The Blue Sky Boys
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The Blue Sky Boys recordings for sale
When they broke with Sherrill, they decided to make a go of it as a duet, similar to Karl and Harty or
Mac and Bob
on WLS in Chicago, the Monroe Brothers in their area, or the
Delmore Brothers on the Grand Ole Opry. In fact, through the years, their repertoire has reflected the influence of other duets: "I'm Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail," "The Prisoner's Dream," "Kentucky," and "The Unfinished Rug" are from Karl and Harty, while
Mac and Bob contributed "Midnight on the Stormy Sea." From the Delmores came "Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes," while "Dust on the Bible" and "When Heaven Comes Down" are Bailes Brothers tunes. Later groups like
Johnny and Jack
also influenced their repertoire, most conspicuously, the
Louvin Brothers, who wrote and first recorded "Alabama," two brothers who frankly idolized and were strongly influenced by
The Blue Sky Boys.
It was because of the profusion of brother duets at the time, in fact, that their distinctive stage and recording name was chosen. Originally, they went by the name, the Bolick Brothers, but producer Eli Oberstein suggested the name change due to the plethora of brother teams, such as the Delmore Brothers, the Callahan Brothers, the Monroe Brothers and the Dixon Brothers, so Bill culled blue from the Blue Ridge Mountains, and sky was a result of that country being known as the Land of the Sky. Thus was one of the most popular and durable acts of the 1930's and 1940's born and named. Much of their success was due, of course, to their quiet, dignified personalities and their singing: a more moving, sincere, and haunting duet was not to come out of this era, and is unique and unmatched in country music.
Their day-to-day career in the 1930's was not all that dissimilar to that of scores of other professional country music bands and singers: they had an affiliation with a radio station on which they had one or two programs a day, from which they plugged their night appearances throughout the listening range of the station. Before the end of 1941, both Bolicks were in uniform, not returning to music until after the war in 1945. This postwar period, dominated by more current songs and, as always, a large number of gospel songs and hymns, produced music as good or better than ever before, but provided less of a focus for the ballad scholar to sink teeth into. Musically, too, these were among their best recordings: the addition of a tasteful and unobtrusive fiddle and string bass enhanced and filled out their sound without cluttering it, as well as, of course, more accurately reflecting the sound they had presented on radio and in person all along.
It is the kind of legend from which legends spring: two young brothers, the mandolin player a fresh-faced veteran of two professional bands at 18, the guitar player a shy and professionally inexperienced 16 year-old, auditioning for Victor records, the largest and most successful record company in the world. Although they had recently split from Homer Sherrill's band, Bill and Earl Bolick still appeared to face the imposing Victor microphones as just a duet, and it was with mixed elation and apprehension that they mounted the stairs to the impromptu studio set up on the second floor of the Southern Radio Corporation Building on Tyron Street, in Charlotte, North Carolina, on a warm Tuesday in June, 1936.
Born to a musical family near Hickory, North Carolina, Bill (10/18/17) and Earl (11/16/19) began applying their unique and distinctive harmony to British and American ballads, old hymns and parlor songs of the 1890's, such as "After the Ball," many learned from their maternal grandmother. Musically precocious, Bill joined Home Sherrill's Crazy Hickory Nuts at the tender age of 16, and he was joined by his younger brother a year later.
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