Falls City Ramblers
Bands / Ensembles
The Falls City Ramblers were a string band from Louisville, Kentucky, which is nicknamed the Falls City, led by multi-instrumentalist Roy Gentry and his then wife, Memphis Beck Gentry. Roy Gentry, born in Kentucky in 1946, was a fixture of the Louisville and southern Indiana bluegrass and old-time scene and co-owned a Louisville music store. The band mixed bluegrass and old-time music with jug-band blues, European styles and Hawaiian songs, played on a wide range of instruments. Its first album, Ain't Nothin' in Ramblin' (Vetco, 1975), featured Jim Webb (guitar, banjo, lead vocals), Roy Gentry (banjo), Memphis Beck (mandolin), David Harvey (fiddle, mandolin, baritone vocals), Robin Rose (harmonica, resonator guitar) and Bob Wood (bass). The band toured beyond the Ohio Valley, with performances reviewed in The New York Times and The Washington Post in the fall of 1977. Roy Gentry and Memphis Beck later recorded as a duo, releasing Old Photographs on Vetco in 1984.