The Reno Brothers

Sons of the renowned banjo player Don Reno, Ronnie, Dale, and Don Wayne formed the Reno Brothers and devoted their professional paths to string band sounds and bluegrass, mirroring their father's approach. Ronnie launched his career in the music industry near 1956 by handling mandolin duties alongside his father and Red Smiley on the Top o' the Mornin' television program out of Roanoke, Virginia. After Smiley's departure, Ronnie and Don Reno maintained the hosting duties, and by the late 1960s Ronnie had taken up bass in the Osborne Brothers' lineup. He stayed with that group into the early 1970s before stepping forward as lead singer for Merle Haggard's Strangers. His initial solo chart appearance arrived in 1983 via the single "Homemade Love," three years after his screen debut in Clint Eastwood's Bronco Billy. While Ronnie advanced independently, his brothers entered their father's Tennessee Cut-Ups and remained with the band long after Don Reno parted ways with Bill Harrell in the mid-1970s. The siblings united following their father's 1984 passing to create music that merged bluegrass with country elements. Their earliest releases featured a rendition of "Yonder Comes a Freight Train" together with "Love Will Never Be the Same." In 1993 the trio also began presenting a recurring program on the Americana cable network, at the time the sole nationally televised series centered on bluegrass.