Lily May Ledford- The Coon Creek Girls

By Richard L. Matteson Jr.

I've been listening to Gems: Lily May Ledford. This striking collection of songs, instrumentals and stories showcases the natural talent and honest humor of Lily May. She was born on March 17, 1917 in a remote area of Red River Gorge, Kentucky called Pinch 'em Tite Hollar.

After reading her unpublished autobiography (loaned to me by her grandaughter), I can only reflect with awe as I read her recounting of her childhood and her rise to stardom with the Coon Creek Girls on the radio, highlighted by her performance at the White House for President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor who were visited by the king and queen of England.

Lily May's talent in music can only be compared to my friend Doc Watson. They have a special quality that transcends the flesh; when I listen to them I feel as if I'm immersed in a spiritual sea filled of honesty human emotion. I'm writing a proposed article about Lily May for the Old-Time Herald. I'll be sharing part of her life with you. By sharing, she'll be making our lives better which is something she would have wanted.

Early Life
Lily May Ledford was born on a tenant farm in a remote area of Kentucky called Red River Gorge on March 17, 1917. Later, after achieving fame on the radio, Lily May was said to have come from Pinch'Em Tight Holler. The original Ledford family came to America in 1738. They bought land together in Virginia near the Roanoke River in the 1750s and moved to Randolph County, NC by 1769.

Lily’s father Daw "White" Ledford was born on Nov 23, 1882. He was the fourth generation of Ledfords born in Kentucky and married Stella May Tackett about 1907. Lily's parents were tenant farmers and life wasn't easy. Of the 14 children four died shortly after birth and several others died when still young.

"The main source of our livelihood was farming the steep cleared hillsides and the spare bottom land along the banks of the Red River and the many creeks, "said Lily May, "our main crop was corn and sorgum cane."

"We raised many vegetables in the many smaller patches ground closer to the house. We supplimented this with wild game, fresh berries, grapes, nuts and many kinds of wild greens. We raised hogs for meat and kept a milk cow or two."

"Our underclothing was made of flour sacks and shoes were bought only for winter and paid for with furs Papa trapped and sold."

This was related to me by Cari Norris Lily May's granddaughter, "Another great story she told was about her and her brother, Coyen: When they were little, their parents sent them to plant watermelons by the river in the spring and gave them a huge can of watermelon seeds. They planted about half the seeds, then decided they would dig a big hole, and dump the rest of the seeds in. They spend the rest of the afternoon fishing by the river and caught several fish, which really pleased their parents. But when a huge mass of watermelon vines grew in one spot a bit later, their parents figured out what they had done and I think they got spankings. Lily May enjoyed hunting and fishing in Red River."

According to Lily May, "Sometimes neighbors would visit at night with a banjo and Papa would take down his fiddle and they would play far into the night. Us little boys and girls would sit on the floor spell bound."

White Ledford also played the banjo, guitar and pump organ and Lily May learned to play both the fiddle and the banjo. One of the songs she learned from her father was John Henry when she was around 7 or 8 years old. Now Cari Norris plays the song on Lily May's banjo. John Garst, one of the leading researchers on the John Henry Ballad, was excited to see the lyrics. This was one of Lily May's favorites:

John Henry
(Lily May Ledford version, learned from her father, Daw White Ledford circa 1924)

When John Henry was a little bitty boy, sittin’ on his daddy’s knee;
He said the Big Ben tunnel on the C & O road, is gonna be the death of me; Lord, Lord, is gonna be the death of me.

When John Henry was just seven years old, holdin’ to his Mama’s hand; He said, “If I live to be 21, I’m gonna make a steel drivin’ man; Lord, Lord,...

Well John Henry made a steel drivin’ man, belonged to the steel drivin’ crew; And every time his hammer came down, you could see the steel walkin’ through, Lord, Lord...

John Henry had a pretty little woman, her name was Polly Ann; John Henry got sick and he could not work, Polly drove the steel like a man; Lord Lord...

Well they put John Henry on the right hand side, they put the steam drill on the left; He said before I let that old steam drill beat me down, I’ll hammer my fool self to death, Lord, Lord...

John Henry went up the boss and said, oh boss, how can it be; You know the rock is so hard and the steel is so tough, I feel my muscles givin’ way; Lord Lord...

Then John Henry went up on the mountain side, he looked to the heavens above; He said take this hammer and wrap it in gold, and give it to the woman I love; Lord, Lord...

So they took his hammer and they wrapped it in gold, they gave it to Polly Ann; And the last words John Henry ever said to her were, Polly , do the best you can; Lord Lord, ....

If I die a railroad man, bury me under the tie; So I can hear old number 4, as she goes rollin by;
Lord Lord....

But if if die a steel drivin’ man, bury me under the sand; With a pick and shovel at my head and feet and a nine pound hammer in my hand; Lord Lord...

1938- A Big Year
Coon Creek Girls performance at the White House for President and Mrs. Roosevelt and the King and Queen of England on June 8, 1938 was the highlight of their career.

You can hear Lily May give an account of the event on "Gems: Lily May Ledford" a CD produced by her granddaughter Cari Norris on JuneApple. If you want to get a copy you can get one here: http://www.elderly.com/recordings/items/JUN-CD078.htm This striking collection of songs, instrumentals and stories showcases the natural talent and honest humor of Lily May.

John Lair met banjoist Bascom Lamar Lunford at a folk festival in Asheville, NC. When Lunsford attended the National Folk Festival in Chicago in 1937 he visted with Lair in Chicago. Lair was appointed to the Board of the National Folk Festival by director Gertrude Knott as "a student of the origins of folk music." Lair was working at WLW in Cincinnati having started the Renfro Valley Barn Dance. Lair asked Lunsford to find talent for WLW and teach square dancing to various clubs in the Ohio valley. Lunsford also performed on WLW’s Saturday night concerts.

Knott asked Lair and Lunsford to organize the Ohio Valley Folk festival to find talent for the next National Folk Festival to be held in Washington DC later that year. Lair included the Coon Creek Girls and Red Foley to the Festival roster. On March 27, 1938 Ohio Valley Folk festival sponsored by WCKY was held in the Cincinnati Music Hall. The Library of Congress, to record the event, dispatched Alan Lomax. The Coon Creek Girls highlighted the event and secured a spot along with Robert Day on the National Folk Festival roster for 1938 plus important connections with Lunsford and Lomax that would help them later in the year get an invitation to perform at the White House.

After the Festival recording engineerAlan Lomax complained about all the hillbilly music. Back then hillbilly music was commercial country music and not folk music that a purist would follow. Director of the National Festival Gertrude Knott seemed to approve of the Coon Creek Girls and Lair promoted them as Kentucky girls from remote mountain areas that sang old ballads. Years later Alan Lomax seemed later to change his mind and invited Lily May to star in his theater production.

According to a Washington Post newspaper report with a photo: "These Kentucky mountain girls make up one of the winning teams from the Ohio Valley Festival held in Cincinnati in preparation for the National Festival. Each plays all four instruments in the picture and sings ballads known in their families for generations."

In May the National Folk Festival directed by Gertrude Knott was held for the first time in Washington DC at Constitution Hall. The Coon Creek Girls and Robert Day accompanied by John Lair made the trip financed by a mere $92 from the Ohio Valley Festival.

Also in May 1938 John Lair went with the girls and A’nt Idy Harper to record their first session with Vocalion Records under Uncle Art Satherley. They recorded nine songs including "Little Birdie," "Pretty Polly" and two of Lair’s songs. At this session they also recorded the song that Lily May would become identified with: "Banjo Pickin’ Girl." Lily May was already being called "Banjo Pickin' Girl" on her WLW shows.

The White House
Late in 1938 an invitation came for the Coon Creek Girls to perform at a White House concert for President and Mrs. Roosevelt in honor of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth who were to visit in June 1939. Perhaps the invitation was made through Lunsford, who knew the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt from the 1933 White Top Festival. Lily May thought it came from the Coon Creek Girls performance in Washington DC at the National Festival although I haven't found any record of Eleanor Roosevelt attending but she may have or at least heard a radio broadcast. John Lair later credited Alan Lomax although Lair couldn't remember his name, with the invitation.

Regardless of who secured the invitation, the first royal visit to the States by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth while visiting the Roosevelt’s would feature a performance by Lily May and her Coon Creek Girls.

Mrs. Roosevelt decided the concert would show a cross section of American music. Bascom Lamar Lunsford and his square dancing group was invited along with Marion Anderson the concert contralto, opera baritone Lawrence Tibbet, pop singer Kate Smith, folklorist Alan Lomax, and The Coon Creek Girls. Local churches formed a black gospel choir to sing spirituals.

John Lair was not invited but he and his wife decided to accompany The Coon Creek Girls to Washington to attend this prestigious event. Arriving several days before the June 8 performance Lily May recalled "The day of the concert we went over for an early rehearsal. We went through the material we were going to do that night. A distinguished looking gentleman came to the door and listened for a while. Then he asked how long I’d been playing and I said, "I’ve been playing a long time." He said he played a little and asked if he could play with us. Then he said "I’ll get my fiddle."

"After getting his fiddle he introduced himself as Cactus Jack so that’s what I called him. We went to another room. He would play a tune then I’d play one. Then we’d both play one together. This went on for quite some time. We barely made it out in time for the show." Later John Lair told Lily May that Cactus Jack was in fact Vice President John Nance Garner, a pretty fair country fiddler!

Each performer was scheduled to do three songs plus the Coon Creek Girls would play fiddle tunes for Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s square dance group. So on the evening of June 8, 1939 limousines began to deliver the cream of Washington D.C. society to the East Room of the White House. Security was tight as President and First Lady, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were entertaining King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England. John Lair, who wasn’t invited followed the Girls limousine with his wife in their car. The only way he could get in was to carry the bass fiddle for the Girls.

"Well on Renfro Valley he was boss," explained Lily May. "So here we were the stars with him behind us toting the big bass fiddle. Security stopped him and searched the pockets of the case, shook the bass fiddle and looked in the fiddle. They finally decided to let Mr. Lair in but they turned his wife away." Viginia Lair, who had bought a new dress for the occasion, reportedly left in tears.

"We were ushered up there while Alan Lomax was playing his final song, Old Chisolm Trail," said Lily May. "We ran out there an lit right in to ‘How Many Biscuits Can You Eat,’ that was the song they told us Mrs. Roosevelt wanted. I glanced out of the corner of my eye and right down there they were…the King and Queen in the front row. Why they were so close you could have spit on ‘em."

Lily May continued, "The king had rather a long-faced, dour, deadpan look, and he worried me a little. Then as I glanced down, I caught him patting his foot, ever so little, and I knew we had him."

The Coon Creek Girls played another FDR favorite, "Get Along Miss Cindy" as well as an English ballad, The Soldier and the Lady, in honor of the royal couple. They also played "Buffalo Gals" for Lunsford’s square dance group from North Carolina.

[photo]

1938 was a big year for the Coon Creek Girls: Lily May (photo on left) and Rosie Ledford with Ester Koehler (guitar, vocals and mandolin) a contest winner from Ohio and Evelyn Lange (fiddle and bass) another contest winner from Wisconsin. They had just had their first radio performance in Oct. 1937 and were becoming stars on WLW radio in Cincinnati on The Renfro Valley Barn Dance. Kentucky native John Lair had created the Renfro Valley show after leaving WLS in Chicago and bringing Lily May and other stars like Red Foley with him.

War of the Worlds

Orson Welles pulled his greatest hoax when he broadcast H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds on October 30, 1938 to make it seem like a current news broadcast. It caused local panic as many listeners believed it was a real alien invasion. This was Welles first notoriety and caused a widespread scandal.

Another "war of the worlds" happened when the Coon Creek Girls led by Lily May Ledford descended upon the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA in 1939 for two weeks to open for Orson Welles production of the play "The Green Goddess."

Sure there have been other all-time booking mismatches, take Jimi Hendrix and the Experience signing on as an opening act for the Monkees in midtour. After dates in the South, they played several concerts in July 1967 in the stadium at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills.

But the Coon Creek Girls and Orson Welles. What were they thinking! The Coon Creek Girls had just played at the White House for the President and Mrs. Roosevelt and the King and Queen of England. Their popularity was at an all-time high.

According to Lily May, "As word got out to the ever alert newspapers, reporters began to arrive from several papers for interviews and the story spread to a New York booking agent who booked us two weeks in the large Stanley Hall in Pittsburgh PA with Orson Welles and Company."

In a 1996 interview with Barbara Greenlief (Lily May's daughter), she commented: "Daisy (one of the Coon Creek Girls) told me one time, I think it was when they were on stage with Orson Welles, that the guys in the orchestra pit kept making fun of them and their accent, and talking about those, you know, the hillbillies. The men would always ask them if they wore shoes at home."

"So one time when the women ran out on stage, they took off their shoes. And so they were kind of playing with that stereotyped image, you know, throwing it back in the guys' faces and laughing at them for thinking such a stupid thing."

