Founded on New Year’s Day 1972 as the Taylorsville Bluegrass Jamboree, the event grew from local musicians in the Taylorsville area seeking a place to play together for increasing crowds and became a major focal point for regional bluegrass and country music. In the 1960s, bluegrass and traditional music were common local pastimes, and brothers Ray and Truman Jones, along with Leon Clark and Roy McKinly, were among those performing. After noticing growing audiences, Ray Jones brought together his band and other newly formed local groups for the first jamboree at Taylorsville City Hall. The festival soon became an annual early-January tradition, later moving to school auditoriums, adding more local and regional bluegrass and gospel performers, and helping inspire the founding of the Magnolia State Bluegrass Association in 1975, which was chartered as a nonprofit in 1978 and later supported festivals across the region. The jamboree continued to expand through the 1980s and 1990s, added a spring show, moved to the National Guard Armory, and then relocated to the Polkville Music Barn in 2003, where it continued as the annual Smith County Jamboree under Jan and Claudia Arender, broadening over time to include traditional country music.
