Brothers Osey and Ernest Helton were the sons of a Cherokee father and a white mother. As they grew up in the Mountains ...

Brothers Osey and Ernest Helton were the sons of a Cherokee father and a white mother. As they grew up in the Mountains of North Carolina, they found separate but converging paths to old-time music: Osey learned to fiddle from an African American man who worked with his father in Asheville, while Ernest was taught the banjo, guitar, and Hawaiian steel by his adoptive father. Ernest and Osey formed a duo as teenagers; Ernest accompanied fiddler J.D. Harris on sides for Broadway and Okeh, and the brothers played together on the radio and festivals under the name Helton’s Old Time Stringband. In 1927, Osey dueted with “Father of Country Music” Jimmie Rodgers. Despite their obvious talent, sustaining a life in music was periodically difficult for the brothers—Osey worked as a plasterer, Ernest as housepainter in Asheville and shipbuilder in Portland, OR. Osey passed away in Jackson County, 1942, while Ernest died in Baltimore, 1979. alt. text: two photos side by side, on the left a man in a jacket, shirt and tie standing in front of a bush, arms spread open; on the right, a man with a bushy moustache, bow tie, and white shirt with arms crossed