George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an Academy Award-winning director, writer, actor and producer for film, stage, radio and television. In the mid-1930s, his New York theatre adaptations of Macbeth and a contemporary allegorical Julius Caesar became legendary. In 1941, he co-wrote, directed, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, often chosen in polls of film critics as the greatest film ever made. Welles received a 1975 American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement award, the third person to do so after John Ford and James Cagney. Critical appreciation for Welles has increased since his death. He is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important dramatic artists of the 20th century: in 2002 he was voted as the greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute's poll of Top Ten Directors.

More on the Welles-Coon Creek Girls engagement from Lily May: "He was making a tour with the 25 minute play the Green Goddess (a popular stage play of 1921 by William Archer) with our first (opening act) matinee performance. When the light men missed cues the infuriated Mr. Welles stopped the performance several times and stepped to the front and apologized to the audience and berated the terrified sound and light men with that awesome voice of his."

"Well we were well received from the sophisticated audience and everyone waited for the evening papers and the critics words. They all simply ripped Mr. Welles calling it a farce etc. About us they said, 'Well it was alright if you go for Hillbilly mouthings.' "

"That same afternoon Mr. Welles sent his valet to our dressing room with the message I should come to his dressing room. I was already half afraid of him now but dared not disobey the message. I was led to the presence of that august body and treated him very royally as he asked if I could do a favor for him. After our act and bows I was to go to the center mic and tell the audience that now the house was to be darkened for the next big act- a complete blackout."

"They were to hold onto their hats and pocketbooks for a minute or so. And then I was to pick up my skirt and just fly from the stage! This I did and Mr. Welles complimented me and I did this for the next two weeks." (From Lily May Ledford's Autobiography)

[photo of the Coon Creek Girls, now a trio, playing on stage in Renfro Valley, Kentucky.]

Renfro Valley
Renfro Valley and the Renfro Valley Barn Dance were created by John Lair after John and Lula Renfro, the first settlers in Lair’s Kentucky home area in Rockcastle County.

It's important to know that these events directly shaped bluegrass music. Karl and Harty and WLS were imortant influences on the Monroe Brothers and Bill Monroe in particular, who impressed the duo with his fast mandolin playing. More on the Monroes in future blogs.

John Lair was born on July 1, 1894 in Rockcastle County, Kentucky. His father was a farmer and Lair attended a one-room school before going on to finish high school in the county seat town of Mount Vernon. After army service in World War I, he worked in a variety of jobs that included teaching school and editing a small-town newspaper. Work as an insurance company claims adjuster brought him to Chicago in the late 1920s where he became interested in radio.

Around 1930 WLS management was looking to form a new stringband for The Barn Dance radio show and asked John Lair, who was working in advertising to help. Lair who played jug, harmonica and wrote songs excelled at finding talent and then organizing and promoting this talent.

He formed the the first and most famous edition of the Cumberland Ridge Runners, by combining Karl Davis and Hartford Taylor (Karl and Harty and also performed under the name of the Renfro Valley Boys) with banjo and guitar player Hugh Cross and a fiddler named Homer Miller who was known for off-the-wall antics. Cross was already a well-established country crooner and collaborator on the earliest recordings of songs such as "Red River Valley" and "Wabash Cannonball." Lair created a hillbilly image for the outfit, dressing them all in checked shirts, straw and overalls. A famous photograph of them shows them in front of what looks like a rustic log cabin, but was actually a replica of Fort Dearborn created for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair.

A red-haired vocalist and bassist named Clyde Foley was hired to take part in comical sketches with Miller as well as play music; he soon changed his name to Red Foley and went on to become a huge country star. Another featured part of the group for a time was singer and banjo player Linda Parker, also known as "The Sunbonnet Girl." She was really forced to ham-up the hillbilly part and was always dressed onstage in a frilly gingham dress.

Lair eventually was employed by WLS as producer, emcee, and music librarian. As Lair became interested in discovering the real life events upon which old songs were based, he began accumulating a large sheet music collection and gained a reputation as an authority on folk music.

In the fall of 1937 John Lair joined forces with Red Foley, Whitey Ford the Duke of Paducah, and Chicago advertising executive Freeman Keyes to launch the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, which broadcast from Cincinnati over WLW. Lily May Leford (Coon Creek Girls), Dolly and Millie Good, and Red Foley were some of the stars that moved with Lair to Cincinnati and he also added the Duke of Paducah and Aunt Idy (with Little Clifford) to his show. Lair was trying to recreate the music found in his Kentucky homeland instead of the Western and cowboy trends that had recently become popular on the WLS Barn Dance.

Lair was planning to move the Renfro Valley show to his home home in Rockcastle County, KY. He was investing money from his sucessful show on WLW into building cabins, a restaurant (the lodge) with southern home-style meals, a souvenir shop, a candy kitchen, a barn for performances and a country store in Renfro Valley.

Move to Renfro Valley Kentucky "where time stands still"
By November 1939 construction was completed and Lair moved the Renfro Valley Barn Dance Show to its final home in Renfro Valley Kentucky. Not everyone in the Renfro Valley Barn Dance Show wanted to move to a remote area in Kentucky. Lair’s original partners Red Foley and Whitey Ford didn’t stay long. They sold their interests and went back to WLS Chicago. Another star A’nt Idy wouldn’t go at first and then only stayed a short while.

The original Coon Creek Girls split up. Daisy and Violet went with the Callahan Brothers, Howdy Forester, and Georgia Slim to Tulsa, Oklahoma and then to Dallas, Texas. According to Daisy, they were ready for a taste of "big city life." For a while Lily May played with the Amburbey Sisters: Berthy Amburgey (Berthy Woodruff, aka, Minnie), Irene Amburgey (Martha Carson, aka, Martha), and Opal Jean Amburgey (Jean Chapel, aka, Mattie), born in that order, as the Coon Creek Girls.

Soon Lily May and her sister Rosie added a younger Ledford sister to their act, Minnie (stage name "Black-eyed Susie" or "Susie" for short) and continued as the Coon Creek Girls. To replace some of the talent he lost, Lair hired two of the best musicians and comedians of the Barn Dance era, Homer and Jethro.

From the first Saturday night the venture was a moderate success. In spite of dire predictions and Lair moving at the onset of winter, the crowds got bigger and bigger. Radio experts who had held that people wouldn't drive a hundred miles or more to see a barn dance out in the country were amazed. All winter long the crowds kept coming from unbelievable distances and when spring brought ideal traveling weather; all roads seemed to lead to Renfro Valley. License plates from as many as fifteen different states were found on a single Saturday night.

Lair’s dream had come true, much to the appreciation of audience members who filled the auditorium and the many thousands of radio listeners. Lair functioned on stage as emcee and guided the program, song by song, week by week and it was broadcast on radio station WHAS in Louisville. After the departure of partners Red Foley and Whitey Ford, Lair now controlled every facet of the performer’s lives.

"John Lair, once he moved to Renfro Valley," said Lily May’s daughter Barbara Greenlief in a 1996 interview, "had them sign contracts that they couldn't record anything unless he said so; they couldn't talk to other people, they couldn't make any other deals. I mean he—the contracts were just—he owned them."

The barn could comfortably hold about 800 people. Some weekends thousands would flock to the small valley. The two scheduled shows on a Saturday night could not accommodate everyone. "They (Shorty Hobbs and Little Elder Long) and the Homer and Jethro team simply tore up the stage encore after encore," recalled Lily May. "Crowds started flocking in the barn at 5 or 6:00 and they were doing shows ‘til the roosters were crowing at daybreak."

Leaving Renfro Valley

The 1940s were the best years of Renfro Valley. Huge crowds descended on the valley where time stands still to see the Coon Creek Girls, Homer and Jethro and the talented acts John Lair had created.

Lily May married and had a child, Benjamin Joseph, "Benny Joe" on May 16, 1943. The union did not last. Lily kept working and bought a house in Mt Vernon. "I was finding life hard in many ways by now," said Lily May. While her brothers went overseas to fight in the War, Lily May struggled to keep the Coon Creek Girls going. "For several years the Coon Creek act was touch and go, being shattered again and again by pregnancies or illnesses. We were losing prestige and fading from the radio little by little."

Around 1946 Lily May "remarried a returning soldier who had sung bass in a gospel quartet." Glenn Pennington became the father of her next three children; Barbara, Jimmy and Bobby. Glenn eventually became the Master of Ceremonies (emcee) at Renfro Valley and managed several touring groups.

Lily May appeared by herself in the Alan Lomax ballad opera "The Martins and the Coys" in 1944. A once-in-a-lifetime cast featured Will Geer, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Lily May Ledford, Pete Seeger, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, and Hally Wood. In the early 1950s Lily May was again featured this time with the Coon Creek Girls in Lomax’s mountain ballad opera, "The Old Chisholm Trail" in New York. This time Cisco Houston and Wade Mainer and his Mountaineers were added to the star studded line-up.

One of the last big shows the Coon Creek Girls did was Sunshine Sue’s Old Dominion Barn Dance which went to Broadway in 1944-45. Needing a banjo player Sunshine Sue hired Lily May and the Girls headed to New York where they shared the bill with Flatt and Scruggs’ Foggy Mountain Boys and met Ralph Rinzler, who was there attending Columbia University.

By the mid-1950s TV was quickly replacing radio as American's form of entertainment. Sponsors began pulling out of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance. "An unhappiness had set in," recalled Lily May, "and we yearned for the first great years of Renfro, plenty of shows, hundreds of thousands of paying guests, the horse races, ball games and mule races (which I rode one for fun)."

After 20 years (1937-57) the Coon Creek Girls called it quits. Lily May's marriage also ended and she devoted much of her time raising her children after moving to Lexington, Kentucky. It's not surprising that they all became involved with music.

Her son, J.P. Pennington, was a founding member of the highly successful country-pop group, Exile. His original songs have been recorded by such popular acts as Alabama. Bob Pennington, played drums and keyboards in the Renfro Valley Band. Her grandaughter Cari Norris now plays Lily's banjo and performs Lily's songs. Will the circle be unbroken...

Her Second Career
With the resurgence of the folk music scene in the late 1960s and '70s, Lily May started her second career. Ralph Rinzler, Mike Seeger, John Ullman, Alice Gerrard, Ellesa High, Loyal Jones, and others played an important part in bringing her talent back to new audiences at folk festivals across the country.

Lily May's solo performances delighted audiences with her charismic stage presence, singing, excellent fiddle and banjo work. After several years of illness she passed away in 1985.

Now she has taken the songs and stories from the hills of Kentucky 'round the world. She truly is- a banjo pickin' girl.

Red Foley Biography

By Richard L. Matteson Jr.

Red Foley was one of the biggest stars in country during the post-war era, a silky-voiced singer who sold some 25 million records between 1944 and 1965 and whose popularity went far in making country music a viable mainstream commodity. In many ways Foley's life was a tragic one. In retrospect, his personal problems seem insurmountable, yet Foley's charisma and talent saw him through these troubled times; his many recordings are his finest legacy.

EARLY LIFE
Clyde Julian Foley was born on June 17, 1910, in Blue Lick, KY. His father played the fiddle and encouraged his son musical ability. He grew up in nearby Berea, and was nicknamed "Red" and "Rambling Red" years later by John Lair for the color of his hair. A shy child, Red was six when his father, who ran the general store, bought him an old battered guitar. His father also sold harmonicas and Red used to practice on them to his heart’s content.  By the time he was nine, he was giving impromptu concerts at his father's general store, playing piano, banjo, trombone, harmonica and guitar.

His mother was proud of Red’s vocal potential and hired a music coach but Red wasn’t happy with this arrangement so this was abandoned.  Music wasn’t his only interest and he also excelled in sports, particularly basketball and track. At age 17 he  was invited to Louisville to compete at the state level talent show, but having a bit of stage fright, he faltered and had to begin again three times.  Eventually he sang the song so well that he charmed the audience and the judges and walked away with first prize. Red worked as a $2-a-show singer in Covington, Kentucky.

His singing successes led to receiving a scholarship to Georgetown College where he studied voice and music. While a freshman in college in 1930, he was spotted by a talent scout from Chicago's WLS radio. Although he wasn't offered a job after he auditioned, John Lair found him a spot on Lair's band the Cumberland Ridge Runners, the house band on the program National Barn Dance that featured Karl Davis, Slim Miller, Hugh Cross and Harty Taylor.

