Dr. Barry Palmer, 65, award winning Georgia banjoist, vintage instrument collector, and an organizer of Banjothon, died on January 27, 2026 after a period of failing health. A lifelong picker, he first began playing with the FFA String Band in his teens in White County, GA. Starting in 1977, he performed as part of the staff band at the Georgia Mountain State Fair in Hiawassee for over four decades, and served as MC at their fiddlers’ convention.
Palmer recorded a banjo album in the ’80s entitled Just Me… And Some Friends. In 1982, he won the National Country Music Songwriting Contest, sponsored by KFC, in his hometown of Cleveland, GA, for his song, Walking Through the Shadows of My Mind. He earned the first place banjo prize at the Tennessee Old Time Fiddlers’ Contest in Clarksville, TN in 1993 and 1997, and placed three times (1994, 1996, 1998) in the banjo category of the National Flat-Picking Championship in Winfield, KS.
The avid picker shared some of his background in a 2013 interview at Banjothon, an annual gathering of pre war banjo enthusiasts.
“I grew up in a rural part of Appalachia down in the north Georgia mountains. Both my grandmother and my dad played the banjo. I remember the first three-finger Scruggs-style banjo player that I ever heard in 1966. A guy about 10 years older than me. He had the first Gibson Mastertone banjo that I ever saw.
When Grandmother died, I got her banjo. It was an original five-string Stella. Then in 1974, I went to my first bluegrass festival and saw the Bluegrass Alliance, Osborne Brothers, Stoneman Family, Don Reno, Carl Story, Pinnacle Boys, and others. I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever been to.
In January of that year, my dad bought me a RB-250. I sat the case down on the streets of Gainesville and said, ‘Dad, I won’t be a good banjo player, I’ll be the best there is.’ And I became a contest player.
In 1978, I graduated from high school. I went to Nashville and played at Opryland. I got introduced to Jim & Jesse and filled in on banjo with them. I played bass for Jimmy Martin. Big thrill, I got to replace Jack Hicks with Conway Twitty. On the shows with Loretta, I got to play banjo behind her.”
In 1998, Palmer resurrected the Bluegrass Alliance (which had disbanded twenty years earlier). Lonnie Peerce, fiddler and founding member, gave Barry the rights to the band’s name before he died. Palmer assembled a group based out of Georgia and recorded an album, Re-Alliance, in 2001.
“He left the band to me if I’d keep his work going,” Palmer shared in an interview with The Times of Gainesville, GA, July 10, 2003. “We want to get our brand of bluegrass to the people…and help proliferate bluegrass as a genre. We want to play the music, see the country and enjoy it and keep the Bluegrass Alliance alive.”
A graduate of the University of Georgia, Palmer worked in his community as a pharmacist at Cleveland Drug. During his education, the Pharmacy School worked with his schedule to allow him to travel to play music so he could pay the tuition.
During another Banjothon interview, he confessed, “I ended up being a full-time musician and a part time pharmacist.”
Al Smith, Georgia guitar luthier and longtime associate of Palmer, shared some personal history.
“I knew Barry since we were teens. We met at a bluegrass festival in the Atlanta area and started playing together. Barry on banjo, Randy Howard on fiddle [who passed in 1999], and me on guitar would play contests together. He and I were both Winfield winners. He won trophies and banjos.
He and I had similar health issues. We were both heart patients and diabetics. Barry was a wealth of information on those situations to help me understand medications and such. He was a great friend to me.
Barry was all things banjo and was a huge collector of banjos all his life. He loved to talk about banjos. He came up through the ’70s when banjo players were learning the melodic style to play fiddle tunes note for note. Barry became very good and was well known for doing that.
It is a great loss for the Georgia music community. He had quite a lot of accomplishments to not be a full-time player. He played with a lot of professional and non-professional people. He deserves to be recognized for his efforts and all his many years of playing the banjo and being involved in bluegrass music.
