As kids, along with the usual top 40 stuff, my brother and I listened to a lot of tapes  made off the radio in Springfield, MO.  We loved bluegrass and variety shows like Wayne Glenn (“The Old Record Collector”) and the perennially popular Riders in the Sky (heard on public radio, KSMU).

One particular tape was a favorite. It was an eclectic playlist, including the Andrews sisters and Tim O’Brien, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Bob Carlin, and Cryin’ Sam Hutchinson (C-H-I-C-K-E-N!). But our favorite number was called Freight Train Boogie, by the Delmore Brothers. Game changer, even for a ten year old. We wore that tape out.

This Delmore Brothers tune, “I’ve Got the Big River Blues,” is a great example of how Alton & Rabon used the tenor guitar together with the 6-string guitar.

Flash forward 15 years or so, and I rediscovered the Delmore Brothers, appropriately enough, through another radio station, the fabulous WDVX, while living in Knoxville, TN. They spun the Louvin Brothers’ Tribute to the Delmore Brothers version of the Freight Train Boogie, which added a last verse along these lines:

The Delmore Brothers was a mighty team
They could play guitar and sing like a dream.
They rocked this nation with a brand new beat
When the freight train boogie got ’em on their feet

We dug up some Delmore Brothers without delay, and it was love at first listen, again. The sweet sound of Alton’s tenor was a big part of that. I decided, even if my own brother had inconveniently turned into a true bass (ruining any hope for family close-harmony), I needed to hunt down a tenor guitar.

Despite having an embarrassment of tenor banjos (it’s sort of like a flock of geese), David and I had never even seen a four-string guitar live and in person. We started asking around amongst musician friends—nobody had one, other than one or two archtops chewed up (literally) and spit out by the Texas fiddle contest scene.

One spring we were at fiddler and accordion player Dwight Lamb’s house for a session and a visit, and he said, “Lloyd Snow might have a tenor guitar for you.” We were delighted and Lloyd came to visit the next day.

We’d met him once before; he had salt-n-pepper hair and a big, friendly smile, and a big presence in a room. His hands said he’d been a farmer much of his life; they were thick and strong and cracked, and narrowed at the tips to nearly a point with the nail. He had sat in Dwight’s “music parlor” and sung for us in a rich, clear baritone, accompanying himself on a vintage Martin dreadnought. He had a prodigious memory for lyrics and could really sell a song, even in a sunny living room, with the washer running in the background.

Lloyd and Wilbur Snow had played in a band with Dwight years earlier called Red Lamb and the Snow Brothers; Wilbur played harmonica, while Dwight fiddled and Lloyd played guitar and sang. We learned one of Wilbur’s two steps, which we now call Wilbur Snow’s Tune.

When Lloyd came in the parlor this particular day, he carried two cases, one large, and one a small cardboard case.

He told us the story: he’d been trading his Gibson for what he considered a serious upgrade, the Martin dreadnought. The trade took sort of a bizarre turn when the gent agreed to sell him the Martin, but with one condition: Lloyd had to take the tenor as well. Lloyd wanted that Martin pretty bad, so he went ahead and took the tenor, but he didn’t know what to do with it, exactly. He had slid it under the bed in his spare room sometime before 1980, and when we opened that cardboard case in 2004 or so, there it was, nestled in a chocolate brown shag toilet-seat cover like the pearl in an oyster.

We bought it on the spot.

Even after so many years, it sang out with a clear, bright voice, which only got better with new strings. It was like waking Sleeping Beauty to find she’s every bit as charming as you’d imagined.

Lloyd showed us the Martin he’d gotten along with it, and we had to agree it suited him, with a smoky sound and a nice dark finish that looked right with his overalls. He demonstrated by singing us “The Little Black Bronc,” a ’40s ballad of the trials of a cowboy breaking a new horse (not to spoil the ending, but the horse got the best of him).

Here’s “The Little Black Bronc” as played by Al Clauser and His Oklahoma Outlaws.  (Listen close for a hot tenor banjo in this band!)

Lloyd passed away not long after, but we consider ourselves lucky to have met him, and hope to take good care of his tenor.