WLS-CUMBERLAND RIDGE RUNNERS 1930-1936
Foley quit school and joined WLS first appearing in March 1931. Foley played bass and sang an occassional solo for the Ridge Runners as well as briefly forming a duo with Lulu Belle as "Burrhead".  One of his early favorites was "I Traced her Little Footsteps in the Snow [Footprints in the Snow]" later immortalized by Bill Monroe's rendition. His first single, "Single Life Is Good Enough For Me/Lonesome Cowboy," recorded on April 11, 1933 and backed by the Ridge Runners, was released in June 1933 on the Melotone label.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6makUywcOcA (Cumberland Ridgerunners- Foley isn't on this- play Goofus on YouTube)

This group had quite a history and saw several changes in makeup. A folio "Doc Hopkins and Karl and Harty of the Cumberland Ridgerunners" published back in 1936, details the roots of this group. Doc Hopkins, Karl and Harty all attended the infamous "Red Bud School" near Mt. Vernon, KY, which is located in the Renfro Valley area where John Lair would eventually move his famous barn dance in 1937. 

Doc, Karl and Harty took to "mountain music" at an early age and could often be seen together at the Davis' barn or the Taylor's blacksmith shop playing their tunes on their guitar and mandolin. When Doc returned from the world war, the three boys formed a string band and called themselves the Krazy Kats. They had a following in central and eastern Kentucky. In 1929 they sang over radio station WHAS in Louisville, KY.

Then, in 1930, a friend of theirs, Bradley Kincaid, helped get the group on WLS in Chicago. John Lair, a program director at WLS, crafted a hilbilly image for the group. He added fiddler Slim Miller and they became the "Cumberland Ridge Runners." They wore costumes and did comic routines. Not only was John Lair was their manager and announcer on their Saturday night programs, he'd often play the 'jug' with them. John Lair would direct many of the interesting sketches of 'mountain life' that they did including the "Coon Creek Social." Karl and Harty also recorded eight songs in December 1931 as "The Renfro Valley Boys." 

Lulu Belle and Red Foley
Young Myrtle Cooper, also a native of the Carolina mountain country, had moved with her parents to Evanston, Illinois, at age 16 and in 1932, had also gotten a job at WLS, where John Lair had teamed her up with Red Foley as the song-comedy duo of Lulu Belle and Burrhead. Foley and Lulu Belle recorded on single in March 1934: "Hi, Rinctum Inktum Doodle" backed by "Going out West This Fall."

Foley’s wife, Eva, preferred that the pair not work together and eventually convinced Red and WLS to make a change. Foley had recently remarried Eva and had a young daughter Shirley. After his first wife, Axie Pauline Cox, died giving birth to their daughter Betty on February 3, 1933, Foley married Eva Alaine Overstake on August 9, 1933. Known professionally during her solo career as Judy Martin, she was one of the Three Little Maids on National Barn Dance and a sister of country music songwriter Jenny Lou Carson.

The WLS management decided to team Lulu Belle and Skyland Scotty. Their act proved not only a commercial hit on the National Barn Dance, but a romantic one as well and the pair married on December 13, 1934. In 1936, Lulu Belle won the title "Radio Queen" in a popularity poll sponsored by Radio Guide magazine, surprisingly defeating a host of Hollywood and New York-based luminaries. They remained top stars on the program until 1958 when they retired from active performing except for two years, (1938-1940) when they were at WLW Cincinnati. Scotty cut four solo efforts for Bluebird, in 1933 and Lulu Belle and Burrhead made four for Conqueror, in 1934.

Red Foley's Early Recordings
Besides his first record cut in April, 1933 backed by Cumberland Ridge Runners and the single with Lulu Belle Foley did several sessions for the Conqueror (Brunswick) label usually backed by the Ridge Runners. (Homer Slim Miller, Karl Davis, Hartford Taylor, John Lair, and Linda Parker) 

Red Foley Complete Recordings to 1942: Banner/Conqueror as Rambling Red Foley (accompaniment Cumberland Ridge Runners) April 11, 1933: 1936 Floods; Be Honest With Me; Blonde Headed Girl; Chiquita; Dying Rustler; Echoes Of My Plantation Home; Going Out West This Fall; I Ain’t Lazy I’m Just Dreaming; I Don’t Care Anymore; I Got The Freight Train Blues; I Traced Her Little Footsteps In The Snow; I’ll Be Back In A year; Is It True?; I’m Looking For a Sweetheart; It Makes No Never Mind; Headin’ Back To Texas; Hi Rinkum Inktum Doodle; In my Childhood Days; Just A Little Kiss; Lone Cowboy; Mailman’s Warning; Montana Moon; Nobody; Old Shep; Ridin’ Home; Ridin’ On A Rainbow; Pals of The Saddle; Rose And A Prayer, A; Seven Long Years; Single Life Is Good Enough For Me; Someday Somewhere Sweetheart; Where The Mountains Meet The Moon; Will You Wait for Me Little Darling; Yodeling Radio Joe;

1937 WLW Cincinatti
In the fall of 1937 John Lair joined forces with Red Foley, Whitey Ford the Duke of Paducah, and Chicago advertising executive Freeman Keyes to launch the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, which broadcast from Cincinnati over WLW on Oct. 9, 1937. Foley's older brother Cotton Foley was also one of the original partners. The Renfro Valley Barn Dance was named after John and Lula Renfro, the first settlers in Lair’s Kentucky home area in Rockcastle County.  They bought land in 1937 in Kentucky and began building a performance home while they broadcast on WLW Cincinatti. Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls, fiddler Slim Miller, Dolly and Millie Good, and Red Foley were some of the stars that moved with Lair to Cincinnati and he also added the Duke of Paducah and Aunt Idy (with Little Clifford) to his show. Hugh Cross came along and Merle Travis played as part of the Drifting Pioneers. Lair was trying to recreate the music found in his Kentucky homeland instead of the Western and cowboy trends that had recently become popular on the WLS Barn Dance. Foley has his own segment [Red Skeleton made his radio debut in January of 1938, on WLW's "The Red Foley Show"] and was one of the top stars on WLW.

Move to Renfro Valley Kentucky “where time stands still”
By November 1939 construction was completed and Lair moved the Renfro Valley Barn Dance Show to its final home in Renfro Valley (Lair’s home in Rockcastle County), KY. On the grounds he put in cabins, a restaurant (the lodge) with southern home-style meals, a souvenir shop, a candy kitchen, a barn for performances and a country store.

Not everyone in the Renfro Valley Barn Dance Show wanted to move to a remote area in Kentucky. Lair’s original partners Red Foley and Whitey Ford didn’t stay long. Foley's wife Eva didn't like it. "Eva hit here loud and long proclaiming that she never have any part of this damn country," said Lair. They eventually sold their interests and moved to Chicago. Another star A’nt Idy wouldn’t go at first and then only stayed a short while.

NBC's Avalon Time- Back to Chicago and the WLS barn Dance 1940-1946
In late 1939, Foley became the first country artist to host a network radio program, NBC's Avalon Time (co-hosted by Red Skelton), and he performed extensively at theaters, clubs and fairs. He then returned for another six-year stint with WLS National Barn Dance. 

His film debut was the movie “ The Pioneers ” with fellow singer/actor Tex Ritter in 1941. Red signed a lifetime record contract with Decca in 1941. Soon he hit with “Old Shep,” a song he had written years earlier about his own German shepherd, Hoover, and which he had recorded earlier for ARC.

Red's first hit recording was the patriotic “Smoke on the Water” in 1944; this song spent 13 weeks at the top of the country charts and was a crossover hit reaching #7 on the POP charts. It's easy to see why this song, written during trouble times of war, struck a chord with many:

There will be a sad day comin' for the souls of all mankind
They must answer to the people, and it's troublin' their minds
Everybody who must fear them will rejoice on that great day
When the powers of dictators shall be taken all away.

CHORUS: There’ll be smoke on the water, on the land and the sea
When our Army and Navy overtakes the enemy
There’ll be smoke on the mountains, where the Heathen Gods stay
And the sun that is risin’ will go down on that day.

In 1944, Red spent 13 weeks at No.1 with Smoke On The Water, which was also a Top 10 Pop hit. The flip-side, There’s A Blue Star Shining Bright, made the Country Top 5. He started 1945 with the Top 5 double-sided hit, Hang Your Head in Shame/I’ll Never Let You Worry My Mind and completed it with the No.1, Shame On You (a Top 15 Pop hit)/At Mail Call Today (Top 3), on which Red was accompanied by Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra. In March 1945, Red was the first major performer to record in Nashville, in Studio B at WSM, and was produced by Paul Cohen. Red’s 1946 hits were the double-sided Top 5 success, Harriet/Have I Told You Lately That I Love You, on which Red was accompanied by Roy Ross & His Ramblers and which came from the movie, Over The Trail, in which he appeared.

Nashville 1946 Hosts Grande Ole Opry
In 1946, Foley signed on to emcee and perform on The Prince Albert Show, a segment of the Grand Ole Opry program broadcast on NBC after the Opry had conflicts with Roy Acuff. "I guess I was never more scared than when I replaced Roy acuff on the network part of the Opry...[the audience] thouight I was a Chicago slicker come to pass himslf off as a country boy to bump Roy out of his job. It took me about a year to get adjusted."

Foley's popularity with listeners is often credited with establishing the Opry as country's pre-eminent radio show. Beginning in 1947, he began recording with his backing band, the Cumberland Valley Boys, earning another number one single with "New Jolie Blonde (New Pretty Blonde)." With the group, he recorded seven Top Five hits between 1947 and 1949, including "Tennessee Saturday Night," a chart-topper in 1948. "Red recorded 'Tennessee Saturday Night' with Zeke Turner playing that great boogie lick," remembers Harold Bradley, a former top session man and the brother of Decca producer Owen Bradley. "That was the first record [on which] he had that style. I guess with the move to Nashville, a lot of things happened: Paul Cohen found better songs, he found the musicians, he found the studio--something just started going in the right direction."

Foley, his band, and Paul Cohen turned out a series of records that mixed elements from pop and rhythm and blues while remaining undeniably hillbilly. By the fall of 1949, the singer's regular band included Grady Martin on lead guitar, Billy Robinson on steel guitar, and Ernie Newton on bass. With this basic lineup, augmented occasionally by other musicians, Foley entered Castle Studios in the Tulane Hotel at Eighth and Church to begin the three days of historic sessions. The first day, he recorded five songs, including two Top 10 hits--"I Gotta Have My Baby Back" and "Careless Kisses"--along with what would become one of the biggest records of his career.
Red introduced Hank in his first Opry appearance on June 11, 1949. At the end of 1949, Red got together with Ernest Tubb and in 1950, their single, Tennessee Border No.2 became a Top 3 hit and its flip, Don’t Be Ashamed Of Your Age, went Top 10. Red followed these with I Gotta Have My Baby Back/Careless Kisses (both Top 10). Then he issued the song that would become his trademark tune, "Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy," which stayed in the number one position for 13 weeks. Red did an overseas tour with Hank Williams who also had a hit record, Love Sick Blues.

Death of Foley's Second Wife- 1951; Death of Hank Williams-1952; Steps down as Host of Opry
In 1951, Foley's second wife, Judy Martin (born Eva Overstake), committed suicide by an overdose of pills, reportedly over the singer's affair with entertainer Sally Sweet (who became his third wife in 1954). In order to devote the majority of his time to raising a family, he cut back considerably on his performing commitments, although he continued to release hit after hit in a variety of musical styles, including rockabilly and R&B; "(There'll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)," a 1951 smash, was the first record ever to sell one million copies on the gospel charts. In the same year, he also released his first LP, Red Foley Souvenir Album.

Red’s 1951-1953 hits were; 1951: My Heart Cries For You (Top 10, with Evelyn Knight), Hobo Boogie (Top 10), The Strange Little Girl (Top 10, with Ernest Tubb), (There’ll Be) Peace In The Valley (For Me) (Top 5, certified Gold) and Alabama Jubilee (Top 3 Country/Top 30 Pop, with the Nashville Dixielanders featuring Francis Craig on bones). (There’ll Be) Peace In The Valley (For Me), on which Red was accompanied by the Sunshine Boys Quartet, was the first million-selling Gospel song. In 1952, Red scored with Too Old To Cut The Mustard (Top 5, with Ernest Tubb) and Milk Bucket Boogie/Salty Dog Rag (both Top 10) and in 1953, he had Midnight (No.1), Don’t Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes (Top 10), Hot Toddy (Top 10), No Help Wanted #2 (Top 10, with Ernest Tubb), Slaves Of A Hopeless Love Affair (Top 10) and Shake A Hand (Top 10).

Then his friend and fellow recording star Hank Williams began having problems with drugs and alcohol. On August 11, 1952, Williams was fired from the Grand Ole Opry. Told not to return until he was sober, he instead rejoined the Louisiana Hayride. Williams died just months later on Jan. 1 1953. Hank and Red Foley had made a promise to each other; whichever one died first, the other had to sing 'Peace In The Valley" at the others funeral, Red followed through on his end, his voice cracking by the time he finished holding back tears.

In 1953 Foley quit his master of ceremonies role on the Prince Albert Show, although he continued to tour as an Opry act for a time. In 1954 Foley was named to host The Ozark Jubilee, a country showcase for ABC television; the show was a hit, and ran through 1960. Also in 1954, he recorded the chart-topping "One By One," the first of many duets with Kitty Wells.

