Shorty Shehan
Oscar V. "Shorty" Shehan (October 26, 1923 – 1983) was a country and bluegrass fiddler and bassist. He was born in Tennessee. He began playing on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance in his mid-teens and later worked with the Moonlight Drifters, the Tennessee Pals and, from 1942, the Lonesome Pine Boys. He and his wife, guitarist Juanita Shehan, were regulars on the Brown County Jamboree in Bean Blossom, Indiana, in the late 1940s and 1950s, when Bill Monroe owned it. The couple also appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, the Renfro Valley Barn Dance and the Dover Jamboree. Shehan played fiddle and bass with Monroe's Blue Grass Boys for a period in 1951. He played string bass on the band's October 28, 1951, Decca session that produced "Christmas Time's A-Comin'." He starred with his band, the Pioneers, on Hillbilly Heaven, a Saturday afternoon television show on WISH-TV in Indianapolis, around 1955. Folklorist Art Rosenbaum made field recordings of Shorty and Juanita performing "Free Little Bird" and "The Soldier and the Lady," which were issued in 2008.
In the newsletter
- No. 11 Spring 1997