had was in Burnsville, North Carolina on the courthouse lawn.
Their favorite booking was with the Farmers Federation. They sponsored a picnic every Saturday for the local farmers. They had a stage on the back of a large truck decorated with hay bales. The boys were paid four dollars and dinner each.
In 1943 Wade Mainer came to Red's house. He needed a mandolin player for a trip to New York City. Fred Smith was at Red's house that day and they persuaded Wade to include him on guitar. Red and Fred took a bus from Asheville to Salisbury, North Carolina to meet Wade and J. E. Mainer. From there they got a train to New York City. This was during World War Il and the train was full of soldiers being transferred so that they had to stand up from North Carolina to New York City.
The program was a production of Alan Lomax to be recorded at CBS in New York. The program was for the BBC in London. They called them folk operas or ballad operas. They had dialogue and music. There were two recorded but at different times.
Red was in the one called The Chisholm Trail. The other one was The Martins and the Coys. The transcriptions were lost for over fifty years. In 2000 when they were found Rounder Records released The Martins and the Coys. The one Red was in, The Chisholm Trail, has not been released. However it was played on the BBC in February 1945. It was nice to hear mandolin breaks on two songs, "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" and "I Never Will Marry" and a trio by Red, Fred and Wade on "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie."
The all-star cast of this program consisted of Wade Mainer, Red Rector, J. E. Mainer, Fred Smith, Cisco Houston, Rosie Ledford, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives and Lillie Mae Ledford. The Ledfords were members of the Coon Creek Girls from Renfro Valley Barn Dance.
When Red returned to Asheville he worked with Carl and J. P. Sauceman, Jim Lunsford, and Oscar Turner for a while and also with the Blue Ridge Hillbillies. Others at WWNC were "Snowball" Tommy Millard, Fred Smith and A. L. "Red" Smiley. This program was known as the Farm and Home Hour. This program on WWNC was a main stay for many bands including the Mainer Brothers, Jimmy Rodgers, Carl Story, Earl Scruggs, Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Morris Brothers, Jack and Curly Shelton, Benny Sims, Red Smiley and Bill Monroe.
In 1945 Red took his first job outside of Asheville. He went to WJHL in Johnson City, Tennessee with Zeke Morris, A. L. "Red" Smiley, Fred Smith and Howard Thompson. They were in Johnson City almost a year. Near the end of the year Red got a call from Johnny Wright and Jack Anglin to come to WPTF in Raleigh, North Carolina. This station carried a very large cast. Beside Johnny and Jack there was Kitty Wells, Ray Atkins and Buster Moore. The venues were usually large and included the beginning of the large tent shows.
Red had bought the A4 Gibson for this move. Johnny Wright gave Red one of the best pieces of advice he had ever received. He told him to develop a style of his own and not play a Bill Monroe style. They were making plans to make a move to WSM Grand Ole Opry. Johnny told him, "You don't want to go there sounding like Bill Monroe." Red liked the sound of Earnest Ferguson and Paul Buskirk. He was yet to hear Jethro Burns. I'm sure each of them contributed to his sound. Red emerged with a sound of his own that is recognized without calling his name.
When Johnny and Jack went to the Grand Ole Opry Red decided not to go. He made a move to Knoxville with the Carlisles who had a regular job at the Gilbert Hotel. There was a sixty dollar a week salary with some extras for picture and record sales. Next came a move Red had wanted. He went to WNOX with Charlie Monroe. Several mandolin players gained valuable experience with Charlie Monroe. Red was pleased because he knew the material and had a great respect for Charlie. He knew it meant a salary and a chance to record. On WNOX they were one of the few bands at this time to have their own block of time. They did an opening theme, their program and then a closing theme. They always met prior to a broadcast to rehearse and plan their program. This was the first band Red was with that had this kind of discipline. They stayed booked solid the whole time they were there.
November 7, 1947 they went to New York City to record. In the group were Rex Henderson, Orne Osborn, Charlie Grean and Lavelle Coy. They cut twelve songs at that session. On February 1, 1949 in Atlanta, Georgia they cut eight songs. Red said he would always remember the mandolin break on "The End of Memory Lane."
From WNOX they moved to Birmingham, AlaBaja. After a stay there Charlie decided to go home to Kentucky and take a break. Red returned to Knoxville to work for Carl Story and the Rambling Mountaineers at WINOX. Their stay was very productive. They were never short of bookings.
The band made another move to WAYS in Char-lotte, North Carolina. Soon after arriving there they set up a Saturday night barn dance at Monroe just outside of Charlotte. Red recorded many sessions with Carl on several different labels. They were well known for their gospel recordings. I counted sixteen sessions with Carl in my discography.
Lowell Blanchard and his family stopped by the station on their way to a vacation at the beach. He persuaded the band to return to Knoxville. WNOX was going live on the CBS Network. The show was CBS Country Style. They would rotate the one hour Saturday night shown with WWVA Jamboree in West Virginia and The Louisiana Hayride.
