Blue Grass Boy Belt Buckles

 I got the idea of the Blue Grass Boy Belt Buckle from Mr. Grant Turner one day when he told me that Ernest Tubb had some belt buckles made for band members and when they had spent a certain number of months or traveled a certain number of miles they were given a buckle, Mr. Grant said that Ernest called it the Fraternity of Troubadours. So I set about doing the planning... I had visited a belt buckle convention in Dallas one year and saw the exquisite work of Award Design Metals from Nobel Ok. I got the particulars and saw it was going to be expensive... I came up with the following plan. There were 6 "sets"of a Solid Silver a Gold Silver Plated, and a Solid Brass Buckle each of these were numbered in sequence 3 #1, 3 #2, and so on as I had planned to give a set to each of the companies that I had approached for monetary help with the project. I had contacted MCA Records, The Grand Ole Opry, Blue Grass Unlimited, Pickin Magazine, Gibson Guitars and Martins Guitars. Emory Gordy Jr called and told me that MCA had a policy that they didn't put out any money on an artist unless it was directly related to a release... Roger Siminoff from Pickin Magazine called and said that they would put in the money but they wanted control of the presentation, they had done a couple of things on Nashville Now by that point and I said thank you, but no thank you. I had been doing these Birthday Celebrations since 82 and I saw no need from anyone from the outside to try and take over. Mike Longworth called from Martin and said that he personally would love to help but Chris Martin would never put any money into a project that had a Gibson Mandolin on the front of it...again I said thanks. Charlie Deerngton at Gibson was angry with me due to the things I had told him about his New Gibson Granada prototype and he never passed the information on to Henry. Bud Wendell called from the Opry and said where do I send a check as did Pete Kuykendall of Blue Grass Unlimited...I had asked for $1500.00 from each and here I had $3000.00 of a project that was going to cost much more... I was determined to make sure the project went forward so I sold an original Style 7, 5 string top tension banjo to cover the remaining cost. (Not many people know this) but I was determined to see the project happen. 

I think I did #7 for Grant Turner(Long time Opry announcer), the guy who gave me the initial buckle idea, The next numbers were the Blue Grass Boys, Tater Tate #8, Blake Williams #9, Tom Ewing # 10,,,I didn't know Mike Feagan has started playing fiddle so I had Billy Joe Foster's as #11, Then I had buckle #12 engraved for Ralph Emery and gave it to Bill so he could make Ralph an honorary Blue Grass Boy, the TV show was running late and we didn't get to do this on the air, but I got with Bill after the show and he presented it to Ralph. I got Mike #119 a couple of weeks later... 

Beginning with buckle #25 I took the donations and birthday wishes in the order that they arrived and engraved them accordingly. Emory Gordy Jr. was 25. Sonny Osborne 26, Del McCoury 27 and so on. The last response I received before the presentation was by Rual Yarbough and he received buckle # 107. After that I found many additional Blue Grass Boys so buckles were given to them but in no particular order from that point on.

Frank Buchanan started a story that the numbers had meaning of the number of Blue Grass Boy they were, but it wasn't based on fact, he kept saying that he was Blue Grass Boy # 37, but his birthday wish and donation for Bill's gift was the 12th that I received. I had sent the first week in July to all the former band members that I had addresses for, telling about the project and asking for birthday wishes and donations if they could make one, the numbers were assigned by the order of their response.