Charles River Valley Boys
| The Charles River Valley Boys | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Genres | Bluegrass |
| Years active | 1959-1968 |
| Labels | Folklore, Mount Auburn, Prestige, Elektra |
| Past members | Bob Siggins Eric Sackheim Ethan Signer John Cooke Fritz Richmond Joe Val Jim Field Everett Allen Lilly |
The Charles River Valley Boys were an American bluegrass group who toured and recorded in the 1960s and were best known for their 1966 album, Beatle Country, presenting bluegrass versions of songs by The Beatles.
The group was formed by students in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1959. They took their name as a jokey reference to the Laurel River Valley Boys, a traditional bluegrass group from North Carolina who recorded several albums in that style in the 1950s, and to the Charles River, which flows between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts.
Although the group's membership changed frequently, the core performers of the Charles River Valley Boys in the early years were Eric Sackheim (guitar, mandolin), Bob Siggins (banjo, vocals), and Clay Jackson (guitar, vocals), all students at Harvard, and Ethan Signer (guitar, mandolin, autoharp, vocals), a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All were fans of bluegrass and old-timey music, and they began performing together, often with others, at Harvard, appearing regularly on the Harvard student radio station WHRB and becoming regular performers at Tulla's Coffeehouse in Harvard Square. In 1961 they recorded an album, Bringin' In The Georgia Mail, partly in Cambridge and partly in London, England. It was released in the UK by Doug Dobell on his Folklore label.
In 1962, Paul Rothchild, a friend of the band who had worked as a record distributor in the Boston area, produced their second album on his own label, Mount Auburn Records. He then began working for Prestige Records, which reissued the album as Bluegrass And Old Timey Music (1962), and produced a further album on the label, Blue Grass Get Together (with Tex Logan, 1964). By that time, the group comprised Siggins, Signer, John Cooke (guitar, vocals), and Fritz Richmond (washtub bass, vocals). Cooke, the son of English-born journalist Alistair Cooke, had joined after Eric Sackheim decided to return to his studies in Europe. Between 1963 and 1965, the group performed and toured on a full-time basis.
...
Wikipedia