Cliff Waldron

Clifford Waldron (April 4, 1941 – July 1, 2024) was an American bluegrass musician. He grew up listening to Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers. As a teenager, he played mandolin and guitar and later performed in local bands.

Career Waldron played mandolin for the Page Valley Boys for a short time. Waldron soon formed a relationship with bluegrass musician Bill Emerson and began performing with him, forming the duo Emerson & Waldron.

The initial band was called The Lee Highway Boys, but was changed to Emerson & Waldron and it stuck. Though the partnership with Emerson was short lived, it provided three, well received recordings on Rebel Records.

In 1970, Emerson rejoined The Country Gentlemen, replacing Eddie Adcock. Waldron briefly played with the Shenandoah Cut-Ups before recruiting his former bandmates into a new band, the New Shades Of Grass, who backed up his first solo release. The band made several well-received albums into the mid-1970s. Waldron stopped making commercial music in the early 1970s, however. For the next two decades he worked for the National Park Service, though he sometimes played music at his church and made some private gospel music recordings.

In 1975, Waldron dedicated his life to Christ.

Waldron died in Virginia on July 1, 2024, at the age of 83.