Allen Brothers & Other Country Brother Acts

Country music has always featured brother acts. The most prolific included the Delmore Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys and the Monroe Brothers. This collection focuses mainly on Austin and Lee Allen. The first three CD's are devoted to them and the fourth deals with their fraternal contemporaries. By the early 1920's, already professional musicians, they settled in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chattanooga would feature in a number of their titles to the extent they were dubbed the Chattanooga Boys. In Chattanooga the Allen's got on radio once or twice a week - a bonus because radio was then the most effective form of publicity. The result was lucrative bookings as far afield as Georgia. They also performed for medicine shows - the musicians gathered a receptive audience for the show owner to exploit. The Allen's seem to have entered the recording studio fairly seamlessly and they had decent record sales. They recorded regularly - most years twice or more. Their sales were sufficient for them to continue to record well into the 1930's - many musicians were discarded because of the depression. Possibly their best-selling title was the slightly risqu A New Salty Dog. Other good sellers were Jake Walk Blues and Reckless Night Blues. Inevitably new brother acts like the Shelton's, the Anglin's and the Crowder's overtook the Allen's, and a few of those are also included.