THE SOURCES of COUNTRY MUSIC

THE SOURCES of COUNTRY MUSIC THOMAS HART BENTON 1AA9-1975 We at Smith Kramer are proud to b€ part of the effort to celebrat€th€ work of Thomas Hart Benton dudng the looth anniversary of his birth. "The Sourc€s of Country Music" will be seen in many communities across the country thanks to the dedication of the professionals who have worked with us to make this proiect a reality. We are thankful, first and foremost, to the Country Music Foundation of Nashville for sharing their murat and the 32 accompanying studies. All works inthe exhibitar€ partofth€ collectionsofthe Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Diana Johnson and Chds Skinker of the Foundation have been unfailing in their behind-the-scenesefforts to initiate this tour. H€nry Adams, Curator of American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, has off€red contin- ued assistanceand support. He has provided the enLertarninge55ay on thesepage.. The spon'oring institutions who have o{fered their supPort by participating in th€ tour of the mural also deserve our thanks. The responseswe receive from these sPonsors and those who vi€w the exhibit are very gratifying. We look forward to sharing this delightful and historic exhibit. David L. Smith Smith Kramer, Inc. "The Souces of Country MusiC' mural The Sourcesof Country Music On January r8ih of I975, in his .arriage-house studio in KansasCity, Thomas Hart Benion put the last brush strokes on his painting Tl.50,rds o/ Cd!rtr! M,i,.. The mural had be€n .ommissioned the year before by Nash ville's Couniry Music Foundation to be displayed in rhe Counhy Music HalL of Fane and Museum. Its conple- tion, in less than ; year, by an eighty-five ye.arold ariisi. was an impressive physical achievenent. The task might have erhausted a nuch younger painter, for the six by ten f€et and contains seventcen nearly life sized figures. But Tom Benion took on the project becausethc subje.t was ver! oprr'o h m lJm.rnle-p.r in,^-Irrynu... hr-thdl.,lr man actively invdved wiih it, he was himself a gifted musician,as wellas i collectorofAmeiican folk tunes.In Tha So,tN al Ctuntr,!M,sit hc distilledthe study and hrrd work of a lifetime "l remembef it from my childhood," Tom renarked of couniry music, shortl)' after he was commissioned to make the Nashvillc nural. "l was raised down in southwest Missouri, and the only music we had was country music. So I was preity familiar wiih ii. I was ramilia. with the songsand with agood deal oflitcrature Tom's maternal grandfather, Pappy Wise, of Wax ahachi€, Texas, was a violin naker and used to set up ir the early hours ofthe noining and pl.\' counby fiddle tunes., His mother was a serious pianist Despite this exposufc to music, however, Tom did nor take up an instrument himself until 1931, when he w.rs rorty one years old. One day he picked up a child's harmonica ihat someone had given to his son T.P. and beganto make noiscs.Afiersome experiment, he learned to play a scale and became so excited that he ran home from his siudio to show his new skill to his wif€, Rita. Tuneswere too muchforhim, however,so he wentout and purihased some music books. Ior weeks h€ did nothing but play children's sonAs and elementary folk tunes. After his playing improved, he pur.hased a more e\ppn'ive l.r, mrni, r tlrl al owed l-rm to p.dy l-rlt--ote. dnd m.,\p \ey Hp Jnd plryi-g 'hdrgF. R,LdbFgrn the guitar and harnonica togeiher in th€ evenings. For awhile Ton was more interestedin ihe harmonica than in painting. Thanks to his enthusiasm,a few of his 1.lnttrirr bvhhn A\nir la,ri.liin,The sources ofCounirv Mu\, .J c .l 2. Araflling tD hi\ \i\Jrt Mi|ttl Snqll, fott @rtt oN rl th, Ittlhs thtt Prtv \t\ia h l nrd1 students be.ame interested as well and began meetin8 at his home on Monday eveninss for musicales. To make it easier for the novice, Ton devised a new form ofmusical notation, which was later picked up, and is still used by comm€rcial music publishers-Raiherthan indicating the position of a note on the scale,thb system indicat€d numedcally whi.h hole to blow throush, and had an !p or down arow indi.ating wheth€r to inhale or For five years, playing the harmonica occupied much of Tom's time. He began taking it wiih him on his summertravels and would perforrn in farmhousesand at country dances.As his ear improved, he besan colle.ting American folk tunes. Helen Lieban, who visited Tom in Music, next to paintinS dominates the Benbn men age. Mrs- Benton sings the sonAsof her native Lom bardy to her own guitar accompaniment,while Benton puffs lusiil)' on