After several years in virtual retirement, Foley moved to Springfield, Missouri in 1954 to host Ozark Jubilee (sometimes named Country Music Jubilee) on ABC-TV and radio. The show ran for five-and-a-half years, but was cancelled partly because of federal income tax evasion charges pending against Foley during 1960. On April 23, 1961, however, he was eventually acquitted.

Later Years
After working on the 1962-1963 ABC television show Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring Fess Parker as Eugene Smith and featuring Foley as Eugene’s uncle Cooter, a homespun philosopher, Foley moved back to Nashville and continued to tour until his death. Foley never lost his love for country music and, unlike Eddy Arnold, never sought success as a pop artist, even though many of his recordings did attain pop chart status. His voice was mellow and had none of the raw or nasal style associated with many of his contemporaries, some have even likened it to Bing Crosby. His importance to the country music scene is often overlooked and little has been written about him but he was rightfully elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1967.

That year in 1967, Red enjoyed a return to the lower region of the chart with the Top 50 duet with Kitty Wells, Happiness Means You and the flip-side, Hello Number One, which went Top 60. At the beginning of 1968, the twosome charted with the Top 70, Living As Strangers.

A great friend of Hank Williams Sr., he was ironically headlining a touring Opry show that included the young Hank Williams, Jr., when, after playing the matinee and evening shows, Foley suffered a heart attack and died in his sleep at Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA on September 19, 1968. This prompted Hank Jr., seemingly the last person to speak to him, to write and record, as Luke The Drifter, Jr., the tribute narration I Was With Red Foley (The Night He Passed Away), which charted for him in November 1968. In the song, Hank Jr. relates, that after reminiscing about the problems faced by a country singer, such as himself and Hank Sr., Red's final words were 'I'm awful tired now, Hank, I've got to go to bed'. 

Bradley Kincaid- Biography 1927

By Richard L. Matteson Jr.

On December 19, 1927 Bradley Kincaid cut his first sides for Gennett,  “The Fatal Wedding” and “Sweet Kitty Wells” in their Chicago, IL studios. Kincaid would become one of Country Music’s finest collectors, interpreters and preservers of traditional Appalachian ballads and folk songs.

The young tenor was one of the most popular radio stars on the most popular country music station in the 1920s the WLS Barn Dance out of Chicago, where he received over 100,000 pieces of mail fan every year. In 1934 he was voted the most popular male Country singing star in the nation with a voice that rivaled the first great country vocalist, Vernon Dalhart. His 13 songbooks sold nearly a half million copies during the Depression years.

Early Life
William Bradley Kincaid (born July 13, 1895 Point Leavell, Garrard County, Kentucky; died Sept. 23, 1989 Springfield, Ohio) was born near Lancaster in a small town in the foothills. “I was born in Garrard County, Kentucky right at the edge of the Cumberland Mountains,” he said, “way back at the head of the holler, where the boulevard dwindles down to a squirrel’s path and loses itself at the foot of a giant tree.”

His father, William was a farm laborer, who led the singing from shape-note books in a Campbellite church. “My father was quite a singer,” said Bradley. “He led the singing in church and Sunday school. He had one of those tuning forks. He’d hit it against something and get the pitch- and off he’d go reading those notes. A good many of those books had shape notes and he could read those very well. That was my introduction to music and all through the years I could remember him singing songs like “Two Little Girls In Blue,” “After The Ball” and songs like that.”

His mother Elizabeth Hurt Kincaid sang the old songs. Bradley remembered, “She went further back. She sang the old English ballads. I learned a lot of ballads from her Like ‘Fair Ellender’ and ‘The Two Sisters.’ When my Mother used to sing the old blood curdlers to me my hair would stand straight up on my head!” Later he guessed he had learned as many as 80 songs from his parents.

One day his father made a trade that would change young Bradley’s life: “We lived in a county where there was a lot of fox hunting,” began Bradley. “Well, my father used to go out with some of the fox hunters and they’d take their dogs and get on top of some ridge and set the dogs off down a hollow chasing some fox. They’s build a fire and and sit around and talk and tell stories. And on one of these occasions a Negro friend of my father’s who would hunt with them once in a while, had this guitar, and my father traded him one of his hounds for the guitar. And he brought it home and all the kids learned to play it.”

The old worn-out guitar eventually became the prized possession of Bradley, the fourth of nine children. Bradley learned to strum his ‘old hound dawg guitar’ while he sang. Later after he became a radio star Sear manufactured copies of his guitar and sold them as Bradley Kincaid’s Houn’ Dawg Guitar. Today that old guitar is in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Kincaid attended Garrard County’s Back Creek School through fifth grade. He dropped out of school to work in a Louisville wheel shop. After riding a corn planter he tried tobacco farming but when he earned only $40 for a whole summer’s work he decided he would return to school and enrolled in Berea College Foundation School at age 19.

“I entered the sixth grade,” he recalled. “I remember how timid I was about going into that first class, because I was almost six feet talk and going in with little six graders. But when I got inside I was calmed down because there was a big fellow across the aisle from me who must have been six feet two- and he was twenty-three years old. I got a job waiting tables and odd jobs. I think they paid ten cents an hour then.”

Even though he was determined to get his Bradley left after the eighth grade to join the army, serving two years during World War I. For a brief period after the war, he worked as salesman for the Storrs-Schaefer Tailoring Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Begins Music Career
Kincaid soon resumed his education at Berea and it was during this time that his interest in music deepened. With the encouragement of Thomas Edwards, one of his teachers, he began systematically collecting ballads and other songs. He also worked with pioneer collector John F. Smith. Kincaid’s search led to several trips throughout the eastern part of the state, and the material he collected was eventually included in thirteen published songbooks.

Kincaid graduated from the Berea College Academy (high school) in 1921 at age 26. A year later he married his Berea music teacher, Irma Foreman, a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He worked in Lebanon, Kentucky as a YMCA district secretary for two years (1922-1924). They then moved to Chicago to attend YMCA College (now known as George Williams College.)

He started singing with the YMCA College Quartet and taking voice lessons from a classical teacher. After appearing with the group on WLS in 1926 he arranged a solo audition in 1928 for the National Barn Dance, a radio program heard widely throughout the Midwest on Chicago’s 50,000-watt WLS (World’s Largest Store). He became a regular cast member on the program singing every Saturday night for $15 a week.

“One day after I’d been singing there for three or four weeks, I went down there a little early one Saturday afternoon and the girl at the outer desk said, ‘Bradley, there’s some mail in the back room for you.’ Well it never occurred to me that anyone would ever write or say anything about Bradley Kincaid. I went back there.  You’ve seen those big laundry baskets the size of a desk. Here was a basket full of mail.”

 Soon Bradley was being billed as “the Kentucky Mountain Boy.” His renditions of “Barbara Allen” and other old ballads and songs he had learned while growing up in Kentucky made him one of the most popular performers on WLS’s Barn Dance, the most popular Country radio station. Other ballads he made popular during his four years tenure at WSL were “Pearl Bryan” and “The Hunters of Kentucky.” Some of his popular fast fiddle tunes were “Liza Up A Simmon Tree” and “Gooseberry Pie.”

First Concerts
Eventually Bradley became the top star at WLS and soon he was getting offers to perform concerts: “The bookers started calling on me. Well I’d never made a public appearance in my life. They wanted me to go on stage and I said , ‘Gee Whiz, who’d want to see me on the stage’.”

Bradle finally agreed to play a concert in a theater in Peoria, Illinois. With some promotion on WLS the concert was sold out. When Bradley arrived to play he couldn’t figure out what all the people were doing there. "I walked up to the theater and there was a line several blocks long and people were being turned away,” he said. “I walked across the street and asked a fellow what was going on. He said, ‘Why the radio singer from WLS is going to be here.”

Kincaid learned he could make several hundred dollars playing a theater show compared to he $15 a night at WLS. Bradley approached concerts with “fear and trembling’ and was more comfortable doing radio. He was billed as Bradley Kincaid: the Kentucky Mountain Boy with his Hound Dawg Guitar.

There’s a funny story I heard about Bradley after he was a famous folk collector, radio singer and interpreter of traditional songs. One of the leading folk collectors in the country read about Bradley and heard that he was giving a concert in a nearby town. The collector knew all the Child ballads and had studied Sharp’s Appalachian ballads. He brought his notebook to the concert hoping to jot down some unusual version of one of the ballads Bradley might sing. Bradley stood center stage with only his old worn guitar and as his first song promptly warbled a rousing version of “After The Ball.” It reminded me of the time I watched Doc Watson sing “Nights in White Satin.”

Song Books
When people began writing the station asking if they could get the words and music that Bradley sang, the manager, Edgar Bill, asked Bradley to put together a songbook. Bradley doubted many people would order a book of songs but he went ahead and typed out the lyrics and had his wife help him write the music.

“I took them down and laid them on Mr. Bill’s desk and he said, “No, you get them fixed up take them to a printer and get them to publish them. So we made arrangements with a printer. He said, ‘How many do you think we ought to get printed first?” I said, ‘Oh, a couple thousand, anyway.’ So a few days before the songbooks came off the press I announced on the air that I had a little songbook and if they’d like to have one- they ‘d send fifty cents to me at the station. Two days later we had more than 10,000 ordered.”

His first book published in 1928, a 48-page unpaginated saddle-stitched booklet, about 7" square, became the first published Country music book. It was entitled, “Favorite Mountain Ballads and Old Time Songs as Sung By Bradley Kincaid 'The Mountain Boy' by Kincaid, Bradley.” The book included photos of "the National Barn Dance 'gang' up in the 'old hayloft,' the studios of WLS," Harold A Safford, WLS announcer and host of the National Barn Dance, and Bradley Kincaid.

Bradley shared the profits with WLS The Sears, Roebuck Radio Station who printed the books and by the early 1930s sold over 100,000 copies. The music and words to the following favorite Bradley Kincaid songs were included: Barbara Allen; I Gave My Love a Cherry; Froggie Went A-Courtin’; Pearl Bryan; A Fatal Wedding; Sour Wood Mountain; Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird;  Tildy Johnson; Two Sisters; I'm Dying for Someone to Love Me; Bury Me Out on the Prairie; Billy Boy; Four Thousand Years Ago; The Turkish Lady; Rip Van Winkle; As I Walked Out; Fair and Tender Ladies; Sweet Kitty Wells; Soldier? Soldier? Will You Marry Me?; I Asked Her If She Loved Me; Gypsie Laddie; Paper of Pins; Pretty Polly; Fair Ellen; Little Mohee; Swapping Song; Dying Cowboy; Frankie; Methodist Pie; Butcher Boy; No, Sir No; I Loved You Better Than You Knew; Lily of the West; No, I Won't Have Him!

Bradley began traveling around collecting songs for his songbooks. Fans sent him songs and he also traded songs with fellow performers like Doc Hopkins. He eventually published 13 songbooks between 1928-36, which reportedly sold over 500,000 copies. His original songbooks can still be purchased on-line.

Recording Career
Kincaid began recording on December 19, 1927 when he cut his first sides for Gennett,  “The Fatal Wedding” and “Sweet Kitty Wells” in their Chicago, IL studios. On Feb. 27, 28 in 1928 he recorded Barbara Allen, Froggie Went A-Courtin’, Methodist Pie, Swapping Song, Bury Me Out On The Lone Prairie and  Sourwood Mountain. Bradley cut a total of 63 for Gennett; his last session with them was on Oct. 4, 1929 in Richmond, Indiana.

He also cut 30 sides for Brunswick in Chicago from Nov. 1929 until Jan. 3, 1931 until the Depression curtailed his recording career. In 1933 Bluebird began recording all the Country stars of the 1920s and Bradley cut 28 songs including many he had recorded before. His last sessions in the 1930s were with Decca in New York City, the last being on Nov. 4, 1934.

Radio Star
Bradley knew Scotty Wiseman’s brother from school and collected some songs from Scotty. Bradley put in  good word for Scotty with the management before he left WLS in 1930 and eventually Scotty a job playing on WLS. The Girls of the Golden West were originally from Mt. Carmel, Illinois when they joined WLS. Bradley Kincaid would later work with the girls in their recordings. They first started recording for Bluebird Records in 1933, where they stayed for quite some time.

Kincaid went on to have similar success on radio station WLW in Cincinnati in the 1930s.  “I went to WLW and told then I didn’t want a salary,” he recalled. “I just wanted to get some time on the air, sell my songbooks and make personal appearances, and I’ll give you a percentage of what I make.”  During his first month he received 50,000 letters and his concerts were standing room only.

