Pee Wee Lambert & Curley Parker with the Pine Ridge Boys
On August 5, 1924, Darrell "Pee Wee" Lambert was born in Thacker, West Virginia.
Like many Appalachian entertainers of his day, he found that music was an abiding relief from coal mining. Lambert has been described as "a charter member" of the Stanley Brothers' band. He played the mandolin and he sang in a high, lonesome style in the manner of his hero Bill Monroe.
He worked with Roy Sykes' Blue Ridge Mountain Boys prior to World War II, and after the war Carter Stanley joined Sykes when he demobilized from the Army. It was there that Lambert and Stanley first met.
Lambert was featured on all the Stanley Brothers' RICH-R-TONE recording sessions, singing tenor on "Death Is Only a Dream" and "I Can Tell You the Time," recorded at their first session. However, he is perhaps best remembered for singing lead on the brothers' version of "Molly and Tenbrooks."
A radio favorite of the Stanley Brothers was "Rose of Old Kentucky," lauded for Lambert's lead singing. He participated in three of the four Columbia Records recording sessions, starting on March 1, 1949, when they recorded three lovely trios, "A Vision of Mother," "The White Dove," and "The Angels Are Singing (In Heaven Tonight)." Lambert sang the high baritone part in what was a new arrangement for trio singing.
In 1951 he joined up with Curley Parker, a Kentucky musical virtuoso, having earlier left the Stanley Brothers when Carter Stanley went to work with Bill Monroe. Lambert re-joined the Stanley Brothers early in 1952 for a couple of months.
Lambert and Parker became co-leaders of the Bluegrass Pardners, later the Pine Ridge Boys, and kept the group going for the next decade; membership included banjoist J.D. Crowe, at just 16 years of age.
Pee Wee is noted as having played a 1922 Lloyd Loar F5 mandolin (as in the photograph), now owned by Ricky Skaggs, who acquired it after it was damaged, abandoned and then restored.
The Bluegrass Pardners / Pine Ridge Boys recorded a handful of singles and EPs on the RICH-R-TONE label, which they sold out of the trunk of their car after their shows.