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Spirit Square Arts Center

Charlotte, NC October 25, 26,1985 A-lS President of the Board of Directors of Charlotte's

community center for the arts, it

is particularly exciting to host The Charlotte Country Music Story. In addition to marvelous entertainment, Tfie Charlotte Country Music Story will preserve a part of this region's cultural heritage and recognize many of the artists whose pioneering work here in this community led to the formation of country music.

I am grateful to the many individuals and organizations named elsewhere in this book whose effort made The Charlotte Country Music Story possible.

I especially wish to thank the Folklife Section of the North Carolina Arts Council for serving as the coordinator of the project.

Sincerely, y

Roberto J. Suarez, President Board of Directors THE CHARLOTTE The Charlotte Country Music Story is the culmination of many months of research and COUNTRY MUSIC planning directed by the Folklife Section of the North Carolina Arts Council in partnership STORY with the Spirit Square Arts Center of Charlotte. It represents a novel collaboration between a state and a local cultural agency to recover a vital piece of North Carolina's cultural

George Holt is director of the history. Too often we fail to appreciate the value of cultural resources that exist close at

Folk-life Section of the North hand; frequently, it takes an outside stimulus to enable us to regard our own heritage with Carolina Arts Council and appropriate objectivity and pride. producer of The Charlotte A young newcomer to Charlotte, Tom Hanchett, first proposed to Spirit Square Arts Center Country Music Story. that a series of concerts be arranged to present some of the artists who helped make Charlotte a center of the emerging country music industry in the 1930's and '40s. A folk music enthusiast and a historian employed by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Properties

Commission, Hanchett had learned that scores of important early country music artists, some professional, most amateur, came to Charlotte to broadcast on Charlotte's WBT, the most powerful radio station in the Carolinas, and to record for RCA Victor in makeshift recording studios located in the warehouse of Southern Radio Corporation and later at the Hotel Charlotte.

Taking an interest in Hanchett 's proposal, Spirit Square approached the North Carolina Aits Council for support, and soon thereafter the Council's Folklife Section agreed to direct the production.

The Charlotte Country Music Story is really a complex body of tales drawn from

hundreds of individual family dramas and sweeping historical themes. In large terms, it is the story of struggling families caught in the throes of the industrialization of the Carolinas:

the transformation of an essentially rural, agrarian society with its distinctive mix of customs and racial relationships to a more urban economy based on the manufacture of textiles, tobacco products, and furniture. In the early decades of this century, hundreds of thousands of Carolinians abandoned their farms for the promise of a small but steady weekly wage at the cotton mills and factories.

The farmers called it "public work" then, and those who answered the call found that they

had driven a hard bargain. As exhausting and unprofitable as farm labor could be, it none- theless afforded families a measure of independence and variation of routine, amenities largely denied them when they entered the mill village, run and owned by the company. One of the great success stories arising from the social turmoil brought on by the farm-to-

factory-town shift lies in the cultural resilience and creativity of the farmers and mill hands who bore the effects of change. The Charlotte Country Music Story celebrates these hard-

working Southerners who carried their folk music and dance traditions to high levels of skill

and accomplishment. The first country or hillbilly artists (as they were typically called in

the 1920s and '30s) helped countless families cope with the pain of dislocation and lifted the spirits of millions of ordinary folk during the dark days of economic depression and war. Their achievements are closely tied to the advent of commercial broadcasting and recording that permitted talented amateur musicians to reach vast audiences. In the early days, radio work and phonograph recordings did not bring in much money. Performers who proved popular on radio were encouraged to try to make a living by entertaining the public at school- house concerts and community events where a small admission price could be charged. With the wisdom of hindsight we can fully appreciate the accomplishments of these grass- roots performers who created a distinctive genre of American music and entertainment characterized by heartfelt sincerity and joyful exuberance, the best of which stands equal to the finest expressions of other art and entertainment forms.

