Biography:
Paul “Moon” Mullins, this year’s recipient of the Ohio Heritage Fellowship for Performing Arts, has done as much as anybody over the past 45 years to make southwestern Ohio a hotbed for bluegrass and hard-core country music. Both as a bluegrass fiddler and bandleader and as a radio personality on WPFB in Middletown (1964-1990), Mullins has promoted bluegrass, its audience and the culture that produced it with pride, enthusiasm, respect and integrity. His afternoon radio shows on WPFB are legendary and they made him a household name throughout Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. He’s been a fixture at WBZI in Xenia since his son Joe Mullins bought the station in 1995.

Born in 1936 in Frenchburg, Kentucky, Mullins spent two years in the 1950s playing fiddle with the Stanley Brothers. He has subsequently performed and recorded as a fiddler with such bands as the Nu-Grass Pickers, Valley Ramblers, Bluegrass Playboys, Paul Mullins, Noah Crase & the Boys from Indiana and the Traditional Grass (with his son Joe on banjo), and has made guest appearances on dozens of other albums. Mullins received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2000 honoring his work as a musician and broadcaster. Paul “Moon” Mullins passed away August 3, 2008, he was 71 years old.