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Thursday, August 23, 2018

Oh you wanted more?

WAYNE RANEY



with The Delmore Brothers . . . . peerless stuff

I wish I had been born in Wolf Bayou, Arkansas!









and a favourite. . . . . . 


Wayne Rainey was born in Wolf Bayou, Arkansas. He started playing the harmonica at an early age and never stopped. He attended high school in Concord, Arkansas. He would wear the harmonica around his neck as he worked the farm fields, playing it when he could take a break. In an article around 1950 or so, they said he could remember the days when he would hitchhike from town to town in almost every state in the union and playing for whatever money he might be able to pick up at clubs and cafes. And he did this during the depression when jobs were scarce. 
As luck would have it, he was in a small town in Texas around 1934 and went into the local pool hall and started playing for the people there. The folks there liked him so much, he collected all of $3.75 for his efforts. It turns out the local radio station manager was there, too and immediately hired him to work for the station - XEPN out of Eagle Pass, Texas. And his musical career was off and running. 
He got married to his wife about 1942 or so and they had two kids when the article appeared in 1950, Wanda and Zyndall. 
Wayne was also a prolific songwriter and had already written over sixty tunes by then. The most popular of them was "Why Don't You Haul Off And Love Me?". They cite King records as mentioning that it had sold over a 500,000 copies of it. And was made even more popular when about a dozen other recording companies had artists covering it. 
Alton Delmore (December 25, 1908 - June 8, 1964) and Rabon Delmore (December 3, 1916 - December 4, 1952), billed as The Delmore Brothers, were country music pioneers and stars of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s. The Delmore Brothers, together with other brother duets such as the Louvin Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, the Monroe Brothers (Birch, Charlie and Bill Monroe), the McGee Brothers, and The Stanley Brothers, had a profound impact on the history of country music and American popular music.

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