It should be made clear that The Charlotte Country Music Story is meant not to bid farewell to an era but to open a new one in which Charlotteans and North Carolinians will lay claim to their cultural heritage with appreciation and understanding. Our program merely scratches the surface of one rich vein of North Carolina's cultural past. We hope that the celebration will stimulate others to work with their native cultural resources in imaginative and enlightened ways.

I regret that it is beyond our scope to deal adequately with the contributions of black

Carolinians to the Charlotte story. Country music owes a great debt to the influences of Afro-American bluesmen and gospel singers. Significant recording of black artists took place in Charlotte during the 1930s and '40s and gospel quartets such as the Golden Gate Quartet

and the Four Knights were well-loved performers on the radio. This is another story

altogether which we must call attention to as soon as possible.

I am grateful that so many of the marvelous artists we honor can take part in our program

and I hope that those who are unable to be here will realize how much we appreciate their contributions to the heritage of this state and nation. George Holt

2 CONTENTS Welcome 1

Introduction 2

Charlotte Country: A Sixty-Year Tradition 4

The Piedmont Tradition 7

Recording in Charlotte 12

Briarhoppers and Charles Crutchfield 17

Joe and Janette Carter 19

Claude Casey 20

Tommy Faile 20

George Hamilton IV Emcee 21

Snuffy Jenkins and Homer "Pappy" Sherrill 21

Johnson Family Singers and Betty Johnson 22

Fred Kirby 23

Roy Lear 24

Wade Mainer 24

Bill Monroe 25

Zeke and Wiley Morris 26

Sam Poplin 27

Red Clay Ramblers 28

Arthur Smith 28

Tennessee Rambler's with Cecil Campbell and Harry Blair 30

Evening Performances 31

Saturday Workshops 31

Schedule of Events Forums and Workshops 31 Recommended Listening 33

Recommended Reading 34

Planning and Production 35

Special Thanks 35

Credits 36 CHARLOTTE COUNTRY On a warm southern evening early in legacy. As Charlotte's 1985 country A SIXTY YEAR TRADITION the 1940s, a country band stood waiting music festival proves, WBT veterans still in a small schoolhouse in Patrick, South know how to hold an audience with

