The Review section of the Saturday Wall Street Journal has a column called, "Playlist," where a different person each week writes about a song that is meaningful to them.
Today's Playlist is written by Ricky Skaggs, about the Stanley Brothers' song, The Lonesome River. I don't know if this link will work because of the WJS paywall, but here are some excerpts.
"Their song, 'The Lonesome River,' inspired me to play the mandolin.
"The song broke my heart when I first heard it on the radio in the late '50s, and I cried. . . Pee Wee's mandolin kicks off the song, and when they hit the chorus, man that rocked my world.
"The story goes that in 1961, after a performance, Pee Wee accidentally broke the mandolin he had used on the recording. He threw it in the garbage bin out back before driving off. Two musician-fans fished it out and had it fixed. Over the years, the mandolin changed hands about five times.
"Then in 2010, mandolinist David Grisman called me and said he had Pee Wee's restored 1922 F-5 Lloyd Loar mandolin and wanted to sell it. I bought it. . . . That's a lot of history there."
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