From WLW he went to  WKDA Pittsburgh, , SGY Schenectady, WEAF New York and finally WBZ Boston. When a “Radio Guide Star Poll” was conducted in 1934 on a nationwide basis Bradley was the only male Country singer to place on the list, out-polling Al Jolson and Gene Austin. In 1939, while at WHAM in Rochester, New York, he adopted a tent show format for much of his warm weather personal appearance work and continued what he called his "Radio Circus" throughout the remainder of his career.

Among the musicians he partnered with during this period was Kentuckian Louis Marshall “Grandpa” Jones. In 1935 he was working at WBZ (AM) radio in Boston, Massachusetts where he performed with a band that included a young singer and banjo player named Marshall Jones. Kincaid teased the twenty-two-year old fellow Kentuckian for always being grumpy when he came to the studio to do the early morning broadcast, nicknaming him "Grandpa Jones." Kincaid had him outfitted with a vaudeville costume—including fake mustache—and at age twenty-two Marshall Jones became Grandpa Jones.  The moniker became permanent for the future Grand Ole Opry star.

“I had the good fortune of playing up and down the New England Coast with Bradley,” said Grandpa Jones. “I’d watch the audience when he’d sing an ballad and you could hear a pin drop. They wanted to know how the story went and his voice was perfect for the song. They were spell bound when he’d sing those songs.” His last major radio work was on WSM's Grand Ole Opry in Nashville from 1942-1947. “I was just fairly popular at the Grande Ole Opry- not like I was on WLS,” said Bradley. “It may have been a change of taste, for I was very old-fashioned.”

Later Years
He had become a partner in building a radio station in Springfield WSSO. The station was losing money and Bradley left Nashville to get it straightened out. He managed the station for five years and recorded and wrote occasionally like his 1945 Majestic label song, “The Legend Of Robin Red-Breast” and his 1950 song about the atomic bomb “Brush The Dust From That old Bible.”

He met future bluegrass great, Hylo Brown, whose family relocated to Springfield, Ohio in 1949. Hylo honed his skills by working on the local music scene in Ohio while holding a day job in a local factory. It was during this period when Brown started to write songs and went on to secured a job singing tenor with country artist Bradley Kincaid. The job lasted for the next five years, in which time Kincaid and his band recorded sides for Capitol Records. It was during his stint with Kincaid that Brown penned the "Grand Ol Opry" song which was later brought to prominence in the bluegrass genre by Jimmy Martin.

Around 1954 he sold the radio station and “retired” from the music business. He was well aware of the changes in Country music, which featured electric guitars, and an up beat honky-tonk style. After playing golf for a year he became bored and accepted a return offer from WLW in Cincinnati. “I noticed my old guitar case was looking pretty bad,” he explained, “I went down to a Springfield music store to get a new case and met one of the best salesman I’ve ever seen. He sold me a new case and talked me into buying the whole store!”

Bradley continued to issue commercial recordings well into the 1970s. Bradley Kincaid was twice nominated to the Country Music Hall of Fame and lost to Johnny Cash and Roy Rogers. He was featured in a biography, “Radio's ‘Kentucky Mountain Boy' Bradley Kincaid” by Loyal Jones published in 1980 by Appalachian Center: Berea College. He donated his collections and papers to Berea College. On September 23, 1989 Bradley Kincaid died in Springfield, Ohio, at age 94, and was interred there in the Ferncliff Cemetery.

Recordings: Bradley’s repertoire consisted on 322 songs that he either recorded or appeared in his songbooks. In 1944 Kincaid cut two songs for the Bullet label and eight songs for the Majestic Record Company in 1945 including “The Legend Of Robin Red-Breast.” He recorded four sides for Capitol in 1950 including “Brush The Dust From That Old Bible.” His 162 song recorded for Bluebonnet in 1962 included 22 songs he had never cut before. They were released on six LPs all titled, ‘Bradley Kincaid, “The Kentucky Mountain Boy” Mountain Ballads and Songs.’ In 1973 he recorded 26 numbers in Springfield for McMonigle Music which were released as LPs “Bradley Kincaid: the Mountain Boy” and “Bradley Kincaid: Family Gospel Album.” They also released a single “There’s a Light Ahead” back by “The Legend Of Robin Red-Breast’.

Songs Bradley wrote or co-wrote: Captain Bill; Cornpone and Molasses; Fifty Years From Now; Fond Of Chewing Gum; I Won’t Be Back In A year Little Darling; Innocent Prisoner; Legend Of Robin Red-Breast; Little Darling Don’t Say We are Through; Little Rooster and The Old Black Hen; Mammy’s Precious Little Baby; Now The table’s Turned on You; Sleepy Head; Some little Bug Is Going To Find You; That Old Tintype Picture;

Complete Recorded Songs:
After The Ball; Ain't We Crazy; Amazing Grace; And So You Have Come Back To Me; Angels In Heaven Know I Love You; Barbara Allen; Beautiful Dreamer; Beautiful Isle of Somewhere; Billy Boy; Blind Girl; Blind Child; Blue tail Fly; Brush The Dust Off That Old Bible; Bury Me Beneath the Willow; Bury Me Out On The Lone Prairie; Captain Bill; Charlie Brooks; Cindy; Cornpone and Molasses; Cowboy’s Dream; Darlin’ Clementine; Darling Nellie Gray; Death of Jimmie Rodgers; Dog and Gun; Don’t Make Me Go To Bed And I’ll be Good; Down By The Railroad Track; Down In The Valley; Fair Ellen; Fatal Derby Day; Fatal Wedding; Fifty Years From Now; Fingerprints Upon The Window Pane; First Whipporwill Song; Fond of Chewing Gum; Foot Prints In the Snow; For Sale A Baby; Foggy Dew; Four Thousand Years Ago; Froggie Went A-Courtin’; Give My Love To Nell; Gooseberry Pie; Grandfather’s Clock; Gypsy’s Warning; Happy Days Long Ago; High Grass Town; Hills Of Old New Hampshire; House Carpenter; Housekeeper’s Tragedy; How Beautiful Heaven Must Be; How The Banjo Was Invented; Hummingbird Special; Hunters Of Kentucky; I Am Not Ashamed Of Jesus;   I Could Not Call Her Mother; I Love My Rooster; I Loved You Better Than You knew; I Will Be All Smiles Tonight; I Wish I Had Someone To Love Me; I Won't be Back in a Year, Little Darling; I’d Like To Be In Texas; I’ll Remember You Love In My Prayers; I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen; In a Village By the Sea;  In The Hills of Old Kentucky; In The Little Shirt Mother Made For Me; Innocent Prisoner; Kickin' Mule; Jimmie Rodgers’ Life; Just Plain Folks; Legend of the Robin Red Breast; Let That Mule Go Aunk Aunk; Letter Edged in Black; Life Is Like A Mountain Railway (Life’s Railway To Heaven); Life Of Jimmie Rodgers; Lightning Express; Listen To The Mockingbird; Little Brown Jug; Little Darling Don't Say We Are Through; Little Green Valley; Little Joe; Little Mohee; Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane; Little Red Rooster and the Old Black Hen; Little Rosewood Casket; Little Shit My Mother Made For Me; Liza Up In The ‘Simmons Tree; Long Long Ago;  Mammy's Precious Baby; Mary Wore Three Links Of Chain; Methodist Pie; Miner's Song; Molly Darlin’;  Mrs. Jimmie Rodgers’ Lament; My Little Home in Tennessee; My Mother's Beautiful Hands; My Mother’s old Red Shawl; My Sweet Iola; Night Time In Nevada; Ninety and Nine; Nobody’s Darling; Now The Table's Turned on You; Red Light Ahead; Red River Valley; Old Coon Dog; Old Joe Clark; Old Number Three; Old Rugged Cross; Old Tintype Picture; Old Wooden Rocker; On Top Of Old Smoky; Only As Far as The Gate; Paddle Your Own Canoe; Paper Of Pins; Pearl Bryan; Picture From Life’s Other Side; Pretty Little Pink; Red Light Ahead; Roll Along Kentucky Moon; Sleepy Head; Ship That Never Returned; Showers Of Blessing; Since The Cross Cast It’s Shadow On Me; Somewhere Somebody’s Waiting For You; Some Little Bug is Going to Find You; Sourwood Mountain; Steamboat Bill;  Streets of Laredo; Swapping Song; Sweet Betsy From Pike; Sweet Inniscarta; Sweet Kitty Wells; That Tumble Down Shack; There was An Old Soldier; There’s A Church In The Valley; There’s A Red Light Ahead; There’s No Place Like Home; Those Precious Love Letters; Three Wishes; Tildy Johnson; True And Trembling Brakeman; Turkish Lady; Two Little Girls in Blue; Two Sisters; Unclouded Day; What’ll I Do With The Baby-O; When Irish Eyes Are Smiling; When Jesus Beckons Me Home; When The works All Done This Fall; Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight; Whispering Hope; Will the Angels Play Their Harps For Me;  Wreck of the Number; Wreck on The C & O Road; Zeb Turney’s Gal.

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Burnett and Rutherford Biographies 1926

By Richard L. Matteson Jr.

In 2003, “Man of Constant Sorrow” was voted the number 20 song in CMT’s 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music. That’s the 20th greatest song all-time! The song appeared in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, under the title "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow." Performed by the fictitious Soggy Bottom Boys in the movie, it was recorded by Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, and Pat Enright. It was a hit in the movie for the Soggy Bottom Boys and later became a hit single in real life. It received a CMA for "Single of the Year" and a Grammy for "Best Country Collaboration with Vocals" and it peaked at #35 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.

When asked about “Man of Constant Sorrow,” a song he called “The Farewell Song” that appeared in his 1913 songbook, Dick Burnett replied, “It might be my song- I dunno.”  The success is a testament to how important the songs in this book really are or could be. The fact that Burnett never recorded the song and probably didn’t write doesn’t matter. What matters is that the songs of early Country Music are preserved and shared in this and future generations.

On November 6, 1926 Burnett and his playing partner Leonard Rutherford made their first recordings for Columbia in Atlanta, Georgia. They started the session for Columbia exec Frank Walker by playing an up-beat bluesy tune titled “Lost John.” They finished the six-song set with the classic ballad, “Pearly Byran.”

Early Life
Richard “Dick” Burnett from Monticello, Kentucky was one of nine children. They were orphaned when Burnett was only twelve years of age. In his youth he worked as a logger and wheat thrasher then a driller and tool dresser in the oil fields in Aspen Valley. While growing up he sang and learned to play banjo, dulcimer, fiddle and guitar.

After he married and had a small child, an event happened in 1907 that would change his occupation and his life forever. Dick Burnett was walking home for his job at the barbershop in Stearns, Kentucky when he was robbed at gunpoint by a railroad tramp. Rather than lose his money, he rushed the robber and was shot in the face by a shotgun blast, leaving him blind. Unable to work at the barbershop, he decided to become a musician to earn money for his wife and small child. Soon after healed from the shooting, he began traveling from town to town playing on the street for nickels and dimes with a tin cup tied to his leg. When he could afford it he took the train, sometimes he’d walk.

By 1909 he was nicknamed Blind Dick Burnett (also the “Blind Minstrel of Monticello") and was touring the South from Florida to Ohio, entertaining at fairs and schoolhouses. He sold ballets (single sheets with the words to the song ptinted on them) to earn extra money. In 1913 he earned enough money to publish his book of ballets in Danville, Virginia. It included “The Lost Ship” about the Titanic sinking of 1912, “The C & O Railroad” (Along Came The Wreck of the FFV), “The Reckless Hobo,” The Jolly Butchers” (which he claimed sold 4,000 copies); and the “Farewell Song” (known now as “Man of Constant Sorrow”). According to Charles Wolfe, the melody of  “Man Of Constant Sorrow” was based on an old Baptist hymn, “The Wandering Boy.”

Teams Up With Rutherford
By 1914 he had found a 14 year old boy, fiddler Leonard Rutherford, to accompany him on his travels. Rutherford was from nearby Sommerset and was learning to play the fiddle. Burnett was willing to teach him if Rutherford would help him get around and play with him. It was the star of a 35-year partnership with Rutherford playing fiddle and Burnett singing and playing banjo.

“Other people cut their music up,” said Burnett. “Me and Leonard, we played every note exactly together.” This unison style was typical of many early string band and country musicians.
 
Dick Burnett and Leonard Rutherford both came from south central Kentucky, a few miles north of the Tennessee border and about 60 miles west of the coal-mining belt. They spent most of their lives in Monticello, Wayne County, in an area rich in musical heritage. John Lair's Renfro Valley settlement was only 50 miles to the northeast, and many of his musicians were drawn from the southern Kentucky region. Emry Arthur and his brothers, prolific recording artists in the 1920'sand 1930's, were raised "just up the road" from Dick Burnett; other musicians from the area included banjoist Marion Underwood, singer-guitarist John Foster, the Walker string band, and fiddler Elmer Stanley.  Monticello itself boasted a stately old courthouse with a big shady front lawn, which was the Saturday gathering place for musicians from miles around. Even today the people of Wayne County have a strong appreciation of traditional music, and the songs of Burnett and Rutherford are still very much alive in the community in spite of the fact that fiddler Rutherford died in 1954 and Dick Burnett in 1977.

