working with fiddler Tommy Magness and the Tennessee Buddies in Roanoke, Virginia. Red Smiley was already an active member of the group when Don Reno was called to join them. Smiley also joined the group in 1949, playing at WDBJ radio. After hearing that Reno had left Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Smiley convinced Magness to call and offer him a job. The first records that Red and Don recorded together were with Tommy Magness in 1951 for Federal Records, a subsidiary of King Records, recording four Reno-penned sacred songs, where they found that their playing worked well together. Their career together After Tommy Magness retired, they both joined Toby Stroud's Blue Mountain Boys to play on a radio station, WWVA (AM), in Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1952, Syd Nathan from King Records called and offered to record Reno and Smiley alone. The duo recorded "I'm Using My Bible for a Roadmap" in 1952, which was written by Don Reno in 1950. They went their separate ways, Smiley returning to Asheville to work as a mechanic, and Reno re-joining Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith and the Crackerjacks in Charlotte, North Carolina. When a man from Richmond, Virginia wanted to produce a live show with Red and Don on Easter weekend of 1955, the two went to Richmond, along with John Palmer on bass and Mack Magaha on fiddle, and played together on stage for the first time. After playing the Old Dominion Barn Dance the day before, a radio show in Richmond, the group was offered a regular job at the Barn Dance. They accepted and Reno & Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups were formed, recording their first session in August 1956 while releasing a single record every six weeks, with Carlton Haney as their manager. The group was popular in the southeast and mid-Atlantic, when the duo started the first early morning country music TV show on December 31, 1956 in Roanoke, Virginia called Top o' the Morning, the show airing every weekday. The show was followed by a Saturday night radio barn dance and a weekly TV show. Due to a heavy TV schedule and the decline in Don Reno's health, their touring schedule was restricted. In November 1964, the group parted ways with Reno keeping the band name and adding his son, Ronnie Reno, on mandolin to work more road dates. The two reunited briefly in