12/25/2011

The Golden Melody Boys

Also known as "Demps and Phil",  Dempsy Jones (vocal and tiple )  and Phil Featherstonhaugh or Featherstonehaugh or Featherstone (mandolin) was an Iowa country duet of the 20's.
As told by Tony Russell in "Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost" Dempsy Jones was a baseball player and lately manager and the Linn County Recorder, Featherstonehaugh "didn't have much a profession" and was run in for transporting liquor in an automobile and fined 300$ in 1925 but he was a fine mandolin player.
The duet was locally successful around 1925 and recorded for paramount in Chicago during1927.
Fans could follow them on stage and on local radio shows to hear an old time repertoire with comedy tunes and a few instrumentals with "modern" chords & strums ornamentation and nice melodies .







A description of their string complementarity by Tony Russell :









5 tunes could be find on the blog with this vinyl compilation , but the blog description is wrong when speaking about a guitar mandolin duet ( except for guitar rag for my opinion)

The complete Paramount recordings can be found in this tremendous 600 mp3 20's/30's old time music compilation for 10$ (J15108 Parker and Woolbright - Golden Melody Boys)

"Down in Arkansas" :


"Freak Melody" :


"Sabula Blues" :

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