The brothers were born and raised in West
Hickory, North Carolina, as the fourth and fifth siblings in a family of six children. Their parents, who were deeply religious and belonged to the First
Church of God, taught them to sing
hymns and
gospel music. A neighbor taught Bill how to play
guitar and
banjo while Earl learned to play
mandolin and guitar. Sponsored by the J. F. Goodson Coffee Company and together with
Homer Sherrill of the Crazy Hickory Nuts, they formed the Good Coffee Boys in the late 1935. Because they were sponsored by the Crazy Water Crystal, they had to perform using the name (Crazy) Blue Ridge Hillbillies. In Atlanta, the Bolick brothers went to
RCA Records for an audition. At first,
Eli Oberstein, the
artists and repertoire man, was reluctant to hear the brothers sing, believing them to be copying the
Monroe Brothers. He changed his mind when he heard them sing, and immediately signed them to a recording contract. A discussion arose concerning what they should call themselves. Since they could not use the previous name the Blue Ridge Hillbillies - it had been taken by Homer Sherrill when the brothers left WGST - they decided to use Blue Sky Boys as their name. Their choice of name came from the nickname of western North Carolina: Land of the Blue Sky. They made their first recordings in
Charlotte, North Carolina, on June 16, 1936. Between 1937 and 1941, the group recorded about 100 songs for RCA to considerable success on the
hillbilly music circuit. Between 1941 and 1946, both brothers served in the military; after their discharges, they returned to Atlanta and resumed recording with RCA. Some of their sides featured fiddle playing from
Leslie Keith, Sam "Curly" Parker, Joe Tyson, and Richard Hicks. They enjoyed a number of hits just after the war, but disliked the burgeoning
honky-tonk style and refused to record it. When RCA asked them to play with an
electric guitar, they refused and stopped recording until 1949. Due to personal issues, the Blue Sky Boys retired in 1951. Bill became a postal clerk in his birth state and Earl took a job at
Lockheed Aircraft in Atlanta. When
Starday Records released an
LP of their radio recordings in 1962, they decided to reunite and record again. Two LPs of new material followed, one secular (
Together Again) and one religious (
Precious Moments). They occasionally played live at
folk festivals, and during a trip to California to perform at the UCLA Folk Festival, the brothers spent two days in the studio recording an album for Capitol Records. By the end of the 1960s, though, they had decided to call it quits again. Once more, in 1975, they were convinced to record, this time for
Rounder Records, and another round of folk- and bluegrass-circuit touring ensued. Following this, Bill moved back to
Longview, North Carolina, while Earl retired to
Tucker, Georgia. In the 1990s,
Copper Creek Records issued a series of four albums with live radio transcriptions from the 1940s. ==Discography==