Herschel Sizemore To Be Inducted into Hall-of-Fame Today!

Herschel Sizemore at 75 is about to join two of his contemporaries in the Alabama Bluegrass Hall of Fame during a ceremony and show today.

He's played with bluegrass stars such as Jimmy Martin, Del McCoury, Vassar Clements, Bill Monroe, The Bluegrass Cardinals, The Boys From Shilo,  The Dixie Gentlemen, Allen Bibey and Curly Seckler. Through the years, Sizemore has released or appeared on about 75 albums, including those where he worked as a studio musician.

------ Herschel Sizemore playing "Red Apple Rag" on Altman F snakehead. ------

Sizemore was born in Sheffiel, AL in 1935 and later moved to the rural Colbert County town of Leighton.

He moved from the Shoals more than 40 years ago to perform on a local bluegrass show with  Don Reno and Red Smiley in Roanoke. When the duo split up, he and the other band members formed a new group.

“We bought their bus and went into business for ourselves,” Sizemore said. “It lasted about five years. I left them and went out on my own.” Sizemore said

Sizemore said the interest in bluegrass from young people has helped keep it alive, even though the music has evolved over time from the early bluegrass of Bill Monroe.

After meeting Bill Monroe at the age of eight, Sizemore says he has no interest other than bluegrass and mandolin after that.

In a recent Mandolin Magazine feature, Sizemore refering to his first mandolin and learning to play said:

"I was fortunate in an unfortunate way -I didn't have a record player, only a radio."

In those World War II days, unable to listen to records. he developed a remarkably keen ear and put his fertile musical imagination to work developing a unique style based partly on popular mandolinists of the day. But, he was also powerfully influenced by the haunting double-stops and soaring fiddle work of players like Benny Martin and Howdy Forrester.

Years later, after he and Bill Monroe had become friends, Monroe would kid Herschel about "not playin' no part of nothin'" because he didn't play Monroe-style. But then, he would confide in Sizemore how much he respected him. "You play what you hear in your head, just like I did," Monroe once said to Sizemore.

That sense of music identity and creativity helped Herschel Sizemore create a mandolin style bridging the gap between the rhythmically dominant approach favored by most early bluegrass mandolinists and the highly melodic approach developed by contemporary players like David Grisman and John Reischman.
Read The Full Article in Mandolin Magazine