The Browns

I was first exposed to the country music group the Browns when I was a very young child. My mother had at least a couple albums by them. I especially remember learning the songs Scarlet Ribbons and The Old Lamplighter. As I got older and became a teenager, my music interests headed in a different direction. Around 1996 I happened to be channel surfing and came across the Nashville Network just as I caught the Browns being introduced on a live TV show. Since I often wear headphones while I'm watching TV due to my hearing loss, I had them on when the Browns started singing The Three Bells. I was suddenly mesmerized by the harmony.

The Browns were a country music crossover into pop music back in 1959 when that song hit it big. Although I was aware of the song, it was not one that I knew well at that point. I sat there absolutely spellbound as I listened to their vocal harmony. I've always believed that sibling harmony is the best because the speech patterns are similar. That is certainly the case for Jim Ed, Maxine, and Bonnie Brown. After listening to them sing it on the Nashville Network, I needed to get myself a copy of it, so I did. Thus begin a few month period when I played the song over and over. After that I purchased more Brown's music so I could learn more of their music.

About 10 years later, I came across something on the Internet advertising a book written by Maxine Brown called "Looking Back to See."  The book's title is named after a song that Maxine wrote. It is mostly an autobiography of Maxine's life up to that point, but it is also a general history of what country music was like in the 1950s and 1960s. I decided I needed to contact Maxine and let her know how I felt about the book. I could not find a way to reach her, so I wrote to Jim Ed and sent it to the Grand Ole Opry. He wrote back to me a short time later and said to send a letter to Maxine addressed to him and he would see that she would get it. I did, she received it, and I heard back from her a few weeks later. I was very impressed that she wrote a four-page letter to me expressing how she really enjoyed reading my letter to her.

A couple years later I happened to come across Maxine's Facebook page and wrote to her again, reminding her who I was and she said she remembered. From that point on a very nice Facebook friendship develped between us. She posted some nice things that I wrote about the Browns on her website. I also became part of a movement to get the Browns into the Country Music Hall of Fame, which many of the Browns fans believed they belong in.

In 2013, while on a trip to Memphis Tennessee, my daughter Kristi and I had an opportunity to visit Maxine. We had lunch together and she talked about some of her experiences, including her friendship with Elvis back in the mid-1950s. Elvis and the Browns used to do some touring together.

Back home, I continued my participation in trying to get the Browns into the Country Music Hall of Fame. It took awhile, but happily, thanks to the help of many of their fans, they finally made it in. And just in time, too, because shortly after the announcement of the Browns going into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Jim Ed passed away from cancer. Maxine and Bonnie were there for the induction, and then sadly Bonnie passed away not too long after that.

I hope to get to Nashville sometime in the near future so I can see their exhibit along with many others in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

These days, I continue to enjoy listening to the Browns' music on a regular basis. I have my own collection at home, and I also hear their songs from time to time on Sirius XM Radio.

Here is Maxine Brown's website: http://themaxinebrown.com/