the Round Up Boys / Lucky Strings
Marion, 1958-65
November, 1960
The Lucky Strings started out in 1957 as two guitarists, Ronnie Williams and George Sexton. Ronnie was 17 at the time and George was 15, students at Marion's Harding High School.
From July, 1957. WTVN is a Columbus station
From July, 1958
By 1958 they were a working band under the name of Lucky Strings. The added another guitar or bass player, Don Miller. The little documentation we could find shows they played occasionally for functions and parties.
A woman from Marion, Edna Bright, wrote a couple song lyrics and, if the posted article is correct, sent them to the original song-poem operation Five Star records in Boston. For the record collectors reading here, Five Star was the source of the Sterling records label and singers Norm Burms, Gary Roberts, and Mel Moore. Five Star composed the music and Edna met up with the Lucky Strings to record the songs. The article also says they were to record them for Fortune, they instead recorded the songs fot Hark. Many song-poem submissions had recordings made by Five Star with Burns, or for early Sterling records, Joe Hall as the singer, but no other recordings of the songs have turned up.
The group name was changed to Round Up Boys for the 45, and what a great rockabilly 45 it is. The players sounds like the three members, lead (Ronnie?) and rhythm (George?) guitars, and upright bass (Don?), no drums. Despite the ad, the record didn't seem to sell well, possibly for a reason explained below, and is one of the rarest and most sought after Ohio rockabilly records.
April, 1965, open 24 hours! Evergreen was owned by Forney Crace of Hark records.
The group continued to play until 1965/6 using both Lucky Strings and Round Up Boys names. Sometimes Ronnie or George would get top billing. We're not sure that they continued to play together.
Edna Bright and her estranged husband were killed in a murder-suicide on May 20, 1963. Edna left 8 children. It's possible that this terrible tragedy led to the remaining run of records being trashed.
Discography
Huckleberry Hollow / Rock And Roll Baby - Hark 504, Nov 1960