Buddy Jones (bluegrass musician)

Shelby Gene "Buddy" Jones (February 2, 1937 – August 13, 2014) was an American bluegrass musician, songwriter, and music recorder and distributor.

In 1953, Jones left the Beckly area and traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he enlisted in the U.S. Navy during the end of the Korean War.

After the war, Jones continued what he had started in 1949, and began pursuing a music career again.

In 1958 he joined the bands Toby Stroud & Jane and The Blue Mountain Boys and also did performances with affiliated musicians Wilma Lee and Stony Cooper.

He made a deal with bluegrass music distributor and entrepreneur Caz Walker in Fitchburg, and from 1959 into the 1980s he frequently traveled from his home in Fitchburg to places across New England, New York, and the Mid-Atlantic regions, down to Tennessee and the Carolinas.

In 1961, Jones and his close friends Louis Arsenault, Bob French, and his wife formed the band The Rainbow Valley Boys & Sweetheart.

Beginning in 1963 Buddy and other band members began to perform on radio shows, and local television programs quite frequently throughout the Northeast, including appearances on "The Coffee Drinking Night Hawk" with Lee More, a program based out of New Jersey, WWVA Jamboree, and WSTJ White River, where they would later sign with Vermont Records in Quechee.

Their first album, entitled "Rainbow Valley Boys Bluegrass" was released in 1963 by Vermont Records.

In 1977 Jones signed with Tanya Tucker and toured several venues in places such as Nashville, Knoxville, and Elizabethtown.