Carolina. It quarter till eight, but picking, singing, and all-around John Rumble directs the Oral was a History Project for the so far only the janitor was there to see good times. Country Music the Briarhoppers, radio stars of Nashville-based Promise, 1920-1940 Foundation, a private, non- Charlotte, North Carolina station WBT. Radio was the key to country music in profit organization thai "Come on, boys," sighed Roy "Whitey" Charlotte from the 1920s to the 1950s. operates the Country Music Grant, one of the bandmembers."Let's the city's flagship station, Hall Fame and Museum. WBT, was of put these instruments in the car and go years Many of the quotations used in founded in 1922, just two after back home." The janitor cautioned him: this article comefrom commercial radio broadcasting began. "Don't leave. This building'll be full." interviews madefor the During the decade of the twenties, WBT Just then, Grant recalls, "I started Foundation's archives. changed hands at least three times, seeing wagons and lanterns and lights finally becoming a Columbia Broad- coming through the woods from different casting System (CBS) affiliate owned by directions. Believe it or not, at eight the network itself. Along the way, the o'clock that building was full, and people station upped its power from 100 watts was sitting in the windows." to 25,000; by 1933 it was a 50,000-watt The incident speaks volumes about giant, as strong as any radio outlet in the WBT country performers, the loyalty of United States. Since WBT lacked clear- their fans, and a fascinating era of music channel status (assigned by the federal history. Back then there was no tele- government), there were gaps in its vision, of course, only radio. Many rural coverage caused by interference from or small-town folks set their watches by other stations. Yet millions of listeners the Briarhoppers' weekday programs, lived within its umbrella, and the and neighbors often gathered on Charlotte powerhouse gave musicians Saturday nights to hear WBT barn dance the exposure they needed to book shows featuring the station's country personal appearances or negotiate talent. When fans did see entertainers in recording contracts. person, it was often in a one- or two- Charlotte's country artists found room schoolhouse. Even concerts held in acceptance within a context of variety civic auditoriums were relatively home- programming. Like other stations—then spun affairs compared to modern sprouting like mushrooms—WBT sought package shows with their banks of loud- broad audiences in order to win speakers and complex lighting panels. sponsors. As a result, early broadcasts Many of the schools had no electricity at Left to Right used everything from local dance bands Woodlawn all, explains mandolin player Arval String Band, and pop singers to minstrel shows or Downtown Charlotte, Hogan: "We would just hit the stage and storytellers. In contrast to CBS Dick Hartman's perform natural, without a p.a. system." or Chicago, Tennessee Ramblers. originations from New York To those who haven't lived through it, Page 5: Charles the country music world of 1940 or 1950 Crutehfield. Page 6: The Briarhoppers: (L to may seem like another planet. But in R) Sam Briarhopper, those days of poor roads and limited Bill, Elmer, Minnie, incomes, a radio barn dance or school- Zeb, Dad, Charlie house show could be as exciting as Crutehfield, Billie and Homer. Christmas or the Fourth of July. What's more, that world has left us a vital which usually showcased pop orchestras In Nashville, for example, the Grand Ole some WBT artists were seasoned pro- and vocalists, WBT's country programs Opry was going strong, while Chicago's fessionals by the time they arrived at the offered homespun fare in the form of the National Barn Dance was already an station. Johnny McAllister, for instance, Woodlawn String Band, Fisher Hendley's NBC network sensation. Everywhere came to the Briarhopper cast from Carolina Tar Heels, the Hawaiian countiy radio was growing by leaps and vaudeville and the New York theatrical Serenaders, or other Carolina-based acts. bounds, and Charlotte was fast becoming stage. But country radio took many Charlotte's country music scene a vibrant regional music center. Carolinians straight from farms or cotton expanded during the 1930s despite a Much of the credit for the mills. "I picked peaches (before I got in nationwide economic depression. As Briarhoppers' popularity belongs to the music business) for a dollar a day- falling prices let more and more families announcer Charles Crutchfield, who ten hours a day for a dollar," remembers buy radio sets, radio stations eventually became WBT's program Cecil Campbell. (With the Tennessee proliferated, with some six hundred director and later its station manager. Ramblers, his starting daily salary was outlets in service by mid-decade. Just as His magnetic voice and warm, personal eighteen dollars.) "Picking the guitar important, demographies were right style were as much a part of the show as was not quite as bad as that, even if you for country music broadcasting. Most the music itself, lending continuity to had to ride all night (to show dates)." southerners— and a great many the broadcast throughout many changes Claude Casey, a Briarhopper star of the northerners— still lived on farms or in in personnel. "Cruteh," as he's known to forties, likewise recalls the lure of radio rural villages where Saturday-night friends, injected parody into the talent fees, but for him the sheer joy of hoedowns were a part of everyday life. Briarhoppers' broad rube comedy, then performing was just as big as a thrill: For sponsors marketing products to such common in the country music field. "To play music and make money for it- down-to-earth audiences, country music Tongue-in-cheek, he'd poke fun at Radio man! That was better than working in a was a natural advertising medium. Girl perfume, Kolorbak hair dye, and factoiy somewhere, cooped up." Two firms played crucial roles in Zymole Trokeys cough drops, all part of Radio stardom also gave musicians the financing Charlotte country shows of the Drag Trade line. Crutchfield was at chance to make records. During the the thirties and forties: Chicago's his best, though, when heaping scorn Depression years, WBT supplied a vast Consolidated Drug Trade Products upon Peruna, an all-purpose tonic with a pool of talent for country recording Company and the Crazy Water Crystals high alcohol content. "We don't care sessions. National firms had begun to