In 1954 Carl went to Kentucky and Red stayed at WNOX with Fred Smith. They started the Red and Fred comedy team and added Ray Atkins to be the Spivy Mountain Boys. Red and Fred also found a new source of income by doing commercials for several businesses. They were still traveling with shows several nights a week as well as the Mid-Day Merry- Go-Round five days a week and the Tennessee Barn Dance on Saturday night.
Television entered the picture and Red and Fred moved to WBIR-TV in Knoxville to become part of the Cas Walker show. About this time Red added to his repertoire. He started to play jazz, tunes, or as he would say, "a bluegrass tune with some fire." His speed on the mandolin was getting better all the time. He booked a lot of festivals as a single and the promoter would furnish a guitar player or even a backup band. Red always told them, get me a good guitar player." Another move was to start featuring very soft melodic tunes that work so well on a mandolin. "Miss Jamison's Favorite, "Gentle Annie," "When They Ring Those Golden Bells, "Mollie Darling," and the beautiful "Lara's Theme" from Dr. Zhivago were just a few. A special tune "Foggy Valley" was a favorite. The combination of fast and slow in the same tune is a technique used with Jethro Burns on their 1983 album Old Friends. "When I Grow Too Old to Dream" and "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" were two they always played. Bluegrass Unlimited and Muleskin-ner News both recognized Red as a prominent musician in articles in their magazines. He had come into his own as a solo performer.
Red developed a style of his own and a sound that he considered the best for his A4 Gibson mandolin. It was made in 1922, the first year they put a truss rod in the neck. Lloyd Loar was head of the shop at this time but he only worked on the F5 model. The softness and the woody tone on the A4 was good for Red. He loved to play old fiddle tunes, breakdowns, and hornpipes with a breakneck speed that earned him the nickname "the Red Flash" from Don Kissil. You can recognize him and his A4 with very tasteful breaks on songs always keeping faithful to the melody and for stepping back to play harmony with another instrument or soloist. Red also had a 1966 Martin D-18 guitar that he loved to play and he played a very good guitar.
In 1958 Hylo Brown regrouped his band the Tim-berliners for a job with Martha White Mills. He called Red to join him along with Clarence "Tater" Tate, Jim Smoak, Joe "Flapjack" Phillips and "Little Darling" Charles Elza. There were ten TV shows that had to be done live from Mississippi to West Virginia. Stations were using kinescope since videotape had not come into use yet. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs would take five in one area and Hylo five in the other. They would have to run two busses to do this. The shows were all at 6:00 am five days a week so the groups were able to book shows as long as they were not too far away from the TV show the next morning.
While Red was with Hylo they cut four record sessions — August 9-10 and 16-17, 1958. They did a total of twenty songs. Capitol Records decided to add the Jordanaires for choral sound to try to appeal to a larger audience in the last two sessions.
In 1959 videotape came into the picture and Martha White would no longer have to pay for two units. The Hylo unit was cancelled. Both units worked the Grand Ole Opry for the Martha White sponsored time frame. Red was on the road for five days a week and came into Nashville home base just long enough to play the Opry and load the bus again on Sunday. Except for the travel time Red considered this a good association. The recordings they made have been written about as being some of the best of old time and bluegrass.
Red returned to Knoxville WBIR-TV and the Cas Walker show again. This had been a safe haven for him many times. There was enough salary to live on and health insurance. Red had been back in Knoxville about two months when Roy Acuff called him.He wanted Red to come out to WIVK radio station to meet him. He would come to Knoxville often to go fishing at Norris Lake, Oswald's Brother had a cabin and they could fish all weekend. When Red got to WIVK it was not a fishing weekend, Roy offered him a job to become one of his Smoky Mountain Boys. The hardest thing Red ever had to do was to turn this job down. He had so much respect for Roy and would like to have gone with him. Red explained to him what a grueling road year he had just come off of and that his family had just settled down with all the children in school and he wanted to be with them for a while, There was also the other thing in his mind. He wanted to be Red Rector, book himself and play his own choice of music.
The fact that he had a job with Cas and a regular salary turned out to be very important. The MidDay Merry-Go-Round and the Tennessee Barn Dance were closing down. They had made a move to Whittle Springs Road on the edge of town and the crowds they had on Gay Street in the center of town did not follow them. Rock and roll became everything, Times were hard for most old time and bluegrass musicians not just in Knoxville but everywhere.
Red's first radio experience was at twelve and lasted until he died at age 60. He never stopped learning; each and every musician he worked with taught him more. These musicians paved a road and left a road map for those to come. There were no fancy buses and no airline tickets.
Red used to say, "you haven't paid your union dues until you play Robbinsville, North Carolina in the winter and drive home. Taking turns looking out an open window to guide the driver to the center of the road." They were crowded into a car with a bass strapped on top. Sometimes there were small crowds but they kept going for one reason — the love of the music. Many successful bands of today are playing the music and singing the songs that these early groups kept alive and brought forward for musicians from Knoxville.