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Artist
Walter Hensley
12+ albums
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Liner notes by Tina Aridas from the self-titled 2003 CD release, James Reams, Walter Hensley & The Barons of Bluegrass: That night back in April of 1959 when Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys played Carnegie Hall (along with Muddy Waters and Memphis Slim, Jimmy Driftwood and Mike and Pete Seeger, among others), Curtis Cody, who was guesting on fiddle for the Baltimore-based bluegrass band, peeked out through the curtains before the start of the show. The elegant hall was packed with Northern folk-music fans, as the first bluegrass group ever to perform at the elegant and historic concert hall – more accustomed to playing in bars in and around Baltimore – paced nervously backstage. Curtis turned to banjo player Walter Hensley and said, “Walt, I don’t think they’ll like us a bit.” Walt recalls that his legs “were like Jell-O – and we had to play the fastest song we knew.” But when Walt, with legs shaking, stepped out onto the stage before the assembled audience at Alan Lomax’s Folksong ’59 concert, Curtis recalls that “he played something on the banjo, and they tore that place up.” Curtis Cody wasn’t alone in his assessment of the band’s performance and the crowd’s reaction. “There is true folk magic in every note Walt plays,” according to Alan Lomax. Neil V. Rosenberg, in his book Bluegrass: A History, reports that “all agreed that of the various groups in the concert, Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys were the hit of the evening.” Years later in an article in
