McLain Family Band
Bands / Ensembles
The McLain Family Band (1968–present) is a bluegrass family band from Kentucky. It was started in 1968, at the urging of his wife, Betty, by Raymond K. McLain, an ethnomusicologist at Berea College, with three of their children: Raymond W. (then 14), Alice (12) and Ruth (10). Raymond K. played guitar, Raymond W. banjo, Alice mandolin and Ruth bass. The band made its first weekly television broadcast on WKYH-TV in Hazard, Kentucky, in 1968. Younger siblings Nancy Ann and Michael joined later, and the members began trading instruments between songs. Between 1968 and 1990 the band recorded 14 albums, played all 50 states, and toured 62 countries, some of them as musical ambassadors for the U.S. State Department, appearing at the Grand Ole Opry, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center. From 1977 to 1988 they hosted the McLain Family Band Festival, at Renfro Valley the first year and then on the family's farm at Big Hill, Kentucky. Alice's husband, Al White, joined in 1977, and Michael's wife, Jennifer Banks McLain, also played with the band. They were inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2024.
In the newsletter
- No. 16 Fall 1998