Biography

Buck Ryan With Don Reno & Red Smiley Fiddling Buck Ryan

Musicians:
BUCK RYAN – Fiddle
DON RENO – 5 String Banjo, Lead Guitar
RED SMILEY – Guitar
BILL HARRELL – Guitar
JERRY Mccoury – Bass
TOM KILEY – Steel Guitar
JIM EBERT – Piano
BOB FINKES - Drums

1. Goodbye Liza Jane (2:19)
2. Chicks Waltz (1:45)
3. Natural Bridge Blues (2:02)
4. I Saw Your Face In The Moon (2:21)
5. Kansas City Railroad Blues (2:08)
6. Kingdom Coming (1:27)
7. Stomping With Reno (2:03)
8. Whispering (1:56)
9. Fiddling Around (2:09)
10. Red’s Virginia Waltz (1:56)
11. Love Somebody (1:38)
12. Lee Highway Blues (1:50)
13. Mary’s Melody (2:56)
14. Ryan’s Stomp (1:21)
15. South Sea Sweetheart (2:28)
16. Indian Creek (2:09)
17. In The Pines (1:59)
18. Ryan’s Polka (2:23)
19. Black Berry Blossom (1:23)
20. Hog Trough Reel (1:58)

Buck Ryan with Don Reno & Red Smiley –
“Fiddling Buck Ryan”

Rural Rhythm Records has done it again by resurrecting the works of another fine fiddler who is prominent in the annals of bluegrass music: Buck Ryan. Buck was playing fiddle with Don Reno, Red Smiley and Bill Harrell and the Tennessee Cut-Ups at the time so we listeners are fortunate to hear one of those rare recordings where Reno & Smiley and Harrell are serving as a backup band. Unfortunately, this was one of Red’s last recordings for we lost him early the next year.

This 1971 fiddle album recording originally came out when Uncle Jim O’Neal owned Rural Rhythm. Collectors of this music tend to cherish these old LP’s. Uncle Jim did us a great service by preserving these great artists, so many of whom are no longer with us. So, now here is Buck Ryan in all his glory on compact disc., recorded from the original master tapes which was produced by Dick Unteed and recorded at the Rome Recording Studios.

Buck Ryan’s version of “Lee Highway Blues,” included on this album, is a good example of why he was so popular through the years. We are also treated to quite a variety of fiddling which spans western swing, contest fiddling and many bluegrass standards.

Arnold W. “Buck” Ryan (May 2, 1925-January 7, 1982) began his professional music career in Virginia at the age of fourteen about 1940. He was basically a bluegrass fiddler, but played enough of the contest fiddling style to win the National Hillbilly Music Center in Warrenton and several others through the years. Buck’s first band, Salt and Peanuts, played on WSVA, Harrisonburg, Virginia. At the station, he joined Lee Moore’s group which included Toby Stroud on Fiddle and guitar. They played together at WWVA on the prestigious World’s Original Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia. He soon joined Toby’s Blue Mountain Boys there and the Old Dominion Barn Dance in Richmond during the mid-fifties and, in 1956, joined Jimmy Dean’s Texas Wildcats. This made him one of very few fiddlers who recorded for a major label at the time: he also played on WSM’s Grand Ole Opry with the group.
Ryan left the Wildcats in 1960 to join The Yates Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Ramblers in the Virginia area with Wayne Yates (mandolin), Bill Yates (bass), Bill Harrell (guitar) and Smiley Hobbs (banjo). In The early 1960’s, he became a member of Bill Harrell’s Virginians and, in 1968, joined Harrell again when Bill was partner with Don Reno in Don Reno, Bill Harrell and the Tennessee Cut-Ups where he stayed for most of the next twelve years until his health forced him to decrease his touring significantly. He retired in 1981. He died with a year at age fifty-six on January 7, 1982.
Liner Notes by Barry R. Willis
Pine Valley Music 1997