W.L. Gregory, a Monticello fiddler: “I was born in 1905 at a place called Rocky Branch, about 15 miles southeast of Monticello. When we were young, our family used to play a lot of music. My brother Jim- he’s dead now- was a good banjo player. As kids we would play on old homemade fiddles, syrup buckets, wooden necks. I’ve played on ‘em since I was 12 years old. Jim and I, we used to enter a lot of contests in the Monticello area, did pretty good too, up till along in the 1930’s. Then we stopped playing. Just got married off, got separated. Broke up playing, and that was it. Went to doing this veterinarian work about 1926, and I’d have to say that was my occupation. Music’s been a hobby, just played on the side. But I had stopped playing for 18 or 20 years there, and just started getting back to it here these last 6 or 7 years, playing with my grandson and then Clyde [Davenport] here.”

“The first time I saw Leonard Rutherford was in 1923. He was sure a better fiddler than I was - - I was young, and he had me worsted by 7-8 years. When I got in with him, got to playing, me with the fiddle and him with the bow, playing tunes together on the fiddle, that’s the way I began. I began to step it up, stepped it up in his style. I learned most of my style from him. Then I met Dick and travelled with him for a while about 1929-1930, sometimes sort of replacing Leonard; Dick would play banjo, I played violin. We would go out 75-80 miles, be gone a week at at time. We’d set up shows, sell tickets back at the door in those days; didn’t hand out bills, just advertised maybe in stores and restaurants. Once I remember we was playing in King Mountain and they called out from the audience and asked up to play Ladies On The Steamboat and we did, and Dick got in a big way, and slapping the hide you know and playing his juice [Jews] harp [Dick Burnett did and uncanny imitation of a juice harp with his throat]. And he knocked the thumb screw out of the neck and hit the string loose and it wound around the neck and Dick, he just kept going through it on four strings and finally wound it up and he laughed real big and said, ‘Folks, I knocked my thumb screw out but I finished for you on four strings’, and the house, well, it went wild. Dick was a showman, a real comic in his younger days. He was a great entertainer. And he’d fiddle ever once in awhile. He could play good breakdowns, but was a little rough. Buckin’ Mule, stuff like that, Train 45. When me and Leonard played with him, out somewhere, we would always give him the fiddle on those number cause he’d cut up with it, you know, but come to a slick one that had to be slicked up, he’d hand it back to us then. But he could always attract a crowd.”

Charles K. Wolfe interviewed Burnett, who was still working as a chair maker at the age of 90 in Monticello, in April 1973 (Old Time Music 9). During the interview, Burnett claimed that he and Rutherford initially recorded because a furniture storeowner at the Bonnie Blue Coal Camp in Virginia wanted to sell records of them. Because of the storeowner's interest in the two musicians, he talked a Columbia talent scout in Atlanta. They had just established their “Country” 15000-D series (Old Familiar Tunes) the year before with Riley Puckett, Ernest Thompson, Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis. Curiously, both Puckett and Thompson were blind. Frank Walker wrote to them and invited them to record at the representative’s recommendation. Burnett & Rutherford made their first recordings for Columbia in Atlanta, Georgia on November 6, 1926.

“You know in traveling everywhere I’d meet people selling song ballets,” said Burnett in an interview with Charles Wolfe. “(I’d meet) other blind people in particular that way. We’d always swap ballets (songs) if somebody had a good one. I’d get them all. I’d get someone to hum the tune to it, I was always quick to catch the tune. I would get the tune then somebody would read the words.” Burnett remembered learning "Willie Moore" from a printed ballad.

The region produced other banjoists like Buell Kazee, Marion Underwood, B.F. Shelton and Lily Mae Ledford (Coon Creek Girls). Another recording artist Emry Arthur, who was friends with Burnett, also claimed to have written, “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Emry was the first to record the song in 1928 for Vocalion. Burnett never recorded the song but his version was similar to Arthur’s, both sang a different melody than the more modern version included in this book.

Burnett and Rutherford crossed paths with nearly all the greats of old-time music: the Skillet Lickers, the Carter Family, Mae and Bob, George Reneau, Charlie Oaks, Byrd Moore, Arthur Smith, Emry Arthur, and many others. They recorded some of the classic sides in old-time music, and their popularity on records kept them recording steadily throughout the 1920's. Their appeal on radio allowed them to broadcast from places like WLW in Cincinatti and from the famous Renfro Valley Barn Dance. Countless fiddlers, singers, and pickers learned from them, either via records or through their many personal appearances.

Rutherford died in 1954 from complications related to epilepsy. Burnett died in 1977, four years after his interview with Charles Wolfe.

Complete Recordings of Burnett and Rutherford: All Night Long Blues; Are You Happy Or Lonesome?; Billy In The Low Ground; Blackberry Blossom; Bonnie Blue Waltz; Cabin with the Roses at the Door; Cumberland Gap; Curly Headed Woman; Going Around The World; Going Across The Sea; Grandma's Rag; Green Valley Waltz; I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow (Credited to Burnett but not recorded); I’ll Be With You When The Roses Bloom Again; Knoxville Rag; Ladies On The Steamboat; Little Stream Of Whiskey; Lost John; My Sarah Jane; My Sweetheart in Tennessee; Pearl Byran; Ramblin' Reckless Hobo; She Is A Flower From The Fields Of Alabama; She’s A Flower;  Short Life Of Trouble; Sleeping Lulu; Taylor's Quickstep; There's No One Like the Old Folks; Two Faithful Lovers; Under The Pale Moonlight; Weeping Willow Tree; Willie Moore

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CITIZEN GREEN: Remembering Bill Livers

By Jordan Green, published June 27th, 2019 in Triad City Beat

Through the lens of my whiteness, shaped by growing up in rural Kentucky in the 1980s, race was invisible. It was easy for me to not see race as a force that shaped the outcome of people’s lives, given the overwhelming whiteness of the place. According to the most recent census, Owen County, where I grew up and attended public school from 6th through 11th grades, is 95.8 percent white, with a total population of 10,686.

My obliviousness to race in Owen County was clearly built on a foundation of racial turmoil and black erasure. The fact that our high school mascot was the “rebel” should have been a clue. An extraordinary account published in the New York Times in 1874 by Deputy US Marshal Willis Russell, details a campaign of terror waged by the Ku Klux Klan against black residents and white allies in Owen County during Reconstruction. 

Willis, who lived in Monterey, the small river town where I grew up, wrote: “They were known as Kuklux, and were in the habit of visiting the houses of citizens, disguised [and masked], in the night-time, and inflicting summary punishment, without charge, reason or excuse. The parties thus visited by them were mostly poor colored men, living in humble cabins, but they would sometimes attack a white citizen of the poorer class. Sometimes they would kill the parties whom they visited. Sometimes they would whip their victims severely, and occasionally burn the houses in which they lived.”

Willis wrote that at the outset of the attacks, around 1870, the ringleaders approached him and asked him to join the Klan. They told him “that their object was not only to drive the negroes from Kentucky, but also all Radicals who were in favor of negroes.” Willis’ article also includes an account of a raid by the local Klan organization in neighboring Scott County, in which they “ordered all the negroes they saw to leave the country within 10 days; if not, they would kill them all and burn their houses.” Willis reported that the Klan “shot and killed an old negro man and wounded several others,” and that one group of black residents returned fire, killing one of the Klansmen. Other unprovoked murders of black residents from Owen and surrounding counties followed over the next five years.

I knew black people when I grew up in Owen County in the 1980s, but I don’t think I thought of them as having a particular history, culture or shared social experience. One of them was Ray Sims, whom my father hired for occasional odd jobs, including helping pump out our cistern. Then there was Bill Livers, a black fiddler. He had a legendary reputation among my parents and their friends, and to me also. His fiddle playing was considered “hot,” thus the name of his band, in which he was backed by a group of young, white hippies: “Bill Livers & the Progress Red Hot String Band.” My uncle, Larry, played with the band occasionally.

But even more than his music, Livers’ fish fries were legendary. It’s probably a conflation of my hazy memory and recollections shared among adult friends, but Livers was renowned for his hospitality and entertaining stories. He was warm and funny. When I was maybe 10 or 11, he took me fishing. The memory of that event is more impression than factual detail — the way the trees leaned over a secluded pool of a creek that ran through the woods, his gentle and kind manner, that we caught some small bluegill and tossed them back. If nothing else comes through, these details should show a man of rare generosity, and many of us probably took him for granted.

When our family attended Livers’ visitation in 1988, I remember his wife, Hattie, reproaching my parents for not coming to visit Bill before he died.

“He would have liked to see you,” she said.

Even though I saw him as larger than life while he was with us, only in retrospect does it seem that Bill Livers’ true magnificence comes into full focus. It’s impossible not to think of Livers in correlation with Joe Thompson, the black fiddler in Mebane who mentored the Carolina Chocolate Drops. They were from the same generation, Livers born in 1911 and Thompson in 1918. But beyond the striking details of race, age and musical discipline, the similarities are somewhat superficial. Joe Thompson and Bill Livers were different artists with different repertoires and styles, each with unique gifts. To my knowledge, Livers, unlike Thompson, did not find a group of young, black players to pass along a legacy of black string-band music. The most important takeaway from the comparison should be a recognition that string-band music played with fiddles and banjos is black music.

Livers’ proteges in the Progress Red Hot String Band recently paid tribute to him with a concert at the Owen County Library. And I want to do my part to nail down some of his cultural significance beyond my childish perceptions.

One of the tunes Livers played was “Old Virge.” John Harrod, my freshman English teacher at Owen County High School, wrote in the liner notes of Traditional Fiddle Music of Kentucky: Along the Kentucky River, a 1997 compilation on Rounder Records: “Bill said that “Old Virge” was named after his grandfather, Virge Livers, who evidently established a reputation with it because the tune was known throughout Owen and Grant counties by that name. Virge Livers and his two sons, Albert and Claude, would walk or ride mules to play for dances through the country.”

To sense what the music was like if you were hearing it in the same room, the best I’ve found is this description, written by Eric Larson and Nathalie Andrews — both friends of my family — in an oral history published in Southern Exposure in 1978: “He plays the fiddle with an abandon that is breathtaking. At times, listening to him is like watching a reckless skater on slick ice. Music is snatched from thin air….”

AT THE HEAD OF OLD SALT LICK (1980)

By John Harrod

The old barn leans in about equal proportion to the fences, the gates, the sheds, the old house, and even the people who live here, Charlie and Noah Kinney, and Noah’s wife, Hazel.  Past the barn and the garden, a tiny shed crowded with Noah’s wood carvings: an ensemble of life-sized female musicians with guitar, mandolin, dobro, and fiddle; a miniature old-time threshing machine; a fire engine; a horse-and-buggy; and a mule pulling a plow. The front porch of Noah’s and Hazel’s house is piled with rocks and lumps of coal that Hazel, not to be outdone, has painted with faces, flowers, and forests.  Charlie’s shanty across the creek is littered with strips of hickory bark that he uses to make garden baskets. The old house where the brothers were born is inhabited now by Charlie’s puppets, bizarre creations assembled from rags, aluminum foil, and bits of junk that hang from the end of a tobacco stick and dance while Charlie fiddles.  The stripping room and barn display Charlie’s paintings: crayon, house paint, and acrylic on window shades and poster board. The gate beside the barn keeps nothing in and nothing out.    As visitors arrive and enter the yard, the last one through is left to figure out how to stand it back up and get it to stay.  No farming has gone on here for a long time.  To pass through that gate is to enter another world.

For years now neighbors and visitors have entered this world, struggled comically to replace the impossible gate, and settled themselves in the barn on apple crates and old car seats for a Saturday night round of music.  Nearly everyone here is a “musicianer” of sorts or a dancer, but the fiddle is the instrument of choice, and the  pickers, dancers, and listeners align themselves around the circle of fiddlers like filings pointing to the pole of a magnet.  “This is fiddle country,” Brooks Mineer explains.  Indeed, few places in North America at that time could have provided such a collection of genuine old-time fiddlers from the same neighborhood as the head of Salt Lick in Lewis County, Kentucky.

Unlike a jam session today where fiddlers play familiar tunes all together in a group, in the Kinneys’ barn one fiddle is passed around the circle and each fiddler plays individually.  A guitar and sometimes a banjo, are likewise traded around as the fiddle is passed, giving everyone the opportunity to second as well as lead.  The order of performing is set by a custom long established among themselves—no one better to lead off than Brooks Mineer, who always claims he has to play first because he’s not even supposed to be here and has to leave early or his wife will kill him.  When he plays his “Gray Eagle,” the fiddle held low on his left arm the old-fashioned way, his body swaying in counter-rhythm to the rolling of his bow, his eyes gleam and sparkle, and he seems transported to another realm beyond this brief instant of time in the old barn.