Company, a laxative manufacturer what you do with it," he's say. "Put it in market countiy music in the mid-1920s, headquartered in Mineral Wells, Texas. the radiator of your car— it'll clean it but the onset of the Great Depression Both organizations sponsored country out." During their run at WBT, virtually wiped out sales. By 1936, programs throughout much of the Crutchfield and the Briarhoppers sold however, things were looking up again. nation, and both lent early country radio railroad carloads of the stuff, partly RCA Victor, the most active label in the a medicine-show format. ("For fifty-six because fans could trade a "Pee-roo-ny" Carolina territory, cut dozens of sides in years," read one advertisement, boxtop for a picture of the band. "About Charlotte over the next four years. " 'Crazy' water has come to the aid of half of the Piedmont Carolinas went Southern Radio Corporation—RCA's the weak and the ailing, and it has made around with half a buzz on most of the Carolina distributor for radios, of them men and women ready to face time," says Crutchfield with a wink, recordings, and record players- life's hardships.") Crazy Crystals "but they were happy." furnished warehouse space where New maintained a Charlotte office, whose All in all, commercial radio gave York executives set up temporary studios, managers recruited a multitude of artists amateur performers the chance to using portable equipment shipped by for WBT and other Carolina stations. become full-time musicians. To be sure, truck or train. Musicians generally Probably the best-known acts were Dick Hartman's Tennessee Ramblers—who had worked Crazy Crystals shows in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Rochester, New York, before coming to WBT—and Mainer's Mountaineers, famed for their hit song Maple on the Hill. Charlotte's first Crazy Crystals programs began in

1933. A year later, the firm organized WBT's Crazy Barn Dance, which lasted into the late 1930s and set precedents for similar WBT shows of the next decade. About this same time, Consolidated Drug Trade Products launched the Briarhoppers program, a staple of WBT's schedule for years. Just as most

American stations had daily shows like Briarhopper Time, weekly jamborees like the Crazy Barn Dance were taking hold in several cities, North and South. considered recording a sideline, for radio station assembled three big weekly Charlotte after World War II. Some of and personal appearances were their shows for regional or national CBS the records these sessions yielded caught bread and butter. Nevertheless, as networks: the Dixie Jamboree, a the attention of the national music press;

Southern Radio's Thomas Jamison Saturday-morning feature hosted and a few became substantial hits. Southern stressed, the Carolinas were a natural scripted by Claude Casey; the Carolina Radio Corporation remained an impor- market for country music, and RCA did Hayride, a Saturday-night barn dance tant RCA distributor, and the Columbia,

quite well with WBT acts like the staged at the Charlotte Armory; and Decca, and Capital labels all set up

Mainers or the Monroe Brothers. The Carolina Calling, a Sunday-morning distributorships in the Queen City. company also held Charlotte sessions show that sometimes mixed country and Similarly, big-time music publishers with performers from other stations, like pop acts. WBT country talent—both courted WBT stars in hopes of gaining Grand Ole Opry star Uncle Dave Macon. established performers and recent radio exposure for their song catalogues.

Although New York and Chicago arrivals—worked all of these programs, Several WBT artists published songs or

dominated the pre-World War II record- offering a wide range of sounds and songbooks through houses like Hill and ing industry, record-making thrived in styles. Solo singers Claude Casey and Range or Acuff-Rose. Charlotte and other southern cities, Fred Kirby added soothing love songs to After 1950 a series of sweeping including Knoxville, Atlanta, Dallas, and the Briarhoppers basic repertory of changes gradually ended country music's Memphis. With a bit more effort and a hoedowns and frolic tunes. Roy Grant heyday in Charlotte. The Jefferson- bit more luck, Cecil Campbell argues, and Aral Hogan (Whitey and Hogan) Standard Life Insurance Company, which Charlotte might have pre-empted kept country music's duet harmony bought WBT in 1945, did continue the Nashville's later claim to the title "Music tradition alive and well. Now led by Briarhopper show for a time. But the

