Lee Rathbone (AKA Lee Acuff) was born in New Jersey and moved to Tennessee later in life. His dad would take him to the local fire hall, at the early age of 5, and let him sing. He was given a little bowl to collect tips and by the end of the night, he would go from one table to the next and by the time he walked the room his little bowl it would be completely full. Some nights he would even make more than his dad would make working a public job. Lee’s family on both sides was talented when it came to music, and some of you may have heard of Roy Acuff, he is a cousin on Lee’s mothers’ side. Lee spent a large majority of his younger life with his grandparents and with his Aunt Annie Birchfield in Western North Carolina. Lee had a gift for music as well as building his own instruments, he built his first bass guitar by himself and it actually turned out pretty nice. His first guitar had three plastic strings on it. He went to his sister Shirley’s apartment one day all excited and wanted to show her his guitar, he handed her the guitar and ask her to show him some chords. Shirley only knew a few chords, but was more than happy to help and then after looking at the three string began to wonder how she was ever gonna show him chords. She had an old piece of a guitar and showed him some basic chords like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and A7. He went and got some new strings for his guitar and she did not hear much from him until a few years later. By then he was an excellent guitarist and bass player. He started to write some songs from his life experiences and decided he wanted to put a band together. Lee had the idea that harmonies would suite his style if he had two female harmonies along with his vocal, this also could be interchanged with their vocals and his harmony. He had a good ear for melodic and pentatonic harmonies and this is why he wanted a trio so that there was no one person always in the spotlight. So no matter if it is a male or female singing lead, you still get the Nightbird sound. Nightbird just would not be the same without his unique blend of harmonies. This band became known as Nightbird around 1977, this was short lived as the band broke up as many do. But, this was not going to stop him, he put the band back together again, and low and behold same story. Lee never gave up and kept on writing and doing solo performances. Through the years he kept trying the band scene and still had the same up’s and down’s that come with having a band. In 1997, he finally decided to try the band idea again and this time it worked better than he thought. There are still four members of that group that are still working and pushing his music; this includes his sister, Shirley Hance on bass , his nephew, Frank Sheppard on drums, Vicky Ward (we adopted her as family) vocalist, and Lee himself. In 2000, Lee’s health started to go downhill, and eventually he could not sing or play anymore. He is now extremely ill but still loves the music and says that if there was any way he was able to do it, he would be there performing. There is a medical procedure that could improve his health drastically, but his insurance will not cover it, this is a big reason why we want to continue with his music. We now have a publishing company that loves his work and they are ready to push it as far as it can go. Hopefully, with their support and the dedicated people that love his work we will be able to obtain enough money to get him the procedure. Not only is the music well written and diverse, we feel it deserves to be heard all over the world. So, are you wondering if Nightbird still exists, the answer is YES. It has been passed down to the younger generation that has been following his music since they were little waiting for their turn. Well, their time is here and in the process of getting out to venues again. We just wanted to let his fans, as well as, new fans hear his music with him in it before we debuted the younger generation. This is a work in progress and we are excited to be keeping true to the Nightbird style. Try and be patient and follow us through his journey, we appreciate each and every one who has visited the page and told others about it. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to read this and listen to the music, from all of us. NIGHTBIRD