Roy Crockett remembered

Roy Crockett passed away on April 28, 2019, while in the Emogene Dolin Jones Hospice House, in Huntington, West Virginia. He was 91 years old. 

Born, one of 12 children, on May 22, 1927, in Wayne County, West Virginia, he was a popular guest on the Flatt & Scruggs Show for about seven years. 

For brief period Crockett was a member of a band assembled by Everett Lilly and Charlie Monroe. How formalized that was is open to conjecture, but despite what Crockett described as “some good music,” they didn’t work together for long. 

A guitarist, Crockett formed his band, the Pleasant Valley Boys, in the fall of 1966. He has been described as a “pleasingly sincere singer,” well suited to the bluegrass Gospel repertoire in which he specialized. 

The Pleasant Valley Boys became popular playing Jamborees in the Charleston/Huntington area of West Virginia. Occasionally, they appeared on the Sleepy Jeffers Show on WCHS-TV, Channel 8, in Charleston. 

The band’s first recordings were made shortly after they got together, producing a single. 

During the following year Crockett cut a dozen songs producing an LP, Gospel and Bluegrass Music. 

During 1968, in another session, Crockett cut a further track, released with an earlier recording on a single. This was followed by an album, on REM Records.  

For the band’s last LP, By Popular Demand, for the Lexington, Kentucky-based Lemco‎ label, there was, as on their debut album, a mixture of Gospel and secular material. However, in this instance there weren’t any original songs. 

Crockett’s Pleasant Valley Boys continued to perform through to the mid-1970s. 

He wrote a few of the songs that he recorded including Just A Corner Stone, Could It Be You, Jesus Cares, A Heavenly Home, Insurance on Your Soul and I’ll Leave This World of Sorrow. 

A Discography 

Roy Crockett and the Pleasant Valley Boys

  • I Meet the Master / Hide Me Rock of Ages (D&R No # , 1966)
  • Gospel and Blue Grass Music (D & R 18703, released in April 1967). This was also released on the Kanawha label, #309, during the same year.
  • I See You in My Dreams / Handwriting on The Wall (D & R 20735/6, 1968)
  • Sings Gospel Songs Bluegrass Style (REM Records REM 1034, 1968)  
  • By Popular Demand (Lemco ‎ 613, 1973)

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About the Author

Richard Thompson

Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics. A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe. He wrote the annotated series I'm On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.