“What? Play the ‘Gray Eagle’ AGIN?” he whines in disbelief.  Gus didn’t have the tape recorder on, so Brooks will oblige, but with a condition: he will play it again if someone will dance.  The plywood board is dragged out into the driveway and another instrument is added to the ensemble, its partner in evolution, the ancient rhythm of the feet.  Now he plays for a long time and puts the young lady through a real workout until finally, when one or both of them has had enough, they end with a flourish, bow strokes and feet together!  Brooks protests he has already stayed too late: “I’m a dead man when I get home.” He  passes the fiddle  to his brother-in-law, Bob Prater, the premier dance fiddler in Lewis County, and so the music continues as different ones, from old men in overalls to adolescent girls in designer jeans, try out their steps on the plywood board.

These fiddlers are close observers and students of each other’s playing.  Noah leans over to me and allows, “Bob’s got a keen cut with the bow, don’t he?”  In fact, there is some similarity in the playing of all these fiddlers, having grown up and learned from a previous generation in the same place, an exaggerated emphasis on the bowing, artful, graceful, and flamboyant,  articulating difficult and complex phrases that most other fiddlers would not attempt. As we were learning, it was something that had to be seen as well as heard.  The way they played could not be learned from tapes or records.

And so it goes as the fiddle is passed around the circle.  After Bob Prater, Clarence Rigdon takes the fiddle and saws his way through beautiful and  lively old tunes learned from his father, who learned them from men who came down the Ohio on the riverboats.   Then Roger Cooper plays, a generation younger than the others, whose playing reflects the years he spent learning from the late Buddy Thomas,  the greatest of  all the Lewis Co. fiddlers.    After Roger, Gus and I take our turns, feeling honored to get to play in such a company.

The evening wears on and now the fiddle is passed to Charlie, who being the oldest, always plays last.  Noah seconds him on the guitar as only a brother can with runs that weave in and out of the tune like the shuttle through the shed of a loom. Charlie remarks that he can “catch a feller’s bow-hand” if he can study it long enough, and I am relieved to know the reason for his unnerving stare while I was playing one of his tunes.  Now he takes the fiddle  and imitates first Gus’s, and then my style of bowing.  Gus and I didn't play at all alike, but Charlie had captured each of us perfectly. Over the years he had picked up tunes from us just as we had from him, and now here he was giving us his rendition of our renditions of his tune!

It is a vision I will never forget:  old Charlie with his legs crossed, sitting on a crate, the old felt hat partly hiding that inscrutable gaze, his bow arm hanging loosely at his side and his hand drawing curves in the air.  As I watch and listen, my attention is drawn to  Charlie’s paintings tacked up on the inside of the old barn: hounds trailing a fox into a mountain sunset while a little girl stands peacefully fishing in a tiny pond; a man hauling dogs in a horse-drawn sled, the dogs with dog-smiles sitting up on their hind legs enjoying the ride; and the one that still speaks to me across the years: a hawk’s eye view of this valley from the top of the mountain, with a life size hawk on a limb in the foreground, and below in the distance this same barn caught in this same instant: brush-strokes and bow-strokes, weaving the signature patterns of our lives.

Remembering Paul David Smith

By John Harrod

Paul was one of the last generation of fiddlers whose lives connected the pre-modern music of the mountains with modern bluegrass. The wonderful tunes he played from Snake Chapman and Doc Chapman before him are as old and timeless as the hills themselves and will forever be a part of our music as long as people live on this North American continent.

Even though he was primarily known as a fiddler, he could play anything he picked up. He worked out his own unique way of picking the banjo that was the perfect complement and driving force to Snake’s fiddling and transposed this into an equally incomparable finger-picking style on the guitar. In his own fiddling, Paul played any style of music that struck his fancy. Whether it was old-time, bluegrass, blues, or swing, he was a master of creative and subtle improvisation.  When workshop participants would complain about the seemingly endless variations that came out when he was trying to teach a tune, he would laugh and say that he never played a tune the same way once.  He could find beautiful harmony parts quicker than anyone, and the fills he played between the lines of a song were the coolest of all, the epitome of that under-appreciated art.

Although his playing was much like Snake’s, still there were differences.  Like all great fiddlers Paul had his own style. Whereas Snake was a strictly up-bow player, Paul turned his phrases both up- and down-bow, or in the words of Earl Thomas, that great Kentucky banjo player and understander of all things old-time, “He could get it coming and going.”

But Paul was more than just his music. More than anything, he taught us how to live. It was the spirit that came though his music, his warmth, his charm, that smile and twinkle in his eye, his patience, and generosity that made him friends all over the country. He was truly one of those individuals who makes you want to be more like him.

He taught us how to live and he taught us how to die. The summer before he passed, Paul was like a brilliant shooting star trailing across the sky.  From Cowan Creek to Port Townsend, Swannanoa, Morehead, Clifftop, and Augusta, he lit up the nights and went out in a blaze of glory. It was a complete burn and he left his music in the air and we can still hear it.  There are young kids and young adults in the mountains today who have grown up playing with Paul and they know his music and they will not forget.

In 2005 Don Rogers, Jeff Keith, Jim Webb, Kevin Kehrberg, Paul, and I recorded a CD together.  This was just one of the groups Paul played and recorded with. Paul was the inspiration and guiding force behind this project which we dedicated to the great fiddlers of Kentucky and titled “Spirits of the Lonesome Hills.”  In the same year we lost J. P. Fraley, then Kenny Baker, and then Paul took his place among them.  I don’t know what religion they all might have followed, and it doesn’t matter – the spirits are real. And I know that some day we can all look forward to joining them again. 

Memorial

Paul David Smith age 78 of Hardy, Ky., passed away peacefully on Monday, August 22, 2011, at his home in Hardy.

Paul was born April 25, 1933, in Pike County, Ky., to the late Wilson and Estalene Smith. He was preceded in death by his wife Maxine Church Smith.

He is survived by his daughter, Pamela and son Stephen Smith; granddaughters, Brittany and Katie and grandson Corey Smith; sister, Mary E. Vance; and two brothers, Gary Smith and Jerry D. Smith.

Paul was a master fiddle player. Starting early in life he was self taught and could read no music. However, he played old-time folk music all his life. He was recognized by the Augusta Heritage Center as an Appalachian Master. Paul was named the worthy recipient of the prestigious Mike Seeger Annual National Folk Alliance Award in Memphis, Tennessee.

Paul has also received the Appalachian Treasure Award from Kentucky Folk Arts Center and Kentucky Center for Traditional Music in Morehead, Ky. Paul was a renowned fiddler nationwide and had recently returned from a trip to Washington state where he taught his craft to others. Paul was also recognized as a Kentucky Colonel.

Visitation was held Thursday, at the funeral home from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Funeral services were held at 2 p.m. Friday, August 26, at R. E. Rogers Funeral Home. Burial followed at the Smith-Stanley Family Cemetery on Stratton Fork in Canada, Ky. Pallbearers will be family and friends. In lieu of lowers contributions were made to the American Diabetes Association.

--Williamson Daily News (WV) - Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Banjo History

By George R. Gibson

Uncle Dave Macon, the first star of the Grand Old Opry, was an extraordinary banjo player and entertainer. It is likely that black musicians as well as minstrel entertainers influenced his music. Earl Scruggs, who originated a unique style of bluegrass banjo playing, came from a mountain area where banjos and banjo songs had long been a part of the culture. Many mountain banjo songs became popular with early radio string bands, and later became bluegrass standards. When the banjo and banjo songs entered the mountains is a question that has not been definitively addressed.

Various writers, most from outside the mountains, have maintained that minstrel entertainers in blackface first brought the banjo to the mountains. That the banjo was foreign to Appalachia until after the Civil War is now a popular belief. It is maintained that the banjo was brought back by soldiers returning from the Civil War, or brought in after the Civil War by professional white minstrel entertainers who performed in blackface while touring with circuses, medicine shows, or on steamboats. Proponents of this theory did not consult mountain historians or folklorists. Also, there are no references in the mountains during or after the Civil War that cite the banjo as a newly imported instrument.

Most contemporary historians interested in the banjo are enamored with the banjo music of minstrels, which was documented in tutors published in the 1850s and 1860s. They have ignored the history of Appalachia, while developing theories attributing the origin of mountain banjo to minstrels. The message inherent in this theory is that it was necessary for professional musicians, mostly from the north, to teach mountaineers to play banjo. I attribute this in part to the ‘hillbilly’ stereotype that grips the popular imagination. This stereotype portrays the mountaineer as either an uneducated simpleton or an uncouth savage, and certainly does not allow for creativity or racial diversity. I believe the power of this stereotype, which has been perpetuated in the popular media for over a hundred years, explains the absurd lengths to which some have gone to establish minstrels as the deus ex machina for mountain banjo music. To properly address mountain banjo history, it is necessary to first provide an overview of minstrel music.

THE MINSTRELS

American musical theater began with stage performances of musicians in blackface in the 1840s. The five string banjo, fiddle, bones and tambourine were the primary instruments of these musicians, now known as minstrels. The history of the minstrels has been documented in several books, one of which is Hans Nathan’s Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. Some musicians and dancers began performing in blackface while traveling with circuses in the 1820s and 1830s. They performed comedy routines and dances that poked fun at enslaved blacks. Black stereotypes developed during the minstrel era persisted well into the twentieth century.

During the winter of 1842-43 the four musicians who formed the Virginia Minstrels met by chance in a boarding house in New York City, and decided to play as a group. Dan Emmett played the fiddle, Billy Whitlock the banjo, Dick Pelham the tambourine and Frank Brower the bones. The first confirmed appearance of this group was February 6, 1843, at the Bowery Amphitheatre. This performance is commonly accepted as the beginning of minstrel theatre. The Virginia Minstrels became an overnight sensation, and in May 1843, traveled to England, where minstrelsy and the banjo also became immensely popular. Other minstrel troupes were quickly formed, including the Kentucky Minstrels, the Congo Melodists, the Christy Minstrels, the Ethiopian Serenaders, and many more. Minstrel theatre remained the most popular form of entertainment in America through most of the nineteenth century. Stephen Foster, composer of My Old Kentucky Home, wrote most of his songs for minstrel troupes. Dan Emmett, who played the fiddle, banjo and other instruments, became famous for his composition of Dixie, which became the most popular song of the Confederate south. Minstrelsy, much changed from its early origins, remained popular in schools and local theatres through the 1940s.

Joel Walker Sweeney, a white musician born about 1810 in east Virginia, is the first white musician to have been documented playing the banjo. References to any banjo players prior to about 1830 are very rare. Sweeney traveled and entertained in blackface during the 1830s, and later formed his own minstrel troupe. Sweeney had two brothers known to have played banjo. One brother, Samuel, was an orderly for Confederate General Jeb Stuart during the Civil War. He entertained Stuart and his fellow soldiers by playing banjo.

Some minstrel banjoists, including Sweeney, are thought to have learned to play banjo from enslaved blacks. Proponents of the theory that minstrels taught mountaineers to play banjo, however, ignore the fact that slaves accompanied the earliest settlers into the mountains, or claim, apparently without research, that there were not enough slaves in the mountains to have maintained a banjo tradition.

We have documentary evidence in Nathan’s Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Minstrelsy that a mountaineer from western Virginia named Ferguson taught Dan Emmett to play banjo in 1840. This fact is ignored altogether, or described as an anomaly, by those who claim minstrels taught mountaineers to play banjo.

THE BANJO IN COLONIAL AMERICA

Eastern Virginia is known to have had slaves that played banjo. President Thomas Jefferson added as a footnote to his Notes on Virginia: ‘The instrument proper to them [slaves] is the banjar, which they brought hither from Africa.’ Reverend Jonathan Boucher, a loyalist who lived in America prior to the Revolutionary War, began a dictionary after immigrating to England. He described the banjo as ‘A musical instrument …in use, chiefly, if not entirely, among people of the lower classes…’ He further states that the banjo in Maryland and Virginia was ‘…the favorite and almost only instrument in use among the slaves… The body was a large hollow gourd, with a long handle attached to it, strung with catgut, and played on with the fingers…’ It is interesting to note that Rev. Boucher states the banjo was used among the ‘lower classes.’ Newspapers were still referring to the banjo as an instrument of the lower classes during the rise in popularity of blackface minstrels.

The lower classes in the 1700s included slaves, indentured servants, apprentices and others economically deprived. The class system in the 1700s was based more on economics than race. White indentured servants, for instance, were treated no better than slaves. Joseph Doddridge devotes a chapter in his Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars to cruelty to slaves and servants. He was an eyewitness to several horrendous punishments, and says, ‘Female servants, both black and white, were subjected to the whip in common with the males.’ Paul Heinegg says in Free blacks of North Carolina and Virginia: ‘Most of the free blacks of Virginia and North Carolina originated in Virginia where they became free in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before chattel slavery and racism fully developed in the United States…When they arrived in Virginia, Africans joined a society which was divided between master and white servant – a society with such contempt for white servants that masters were not punished for beating them to death …They joined the same households with white servants – working, eating, sleeping, getting drunk, and running away together.’

