Today's duo, Lester "Mac" McFarland from Gray, Kentucky, and Robert "Bob" Gardner from Oliver Springs, Tennessee met in school at the Kentucky School for the Blind in 1916. Both were studying music with Bob having a great ear for perfect pitch and tone, and Mac pretty much playing everything under the sun (piano, organ, coronet, trombone, guitar and mandolin).

Let me start this next bit by saying when the two joined up, it's reported they became the first duo in country music history starting a trend that would continue for the next 15 years of the genre. The pair teamed up and got work on the vaudeville circuit as a sort of novelty act, but it was enough to get them noticed. By 1926, they were hired in Knoxville, Tennessee by radio WNOX. Their close harmony duet-style of singing with the mid-tone guitar and higher tone mandolin to compliment made a totally new sound for the era. The pair was immediately popular and got a recommendation sent to the Brunswick Recording Company which would see them in the New York studio by the end of 1926. Once again, their initial record sales were fantastic.

They would continue to record and play on the radio until around 1935. Country music was changing with the artist being themed as a hillbilly or a cowboy. Bob and Mac were two guys in suits with great musical talent, but their image couldn't keep up. Over the years they would record for Brunswick, Decca, Supertone, Conqueror, Vocalion, Melotone, Okeh, Perfect, Minerva among others, and even pair up with country music stars old and new like Vernon Dalhart and Gene Autry.

When their music career slowed, Bob would go on to make a living as a piano tuner, while Mac used his gifts to become a music teacher.

I've posted Bob and Mac on the channel before singing with Vernon Dalhart and Wilfred Glenn, and even amongst the others (and in today's song as well), that famed tight harmony and belting tones of Bob and Mac with the backing of Bob's guitar and Mac's mandolin really give the song a whole new quality, even on a hymn you've probably heard a thousand times. This recording took place in New York City on December 10, 1927.

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