Harold Austin

Born Harold Eugene Austin on 3 August 1944 in Sharon, Pennsylvania, USA, he spent his childhood in Kentucky. There the singing of Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt shaped his direction, and he emerged as one of bluegrass music’s most admired high tenors. Although he first prepared for the ministry rather than a career in performance, a 1972 victory in a singing contest changed his immediate course while he was serving at a church in Walton, Kentucky. He joined Carl Story’s Rambling Mountaineers, appeared on several of their albums, and heard his own composition “Mother’s Last Words” chosen as the title track for an Atteiram collection. In 1975 he cut a solo album for the same label and launched his own group, First National Bluegrass, which issued further recordings. The band remained active through the 1970s and 1980s, concentrating on Kentucky engagements. Early in the 1990s he returned briefly to Story’s circle before reassembling his own unit after taking a ministerial post in Dunnville, Kentucky, where he also performed alongside the Sullivans.