It would be logical to assume that the banjo music of slaves and the fiddle music of indentured white servants began to be shared during this era. The mountain frontier of Virginia and North Carolina was populated in part by servants free of indenture and free blacks hoping to improve their circumstances.

Mr. Heinegg documents 400 free blacks families; many were the result of a union between a white female indentured servant and a slave. Descendants of these families were early settlers on the Virginia and North Carolina frontiers. It would be reasonable to assume some of these families maintained a banjo tradition. Mr. Heinegg says, ‘Many free blacks families in colonial North Carolina and Virginia were landowners… The light skinned descendants of these families formed the tri-racial isolate communities of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Louisiana.’ Tri-racial groups had European, Indian, and African ancestry. Some free blacks intermarried with their white neighbors on the frontier, and because of discriminative and punitive laws passed during the rise of virulent racism, began to conceal their blacks heritage from their children and their neighbors. By the Civil War era some families had apparently forgotten their African heritage. Some early settlers in Kentucky were members of a tri-racial isolate community. The majority of early settlers were of English ancestry, with a minority having German, Scots-Irish, Irish, African, French and Indian ancestry.

THE BANJO IN THE MOUNTAINS

Dr. Daniel Drake’s letters to his children, published in Pioneer Life in Kentucky, describes in detail his boyhood near Maysville, Kentucky, in the years 1788 to 1800. Mr. Rector, a neighbor whom Dr. Drake refers to as ‘Old Leather Stocking,’ depended mostly on hunting and trapping for his livelihood. Dr. Drake recounts, ‘Deer hunting seemed to have been Old Leather Stocking’s cherished pursuit. Its results were clothing, food, & fiddle strings for the Banjo.’ Mr. Rector had migrated to Kentucky from near Winchester, Virginia. Dr. Drake wrote, ‘What he [Mr. Rector] said about the Valley of Virginia indicated that it had, at the middle of last Century [1750], rather a rude, vulgar, and turbulent population.’ That ‘rude, vulgar, and turbulent population’ included slaves, freed slaves, indentured servants and servants free of indenture. This is most likely where Mr. Rector learned to make ‘fiddle strings for the Banjo.’

Dr. Drake’s father had come to Kentucky from New Jersey with several of his neighbors. Dr. Drake considered the settlers from New Jersey to be a better class of people than slave owning neighbors from Maryland and Virginia. Dr. Drake said of slaves in his 1851 Letters on Slavery: ‘…they sometimes assemble for public worship; but, in general, they deliver themselves up to visits, gossip, games, laughter, singing, ‘banjoing,’ fiddling, and dancing…’ Dr. Drake was the best-known physician, teacher, and writer in the mid-west during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

Some of the first settlers in the mountains had slaves. John Mack Farragher states the following in the biography, Daniel Boone: ‘Slaves were another important component of Boonesborough society. There were a number of slave families who should be counted among the early settlers, although few have found their way into the historical record. One who did was a man known as Uncle Monk, owned by James Estill, who arrived with his family in 1775. Monk was one of the most valued men at Boonesborough, a superior hunter and marksman, an accomplished musician who played at all of the dances and frolics, and a blacksmith who knew how to make gunpowder from sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal, an art he taught to Boone…Slaves made up 10 per cent of Kentucky’s American population…’ Monk was later freed after heroism in a battle with Indians.

Perry County Kentucky: A History, by the Hazard chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, prints the will of Elijah Combs. He owned slaves and was one of the first settlers in Perry County. He built his first cabin where the present eastern Kentucky town of Hazard is located. The first industry in Kentucky was salt mines. This industry employed many slaves. A road law of January 28, 1817, mentions salt works on the North Fork of the Kentucky River. The minutes of the Mountain Association of Regular Baptists, held in 1860 and printed in the Perry County history, lists a slave, Dick Johnson, as one of the licensed preachers.

My Adams and Hammons ancestors were slave owners in east Virginia, and moved to Wilkes County, North Carolina after converting to the then new Baptist faith. Moving to North Carolina or western Virginia from east Virginia was a migration route for many families. I believe the banjo song, East Virginia, is a musical record of that migration. Descendants of these families were pioneers in Kentucky, Tennessee and other frontier states. Slaves were fewer in the mountains, but were not as separated from their owners as was possible on the large plantations in east Virginia. One early traveler on the frontier noted that it was common for slaves to occupy the same dwelling as their masters. John M. Stamper said of an old cemetery on Carr Creek in Knott County, Kentucky: ‘Some of the oldest graves are slave and master, buried side by side.’

Katherine Pettit was a founder of the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County. She and others, including Cecil Sharp, collected folksongs in the area. She is thought to have collected songs from a student, Josiah H. Combs, who enrolled in the school in 1902. Combs was from a musical family, and immediately began collecting songs from his family and others in the area. He collected two versions of Whoa Mule from Cullie Williams in 1902. Williams was a blacks man who resided in Knott County on Breedings Creek, which was named for Elisha Breeding. According to Breeding family history, Elisha had several slaves when he moved from western Virginia in 1816. He freed his slaves sometime prior to or during the Civil War, and gave them land on Breedings Creek. Most blacks in Knott County have since lived at Redfox on Breedings Creek. Both blacks and whites have always attended the nominally ‘black’ Baptist church at Redfox.

Josiah Combs continued his education at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and at the University of Paris, where his doctorial thesis, Folk-Songs du Midi des Etats-Unis, was published in 1925. D. K. Wilgus used Combs’s English draft and the French text to edit in 1967 an English version, Folk-Songs of the Southern United States. Mr. Wilgus’s edited version includes a 1959 interview with Dr. Combs, in which Combs describes Cullie Williams as follows: ‘When I was a boy, ‘Cull’ stayed at our house and worked for us at Hindman, Knott County, about the turn of the century. He was a great ‘banjer’ picker…He was intelligent, industrious, and withal a likeable fellow.’ The two versions of Whoa Mule that Combs collected from Williams are in Wilgus’s edited version, along with many other folk songs, including a version of Ellen Smith that Combs collected from my grandfather’s first cousin, Dan Gibson. My grandfather, George W. Gibson, and his cousin Dan were playing banjo in Knott County by the 1890s. My father, Mal Gibson, learned to play around 1905-10, and used more than fifteen different banjo tunings; however, he never used the lowered bass tuning commonly used by minstrel banjoists, nor did any other old timer I heard in Knott County.

Dr. Combs has the following to say in Folk-Songs of the Southern United States regarding banjo songs: ‘The Highlanders have adopted a considerable number of songs belonging to or originating among the Negroes. Some of these songs have long been current in the Highlands, from the days prior to the Civil War, and include banjo- and nonsense-songs, besides some spirituals and songs of the British type… Since the Civil War a number of Negro occupational songs have crept in, notably such well-known ones as ‘John Hardy,’ ‘John Henry,’ the ‘Yew-Pine Mountain,’ ‘Frankie,’ ‘Lynchburg Town,’ ‘The Kicking Mule,’ ‘Turkey in the Straw,’ and others.’ Later, he makes a more specific statement regarding this subject: ‘The Highlander has adopted many banjo airs from the Negroes, although the Negro population of the Highlands has never been extensive. Such airs came into the Highlands prior to the Civil War, while the Negro railroad songs came in afterwards, largely during the past twenty-five years [1900-1925]. The tunes of ‘Lynchburg Town,’ ‘Shortnin’ Bread,’ ‘Raccoon,’ Shady Grove,’ ‘Hook and Line,’ ‘Houn’ Dog,’ ‘Ida Red,’ ‘Little Gray Mule,’ ‘Big Stone Gap,’ and numerous others, are from the Negroes.’ Dr. Combs is very specific in stating that banjo songs came in prior to the Civil War; he did not feel it necessary to state the banjo also came in at the same time, for that was common knowledge at the time he was writing. In any event, it would be difficult to imagine banjo songs traveling without the banjo.

The earliest descriptions of slave banjos, including that of Rev. Jonathan Boucher, depict an instrument with a gourd body. Manufactured banjos supplanted gourd banjos in urban areas by the 1860s. Gourd banjos, however, were still being used in the Kentucky mountains as late as 1950. Leonard Roberts published a 1950’s interview with an east Kentucky family in Up Cutshin & Down Greasy: Jim Couch related, ‘My grandfather made one [banjo] that lasted for years. The box of it was made outten an old gourd. The strings was connected up some way on the neck, and that thing played right good, I thought.’ Jim’s father, Tom Couch, a banjo player born in 1860, said one of his forbears started the tradition of picking and singing by making himself a banjo from an old gourd.

Jean Thomas describes banjo making in Devil’s Ditties, published in 1931: ‘If a fiddle were not to be had, a man could, if he were so minded, make a banjo with pine or cedar for the neck, a coon skin or fox hide stretched tight over a hickory hoop for a sounding board, or he could even use a long necked squash for that purpose.’ She describes a small banjo made from a gourd in Ballad Makin’ in the Mountains of Kentucky: ‘The rounded side had been cut away and the opening covered with a scrap of brown paper made fast with flour paste. The strings were of wire.’ Thomas began the American Song Festival in 1931. Folkway’s CD F-2358, American Folk Song Festival, which can be ordered from Smithsonian Folkways, has in the liner notes a photo of a young lad sitting on stage with his gourd banjo. There is also a photo of this boy and his gourd banjo in Alan Eaton’s Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands.

Eliot Wigginton and his students edited the popular Foxfire books. The second chapter of Foxfire 6, Gourd Banjos and Songbows, has the following statement regarding Ernest Hedges, whom they had met in 1977: ‘Since Mr. Hedges is a concert violinist and violin maker, we were surprised to learn that his first musical instrument was a gourd banjo made for him when he was a small boy in the mountains of North Carolina by his grandfather. He related details of how his grandfather constructed the instrument out of a long neck gourd, a tomcat’s hide, and a hank of horsehair. We’ve asked a lot of people since then about gourd instruments and found that they were not uncommon at one time in our region’s history.’ Leonard Webb, of Macon County, North Carolina provided the students a detailed description of his procedure for making a gourd banjo.

CONCLUSION

The rise of blackface minstrelsy coincided with the rise of virulent racism in the United States. Banjo players in the mountains would have been aware of the racial stereotyping and low comedy that connected the slave with the banjo. I believe this is one reason more references are not found to mountain banjo in the era prior to the Civil War. Another reason is the primitive nature of the home made banjo – early on it was an artifact used in remote cabins; it was not displayed for the casual visitor. Cecil Sharp collected folk songs and ballads in the mountains early in the 1900s when banjos were relatively plentiful. He apparently did not hear a banjo played. He made the following observation in his 1917 book English Folk Songs in the Southern Appalachians: ‘I came across but one singer who sang to an instrumental accompaniment, the guitar, and that was in Charlottesville, Virginia.’ Mountain folk are very hospitable, and generally try to provide a visitor’s wants, which in the case of Sharp were old English ballads sung unaccompanied.

In conclusion, the banjo was brought from Africa, either physically, or in the memory of enslaved Africans. By the mid-1700s the banjo was transported to the Virginia and North Carolina frontiers by the ‘lower classes,’ which included enslaved African, free blacks, white indentured servants, and servants free of indenture. Mountaineers of both African and European ancestry used the banjo for frolics in remote frontier cabins before 1800.

The transfer of banjo playing from Africans to mountaineers of European descent occurred much earlier than has been assumed and was certainly not as simple as many claim, for some mountaineers have both African and European ancestry. It is preposterous to believe that mountaineers of European ancestry ignored the music of blacks, enslaved and free, with whom they had lived rather intimately for well over a hundred years, and then suddenly adopted the banjo after the Civil War. The contributions of enslaved and free blacks began with the introduction of the banjo, and continued through the introduction of railroad songs as noted by Dr. Josiah Combs. Folk banjo music, a mixture of European and African influences, has been in the mountains since the days of first settlement.

©2001 iBluegrass.com. All rights reserved.By George R Gibson

About George R. Gibson: George, a now-retired business executive, has been working for more than fifty years to save the music of eastern Kentucky. In the process, he’s become a key figure in efforts to preserve the history of the banjo. George plays and collects antique banjos, which he uses to record traditional music. He has also published numerous articles on banjo history, and has designed exhibits in various non-profit museums dedicated to the conservation of American folk heritage

National Heritage Area Designation

Eastern Kentucky is a great opportunity for National Heritage Area designation by the National Park Service. National Park Service's National Heritage Areas are "places where historic, cultural, and natural resources combine to form cohesive, nationally important landscapes." Unlike national parks, National Heritage Areas are large lived-in regions focusing on community-led conservation and development. NHAs are not federally owned, though they may feature federally owned properties.

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