It was some tough times. Mercury records weren't selling; after almost ten years we were still playing Bristol. It seemed like people were tired of us. The pity was, we had one of our best bands with us at the time. We had a mandolin player named Curley Lambert we found in the Lynchburg area. Before you get too confused, Curley's real name was Richard but we nicknamed him “Goat,” which I'll tell you more about later, and he was no relation to either Pee Wee Lambert or Ray Lambert. Curley could really nail it on the harmony singing. Then we'd also got us a fiddle player, Ralph “Old Maid” Mayo, who was from Kingsport n east Tennessee, not far from G. B. Grayson's stomping grounds, and he was raised on the same Grayson and Whitter records we were; he could get that old-time lonesome tone from a fiddle like Grayson could. Carter hung the nickname “Old Maid” on him and I can't for the life of me recall exactly whi, other than he just liked the sound of it and thought it was funny. They had a wagonload of talent for two men, and later on they played with us on “Rank Stranger,” with Curley on mandolin and Old Maid on guitar, that a lot of our fans say is our best record. Just this past summer the Library of Congress added “Rank Stranger” to its National Recording Registry for preservation; there are only two hundred fifty “culturally significant audio recordings” on the registry, so it's quite an honor, especially when you consider the Stanley Brothers still ain't in the Country Music Hall of Fame. What I'm really trying to tell you is, this pair of Clinch Mountain Boys brought some wonderful playing and singing to our sound.
So it looks like Curley Lambert played mandolin on that record. And if you haven't read Dr. Ralph's book, you ought to. The link I made above will give Mudcat some income too.