Frank Hunter and his Black Mountain Boys.
Rich-R-Tone Records # 1049 - 1952
Side A - Tennessee Boy.
Side B - Long Time No See.
Here is a real heavy shellac killer bluegrass offering from Frank Hunter on the highly prized Rich-R-Tone label which was founded in 1946 in Johnson City, Tennessee before moving to Nashville.
Tennessee boy is real nice but for me it's the flip that moves,moves,moves! just brilliant bluegrass that jumps into your very being and lifts you up up up! Long Time No See is pure magic!!
That this early bluegrass artist hailed from the tropical panhandle state is somewhat unusual for the early bluegrass crowd of the '50s, most of whom came from musical families who had lived for generations scattered around various Appalachian strongholds. This is the same area where Hunter eventually drifted to, by the early '50s, establishing the Black Mountain Boys with fiddler and vocal partner Gene Christian, a former member of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. There was some serious talent lurking in the band membership that cut sides for the Rich R Tone label in the early '50s. Banjoist Pee Wee Buttrey was a wonderful player; while Junior Husky had a brilliant career as a country sessionman, thinking in big and little terms as both a bassist and a mandolinist. Other members of the group have passed into total obscurity, not even identifiable by name anymore due to the casual nature of recording session documentation.
Rich R Tone itself was a helpful connection for Hunter and his partners, even if it was just one guy with a car. As the mountain folk had known all their lives, one fellow with wheels can distribute a great deal of merchandise, whether it is the traditional white-lightning home-brewed liquor, or a newfangled gimmick called bluegrass records. Meanwhile, the Black Mountain Boys had secured a regular radio spot on WKSR out of Pulaski, TN, coming on at 5:45 a.m., with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs waiting in the wings for the 6:00 a.m. slot. The group worked together for several years following their Rich R Tone single release, "Long Time No See," appearing on the Louisiana Hayride, in a program that included country crooner Slim Whitman and old-timers Johnny and Jack but nothing even remotely resembling bluegrass. The music form was still relatively new, being created whole cloth, chord by chord, by pioneers such as Hunter. When the Black Mountain Boys called it quits, he headed back to Florida, basing himself out of Tampa, where he played some local jobs. At one point, he recorded an obscure LP entitled The Return of Frank Hunter, although it was hard to say where he had been or what he was returning to, other than further obscurity. When Rounder assembled its ambitious History of Bluegrass series, Hunter and his buddies were one of the only historic bluegrass acts the archivists were unable to supply a photograph of.
