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Early Influences

  • Carter Family
  • Monroe Brothers
  • Blue Sky Boys
  • Callahan Brothers
  • Paul Buskirk

Came to Fame With

  • The Lilly Brothers & Don Stover, 1948-1996

Performed With

  • The Lonesome Holler Boys, 1938
  • Molly O’Day & the Cumberland Mountain Folks, 1945
  • The Smiling Mountain Boys, Knoxville, TN, 1940s
  • Red Belcher’s Kentucky Ridgerunners, 1948-1950
  • Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs & the Foggy Mountain Boys, 1951-1952, 1958-1959
  • The Confederate Mountaineers, Boston, MA, 1952-1956
  • The Lilly Brothers & Don Stover, 1956-1996
  • Clear Creek Crossin’ or Everett Lilly and the Lilly Mountaineers, 1970-2012

By the Way

  • The only sideman in the Foggy Mountain Boys ever separately credited on a record label.
  • Nicknamed “the Colonel” by Tex Logan probably because, in his Confederate Mountaineers uniform and being the boss of the outfit, he came across as a colonel type.
  • Vice president of Towa Kikaku and Company, which booked the Lilly Brothers & Don Stover, Bill Monroe, Jim & Jesse, and J.D. Crowe on tours of Japan and issued commercial recordings from some of those performances.

Led the Way

  • Bridged the brother duet style of the 1930s into the emerging bluegrass genre of the 1940s and 1950s. A kind of “living encyclopedia,” the Lilly Brothers evoked for modern audiences the sounds and performance techniques of earlier decades.
  • Influenced numerous country, bluegrass, and folk artists in New England and West Virginia, and played a major role in popularizing bluegrass in Japan.
  • Appeared in the movies Festival (1967) and Bluegrass Country Soul (1971) and the West Virginia Public Television documentary True Facts in a Country Song (1979).
  • Massachusetts Country Music Hall of Fame, 1986.
  •  Bluegrass Hall of Fame, 2002.
  • West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, 2008.
  •  IBMA Recorded Event of the Year for “Everett Lilly and Everybody & Their Brother,” 2008.

Early Influences

  • Carter Family
  • Monroe Brothers
  • Blue Sky Boys
  • Callahan Brothers
  • Paul Buskirk

Came to Fame With

  • The Lilly Brothers & Don Stover, 1948-1996

Performed With

  • The Lonesome Holler Boys, 1938
  • Molly O’Day & the Cumberland Mountain Folks, 1945
  • The Smiling Mountain Boys, Knoxville, TN, 1940s
  • Red Belcher’s Kentucky Ridgerunners, 1948-1950
  • Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs & the Foggy Mountain Boys, 1951-1952, 1958-1959
  • The Confederate Mountaineers, Boston, MA, 1952-1956
  • The Lilly Brothers & Don Stover, 1956-1996
  • Clear Creek Crossin’ or Everett Lilly and the Lilly Mountaineers, 1970-2012

By the Way

  • The only sideman in the Foggy Mountain Boys ever separately credited on a record label.
  • Nicknamed “the Colonel” by Tex Logan probably because, in his Confederate Mountaineers uniform and being the boss of the outfit, he came across as a colonel type.
  • Vice president of Towa Kikaku and Company, which booked the Lilly Brothers & Don Stover, Bill Monroe, Jim & Jesse, and J.D. Crowe on tours of Japan and issued commercial recordings from some of those performances.

Led the Way

  • Bridged the brother duet style of the 1930s into the emerging bluegrass genre of the 1940s and 1950s. A kind of “living encyclopedia,” the Lilly Brothers evoked for modern audiences the sounds and performance techniques of earlier decades.
  • Influenced numerous country, bluegrass, and folk artists in New England and West Virginia, and played a major role in popularizing bluegrass in Japan.
  • Appeared in the movies Festival (1967) and Bluegrass Country Soul (1971) and the West Virginia Public Television documentary True Facts in a Country Song (1979).
  • Massachusetts Country Music Hall of Fame, 1986.
  •  Bluegrass Hall of Fame, 2002.
  • West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, 2008.
  •  IBMA Recorded Event of the Year for “Everett Lilly and Everybody & Their Brother,” 2008.

From the Archives

“Laughing, [Everett] told me of one time when he was asked to play for an undertakers’ convention, and he left them in a stunned silence with a set of songs consisting of ‘Bury Me Beneath the Willow,’ ‘Mother’s Not Dead She’s Only Sleeping,’ and ‘Mother’s Body’s Lying in the Baggage Coach Ahead.'”
Samuel Charters, in liner notes to Have a Feast Here Tonight! Prestige Folklore Records, 1999.
“Not long after my Dad went with Flatt & Scruggs he showed up at my grandparents’ house all excited. He had a copy of their first Columbia recordings, which included ‘Over the Hills to the Poorhouse,’ which Dad had taken to Lester. My grandparents never did have a record player but Dad managed to borrow one from someone. Soon we gathered around and heard my Dad playing mandolin and singing tenor. A few years later, my brother and I went to Boston for the summer. An adult took us to the Hillbilly Ranch, the big nightclub where the Lilly Brothers & Don Stover played seven nights a week. We were too young to go in and so we peered through a window in the door. There in the stage lights was my father playing the ‘Orange Blossom Special’ as smoke drifted around him. I felt instant sorrow as I watched and listened. When I returned to my grandparents in West Virginia at the end of the summer I often thought of that scene when the quiet darkness returned to the mountains, and I simply prayed for my Dad. I knew that Dad, Bea, and Don had large families and that a bluegrass band on the road in those days was a tough proposition.”
Everett Alan Lilly (son), personal communication, 2009
“I remember asking Everett when I visited Boston while in high school why he did not write more songs. He lectured me on the beauty of the old songs and noted that if the Lilly Brothers did not do them audiences would not get a chance to hear them.”
Michael Toney (nephew), personal communication, 2009
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