Allen Shelton was an American five-string banjo player mostly known for being a member of the bluegrass bandJim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys since the 1960s. Shelton was born in Rockingham County, North Carolina, on July 2, 1936. Shelton started playing the banjo when he was fourteen. His father Troy Shelton was a guitar player mainly but also played fiddle, Mando, and some banjo. A local named Junior Boggs showed him some three-finger style..
Career
Shelton played with a wide variety of people throughout several genres in his career. The most notable of them were Jim and Jesse, whom he spent most of his professional career with. He played with Mac Wiseman, and the Country Boys where Mac at the time was working for WRVA the Old Dominion Barn Dance in Richmond. Playing with Mac was Allen's first recording experience.Shelton got his first full time job as a musician when he was sixteen playing with Jim Eanes he was the banjo player on most of Jim's Starday Records recordings. In the 1950s, Allen performed with Hack Johnson and the Tennesseans, and later, with Jim Eanes and Mac Wiseman. He joined Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys, and began recording for Columbia Records on December 7, 1960. In 1966, Jim & Jesse had an offer to record with the Nashville Symphony and Shelton left the band in protest. He retired from music and began working as a machinist and welder in Louisiana. About ten years later he found himself once more on the road with Jim & Jesse playing mostly five-string "Dobjo" because they already had a banjo player named Mike Scott. He released his first solo album, Shelton Special, on Rounder Records in 1977. In total Allen recorded 89 songs with Jim, and Jesse and defiantly became a part of their sound that is so iconic, and has influenced countless banjo players.
Picking style and influences
Shelton's picking style was more experimental than some other bluegrass banjo players. He enjoyed creating unusual sounds including adapting steel guitar licks into his solos. Jesse McReynolds is quoted saying "When Allen Shelton played with us all those years, every time we heard a pedal steel guitar break, we’d try to adapt it to the banjo and to the mandolin, both we just experimented with different things.”His playing was described as "bouncy". The two main influences Shelton quotes according to the book "Masters of the 5-String Banjo" were Earl Scruggs, and Don Reno he saids he loved the right hand of Scruggs, and the left hand of Reno. In an interview of Shelton with fiddle player Eddie Stubbs he said that early on in playing banjo he figured out he couldn't play like Reno or Scruggs, which caused him to create his own style which has become known as "Shelton Style" which is the bouncy, swing sound everyone talks about when talking about Sheltons playing. He also experimented with a "Dobjo", which is a combination of banjo and resophonic guitar, with which he recorded a whole album called 5 string Dobro, and Banjo where he played many of his influential instrumentals. When he went back to playing with Jim, and Jesse, Mike Scott was playing banjo, so mostly Shelton would play "Dobjo" and on some songs he would plan twin banjo with Mike Scott.
Death
In September or October 2009, Allen was diagnosed with leukemia. Allen died on November 21, 2009 at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, TN when he was 73, according to his daughter-in-law. It is believed he actually died from a heart attack, or a stroke rather than the symptoms of his leukemia.