He became very good friends with Sonny Osborne, and actually owned some of Sonny’s banjos through the years. He was telling somebody who all he knew [in music] and the guy thought he was full of bull. After an event, they went to a Waffle House, Sonny was sitting in the back and hollered out, ‘Hey, Barry! Y’all come sit with us.’ The guy said he sat there and listened to them reiminesce and realized that Barry really did know everybody.
He was one of the first to start Banjothon in Knoxville at the Crowne Plaza every year in January. I talked to him the week of that event [this year]. I didn’t think he was going, but he said, ‘Yep, I’m going and I’ve got 20 banjos ready to go.'”
Shylan Wood, pastor of Black Mountain Baptist Church in Franklin, NC, drove Palmer to his last Banjothon and a dialysis appointment while there.
“Larry Mathis started Banjothon in his home, and as it grew, he brought in Barry and Mike Johnson to help grow it. At Banjothon 2026, there were nearly 300 attendees. I was proud that Barry was able to be there one more time. Now that I am part of the crew, I will uphold his legacy.
I’ve known Barry Palmer my entire life. An only child, his parents, Phillip and Eleanor, were instrumental in his becoming a musician. He was a fixture in our home when I was growing up, making music with my grandfather.
As I got older, he took me under his wing. He was a father figure to me and taught me to play the guitar. Coming from a musical family, I was 22 years old before I ever learned. Barry sat me down me and said, ‘You got to learn this.’ That’s the way he was. If he saw someone that had the ability, he poured into them. When I was dealing with the call to the ministry, he said, ‘It’s the greatest thing you’ll ever do, but it’ll be the hardest thing you ever do.’
I believe he knew that his time was rather short. He said, ‘Me and the Lord has had a lot of talks and when the time comes for me to go, I promise you, I’m ready.’ I have peace in knowing that. He loved his family; he loved his community; he loved bluegrass music. He was salt of the earth people.”
Longtime friend, Mike Johnson, reflected…
“I have known Barry literally since we were children. Barry and I shared a great passion for the banjo that evolved through the years with learning, discovering, performing, promoting, collecting, studying and enjoying Gibson banjos and all the milieu and ethos of the bluegrass music. This commonality and affinity and friendship characterized our relationship for over 50 years. At the behest of Larry Mathis, the originator of Banjothon, Barry and I assumed responsibility for the continuance and further development of this event in 2015. This annual event was very important to Barry, and subsequently to me for the last decade.”
Award-winning South Carolina banjoist and buddy to Palmer, Randy Lucas, shared…
“I think the first time I saw him was in Winfield. We both won in 1996. I started corresponding with Barry over the years. A lot had to do with prewar Gibson banjos.
One of the things that I appreciated about him so much had to do with Snuffy Jenkins’ banjo. I played with Snuffy many years when I was a kid, and he wanted me to have that banjo, but his son sold it. The first guy that wound up with the banjo was Jim Mills, and he sold it to James Brown in Texas. I heard he was going to have it at Banjothon and I was anxious to see it. I had played it many, many times with the Hired Hands.
Barry knew the story and probably approached James about it. He came to my defense and he knew Snuffy wanted me to have the banjo and knew the historical value. That meant a lot to me. I had an opportunity to get the banjo back, but it was going to take a lot of money. It was hard to justify spending that kind of money.”
I was sad to hear he had passed. I knew he was struggling [with his health] the past few years. I enjoyed our conversations that we had together, a lot about banjos.
He was such a funny guy! I loved the way he talked and the way he told a joke. It was hilarious.”
Chuck Nation, fiddler in Palmer’s edition of Bluegrass Alliance, shared…
“I have known my good friend Barry Palmer for 30+ years. Those of us who knew him well could see it coming for a while now, but I still can’t believe it. Death seems to always catch us off-guard. He battled serious health issues on multiple fronts for a long time: day-long trips to dialysis three times a week for nearly ten years, open-heart surgery three years ago, acute diabetes that eventually took most of his eye-sight.
I believe he is now better off than any of us. I wouldn’t be much of a preacher and friend if I hadn’t talked to him often about his soul, and preparation for the life to come beyond this world. As his standby go-to for rides to dialysis, I would have ample time on the road to talk about a lot of things. He had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He trusted the Lord by faith, and had received God’s grace, goodness, and forgiveness.
