The Charles River Valley Boys

Emerging as pioneers among city-based ensembles that performed bluegrass alongside old-time music, the Charles River Valley Boys helped ignite the folk resurgence of the early 1960s. Their initial song selections drew heavily from material associated with Uncle Dave Macon, Charlie Poole, and Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers, yet the 1966 release Beatle Country stood out as one of the first projects to recast selections by the British rock group in a country framework.

The ensemble took shape after banjoist Bob Siggins, then a Harvard student, crossed paths with Ethan Signer, a Yale alumnus who had arrived in Cambridge for biophysics studies at M.I.T., and Eric Sackheim, a New Yorker transplanted to the area who championed old-time music, maintained an extensive song list, and owned a collection of scarce recordings. Adopting their name through a playful reference to the Laurel River Valley Boys, the group made its first appearance at Harvard University’s Lowell House Dining Commons and gained wider notice through regular slots on the university radio station WHRB programs Balladeers and Hillbilly at Harvard. Recordings from those broadcasts later surfaced as the self-produced debut Bringin’ in the Georgia Mail. In subsequent years the musicians became fixtures at Tulla’s Coffeehouse in Harvard Square; after an introduction to Paul Rothchild, then a salesman for Dumont Record Distributors, they issued an album on his brief-lived Mt. Auburn imprint.

As the Charles River Valley Boys moved toward a more consistent full-time lineup, personnel shifted. By 1966 the roster comprised Siggins together with Joe Val, Jim Field, and Everett Allen Lilly. Val, raised by Italian immigrant parents and employed as a typewriter repairman, brought masterful bluegrass mandolin technique and a distinctive high tenor. After frequent guest appearances with the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover at the Boston bluegrass venue Hillbilly Ranch, he had formed a band with Bill Keith and Jim Rooney; once Keith entered Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys and Rooney departed for Greece on a Fulbright scholarship, Val became part of the Charles River Valley Boys. Guitarist and singer Field, born in New York, had previously served as lead vocalist for the New York Ramblers, a unit that included mandolinist David Grisman. Upright bassist Lilly was the son of Everett Lilly from the longstanding Lilly Brothers.

Following Paul Rothchild’s hiring as an A&R producer at Elektra Records, the Charles River Valley Boys submitted a demo containing four tracks, among them bluegrass arrangements of the Beatles numbers “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “What Goes On.” Rothchild and co-producer Peter K. Siegel responded by developing the notion of an entire album devoted to Beatles material. With added contributions from California guitarist Eric Thompson, another New York Ramblers alumnus, Nashville fiddler Buddy Spicher, and West Virginia dobro player Craig Wingfield, the band cut Beatle Country in Nashville during 1966. The record soon became a prized collector’s item that commanded prices up to $75 per copy until Rounder reissued it in 1995.