Mandolin player Earl Taylor’s band was named the Stoney Mountain Boys, in honor of a geological feature near Taylor’s birthplace in the southwestern Virginia coalfields. The first version was formed by Earl in 1947, with Lucky Saylor and Elmer Kinsler. In 1952, Earl’s band was composed of Sam “Porky” Hutchins and future Country Gentlemen leader Charlie Waller. Later additions included Vernon “Boatwhistle” McIntyre, former Stanley Brothers fiddler Art Wooten, and Detroit legend Rufus Shoffner. Boatwhistle remained with Earl for the next 35 years, fathering second-generation Stoney Mountain Boy Vernon “Junior” McIntyre. In 1957, the band included Boatwhistle, Waller, and Hutchins. Later, Walter Hensley was added on banjo, and Charlie Waller dropped out to form the Country Gentlemen. By 1959, the band was playing seven nights and two afternoons a week in Baltimore, Maryland, and had caught the attention of folk music scholar Alan Lomax, who booked them into New York’s Carnegie Hall on April 3, 1959, where they became the first bluegrass band to play that hallowed hall. The band at the time included Earl on mandolin, Walter Hensley on banjo, Sam Hutchins on guitar, and Boatwhistle on bass (Curtis Cody on fiddle was added for the New York date). Soon after, Jim McCall joined the band and was to remain with Earl off and on for many years. In 1961, the band moved to Cincinnati, where they were to become local bluegrass legends.
Stoney Mountain Boys