Barry was a storyteller. We talked often and at length. We talked one hour and 37 minutes the day before he died. Nothing earth-shattering, mostly ‘spit and whittle’ stuff, but it seemed almost like he didn’t want to say goodbye.
Barry played banjo and played it well. He studied it. He worked at it. He could play any style, and play with anybody, but he could also play fiddle, mandolin, and guitar, all equally well. He was an excellent bass player and could sing any part. He traveled with Benny Martin playing the ‘boom-boom’ as Benny called the upright bass. He played with Kenny Baker and Josh Graves, Jim & Jesse, and many others as a fill-in on banjo or bass when needed. He traded instruments, guns, and hot-licks with famed banjoist Sonny Osborne.
Barry had one of the finest collections of prewar Gibson banjos in the country. But he was also a collector and virtual encyclopedia of information about guns, knives, music memorabilia, folk art, arrowheads, tractors, jeeps, tools, etc.
He had a close relationship with fiddle player and band leader Lonnie Peerce from Kentucky. At Lonnie’s bequest of the name and all rights, master recordings, etc., Barry re-birthed a new edition of his favorite band, the Bluegrass Alliance, in 1998. Because of my membership in a configuration of that band, circa 1972-74, as mandolin player and later guitar player, Barry recruited me to play gigs on fiddle with the band’s reprise. We recorded an album in 2001, toured Japan that year, and played countless other shows and venues for several years. Thanks to Barry’s close friendship with Sonny Osborne, the band was a frequent guest on Ernest Tubb’s Midnight Jamboree in Nashville.
Barry was influential. Because of his contagious enthusiasm for music and vintage stringed instruments, I gained a renewed interest in playing music after several years of semi-dormancy, and even upgraded my own instrument collection with his assistance.
He took many young fledgling musicians under his wing and encouraged them, taught them, inspired them, helped them. And he educated us all about banjos. He knew all there is to know about vintage Gibson banjos. He knew not only the detailed specifications of the instruments, but their individual histories. He knew where all the banjos were, who owned them, where they got them from, what parts were or were not original, their value, and much more. He knew all the banjo experts and they knew him. He knew all about set-up and how to get the optimum sound.
Barry will be missed by his widow, Tina, and by all of us who loved him. And he will forever be remembered anytime banjo pickers get together.”
More condolences poured in from many in the bluegrass community.
David Harvey, master luthier for Gibson Original Acoustic Instruments, said…
“Barry Palmer was a passionate, great musician, banjo/instrument expert, and a wonderful person. His work in recent years helping put on Banjothon/Loarfest was always an event that I looked forward to! It was a joy to attend, in no small way, because of Barry Palmer’s presence!
Barry was present there just two weeks ago and I’m so sad I couldn’t attend.
I will miss you, Barry Palmer. Rest in peace, my friend!”
Curtis Burch, a founding member of Bluegrass Alliance, shared, “I’ve known Barry for many years. The last time I saw him was January 2020 at Banjothon. Very sad about him passing, he sure was loved by many.”
Jim Britton, banjo expert, noted, “He was one of the pillars of the pre-war Gibson banjo community, and was a very valuable historian and a very gracious man.”
Mike Scott, Nashville-based banjoist, recalled, “He was a ‘banjo buddy for sure. I saw him at Banjothon a few weeks ago.”
Ed Carnes, Nashville picker, summed it up, “Barry Palmer is a highly regarded banjo player with over 50 years of experience in the music industry.”
Barry Palmer is survived by his wife, Tina. Funeral services are scheduled for 11:00 AM Wednesday, February 4, 2026, at The chapel of Barrett Funeral Home in Cleveland, GA. The Rev. Chuck Nation, Bro. Shylan Wood, and Mr. Brian Thompson will officiate. Interment will follow in Blue Creek Baptist Church Cemetery.
A livestream of the service will be viewable online.
The family will receive friends from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday at the funeral home. To share a memory or to leave an online condolence for the family, visit Barrett Funeral Home online.
R.I.P., Barry Palmer.