his harmonica, showina spe.ial par- tiality for such early American folk tunes as "Old Joe Clark," "My Horses Ain't Hungry," and "Buf{alo Gals." Of later years he has gone in relentlessly for Beethoven,Bach, and MozarL makinS up in fire what h€ lacks in virtuosity.s During the r93o's, Benton sketched and befriended country fiddlels like Uncle Lavrrenceand Dudl€y Vance 3. Hd?n Litbin, Thand. Bolon, Anttitt MtttL Pnirttt, t)esign,D.dml'rr, I'r3,1 r' J.l (both of whon are mentioned in A, Altist ifl Ahtkn, Tom's colorful autobiography); made po raits of mod- ern composers su.h as Edgar Var€se and Carl Russles, and befriended the musicologist Charles Seeser,an early .ollecior of American folk songs. Charles Seeg€r'sson, the folk singer PeteSe€serhas recalled that he firstheard the sons "lohn Henry" when B€nton performed it for Many of Benion's best pajntings of the 1930's lrantir rnd lahnv, Thel.olDu' Lott of theLane Green v ollry, and The Engin*r's Drean, for example-w€re directly inspir€d by folk songs. In ihe mural panels he created for ihe Whiiney Museum in New York in 1e32,Tom included a likeness ot Wilbur Levelett, from Calena, Missouri, playins the guita' Dudley Vance, from BlulT City, Tennessee, playing the liddle; ud his pupil Jackson Pollock playins the harmonica. Indeed, Benton probably tried to create visual styles which corr€lated with the various types of music that he toyed. Thek^lon La"o ol Latu Cfter v^llev, fot example, evokes the sadness of a countiy fiddle tune; whereas Iotreion?Road, a likeness of a black man with a mure ano a ramshackle cart, has the serio.omic mood and the jerky, unexpected rhythms of the blues. In 1941 Bentd even flirted with a careeras a harmonica virtuoso. In thai year h€ cut a three record album, releasedby Decca, titled "Saturday Nisht ai Ton B€n- tont" (Decca 331). In it he tooted out tunes on his Upperbody, headdulcine. player harnonica, backed by an orchestraotproFesrional musi As a consequ€nceofhis nusi.al interesis,Tom Benton did not need much persuading when he was first approached by the Country Music Foundaiion. In Jan uary, 1973, when Nornan Worlell, direcior of the TennesseeArts Comnission, and Tex Ritter, ihe famed .owboy sing€r, visiied him in KansasCity, Tom warmed up almosi immediately to Tex's suSgestionthat he create a largevr-ual of the r.oL. of Lou.lry mu\i, 'umma.y While he and Ter sipped Jack Daniels together, Tom repeated,"The sources oF country music-thatt it." He then elaborated: "No one should be recosnizable. It should show the roots of the music th€ sources-before ther€ were records and stars."a Benton laier commenied: I'd had considerabLeinterest in folk music of the United States in various times in my life. So I didn't have to do any research-l knew all ihai stuff. Th€ problem was merely to get it iogether, in my own nind, about how I.ould represent these things in the Now a great deal of this folk sons orisinally came from the countries where ihe early settlerscame from, 4. Knnl Ann Malii,& Tom Berton and His Drawings. p Un.'.r'-,t \/ba". !- ..ludlt db< t Wli'i4 t i, |r'P lheMa^'ngof fhcsout,"-o-(oJFl') Mu'!. /'dr! ' artntt! Mtst Fo"ndttion, Naslrilk To,*rfr, 1975 lenpasinar and in our own ihe most of'em are English and Scoich lrish, but they, naturally, were modified in the American environment and took on iheir particular charact€rand their particular conient. Now this is an inierestina ihinA aboui .ountry music. Until very Latelythey used no percussion, not evenabanjoorasuitar. Everythinswas eitherfiddle or sinSing.The singing was sometimes part sinaing iwo and three, generally three parts; but there was no kind of percussion instrument, say iike a banjo, which has some ofthe attack that a percussioninstrumeni would have. They were not used. I don't remember any guitar playing in my youth in the Ozalk country at all, in my early youth. The only banjos that were ever played were ihose in the old minsirel shows.s Benton beAan planning the Nashville painting in ihe fall of 1973. In December he wrote to William Ivey, executive director of the Country Music Foundation, ursing that "people should express their opinions and preferences,?'and suggesting that the painting might include "pioneer liddlers and square or play party dancers hvmn singers,(white spiiituals)-ballad singers (rnaybewiih dulcime.), blues sins€rs-(nesro with banjo, mJybeon the beloB Memphi.) Cowboy,in8"h- 'rver etc., etc."6 By the first of January 1974, Benton had submitted an initial sketch to the Board of the tounda 5.

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