Buster Pack and Lonesome Pine Boys
Early bluegrass musician Buster Pack was born Stuard Lesley Pack in the hills of Russell County, Virginia, where he began picking guitar at the age of four. By six, he had already won a fiddler's contest held at a Reno Circus in Dante, Virginia. In this arena of youthful pickers, he outplayed Ralph Stanley of the Stanley Brothers for top honors. Pack played music constantly throughout high school and college, starting up a radio program with Jesse McReynolds of Jim & Jesse fame.
The group's initial recording efforts included cutting sides for the RICH-R-TONE label, a one-man operation that pioneered the distribution of bluegrass music throughout the Appalachians. This label was not seeking to document a "folk" or "old-time" sound, but instead simply cut sides of the music that was being played by the active local bands of the time. One of the bands Pack and his buddies put together for the label eventually earned them a place in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
The single that is of interest to rockabilly collectors was entitled "Indian Boogie" and was recorded in Kentucky in 1952. Trying to come up with a Native American sound, Pack's band created distinct guitar work that was intended to sound like a Native American dirge.
The more common bluegrass sound of the group became familiar over many Appalachian radio stations such as WCYB and WFHG in Bristol, Virginia; WJHL in Johnson City, Tennessee; the "barrell of fun" station in Elizabethton, Tennessee and WNVA in Norton, Virginia. Pack did more than play bluegrass on the radio, eventually becoming a news announcer on a station transmitting out of Grundy, Virginia.