Wade Mainer turns 101

Wade Mainer - photo by Flint JournalIt hardly seems a year ago, does it, since we mentioned the celebrations for Wade Mainer’s 100th birthday? Well, it is.

A North Carolina native, Mainer turns 101 today (Monday, April 21) and on Saturday, with the help of about 400 well-wishers, he marked the occasion with a concert performance, accompanied by his 89 year-old wife, Julia, on guitar; Mel Hammon, 83, on the fiddle and Virgil Shouse (bass).

A brief report about the event appears in The Flint Journal, a local Michigan newspaper near where he now resides.

Mainer used a cane and needed assistance to get onto the stage, set on the athletic field at Premier Indoor Sports on Torrey Road. But on stage and seated, banjo in hand, Mainer turned to his quartet and said “let’s do some of the old numbers.”

You can read the full piece on the Flint Journal web site, where they also created this web video with highlights from the concert.

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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.