City, U.S.A." Cecil Campbell, the Tennessee Ramblers firm wasn't wedded to country music in specialized in western songs, and both the manner of Crazy Crystals or Fulfillment, 1940-1955 the Rangers Quartet and the Johnson Consolidated Drug Trade Products, and The 1940s saw a massive expansion of Family Singers sang some of the finest these companies too cut back radio country music— in Charlotte and gospel music ever heard. Early in the advertising as discount drugstore chains

elsewhere. World War II revived the decade, the legendary Carter Family also captured once-secure markets. As tele-

American economy and pushed recording broadcast over WBT; a little later, vision attracted larger audiences, radio and music publishing to new heights. versatile instrumentalist Arthur Smith stations were forced to adopt specialized New barn dance shows appeared on emerged from the Briarhoppers to form formats in order to survive; many every hand. Meanwhile, population his own band, as did Claude Casey. country acts were dropped in the shifts and the mingling of people from Assisting these performers were a process. Moreover, competition forced different regions in military service number of top-flight announcers, among the wide-spread use of recorded music further nationalized a music that already them the unforgettable Grady Cole, instead of expensive live talent. had large followings on both sides of the known far and wide as "Mr. Dixie." Changing popular tastes, reflected in the

Mason-Dixon Line. And even though As in the 1930s, radio provided a upsurge of rock and roll, also dethroned more and more rural folks were moving springboard for other music ventures. country music as king of Charlotte radio. to town, many of them still had a love WBT artists extended the range of their The simple fact was that Americans were for rural entertainment. tours and now played to larger crowds becoming increasingly citified and WBT was quick to take advantage of than ever before. Although RCA sessions wanted uptown entertainment. Conse- these trends. While the Briarhoppers tapered off, smaller firms like Super Disc quently, some of WBT's pickers retired or continued their weekday programs, the or Sonora held recording dates in took up alternative careers. But country music in Charlotte never

really died. Far from it. Arthur Smith went on to set up publishing and recording operations there and also founded a long-running television show. As a television personality, Fred Kirby found a whole new audience among Charlotte-area children. The Briarhoppers regrouped about ten years

ago and still delight listeners at bluegrass festivals around the region. And whatever the transformations in

Charlotte's musical landscape, its country entertainers have created a

living tradition, one filled with friendliness, humor, and good old- fashioned fun—enduring qualities that have made them heroes to legions of fans, both old and new.

John W. Rumble THE PIEDMONT In the decades before the advent of as well as the countryside where it TRADITION commercial broadcasting and recording, was born. several generations of gifted musicians Before records and radio, music in the Delia Coulter is afolklorist on and singers entertained family and Carolinas was homemade entertainment. the the Folkiife Section staff of friends in piedmont communities from Claude Casey, who was born in Enoree, of the North Carolina Arts Danville to Greenville with hoedowns, South Carolina, at the southern tip of Council. This article draws on waltzes, ballads, and popular the piedmont and raised in the Danville the research of Wayne Martin, sentimental songs. There were many area at the piedmont's north end, John Rumble, Archie Green, Ed developing piedmont Kahn, Pat Ahrens, Glenn influences on these remembers the local square dances Hinson, Mike Paris, Donald Lee musical styles. Sunday church services, where his father played the fiddle. While Nelson, Wesley Wallace, Allen camp meetings, and sacred singing his father bowed, someone else beat time Talks, and Torn Hanchett and schools nurtured the spiritual growth on the fiddle strings with a couple of was completed with the and the musical abilities of piedmont straws. "In the old days, the fiddle and Sherrill, assistance ofHomer singers from the towns of most rural banjo was it," remembers Claude. Claude Casey, Roy Grant, areas. The travelling medicine shows "That's the good stuff." And the "good ArvalHogan, Hank Warren, which crisscrossed the back roads, stuff' was also found in Sherrills Ford, Pauline Grant, Dorothy brought entertainer's with new songs and about twenty-five miles north of Sherrill, William E. Dixon, old songs in new styles to rural Charlotte, where Homer Sherrill was Beatrice Dixon Smith, Hayden Dean Dixon, Dorsey M. Dixon, communities all over the piedmont. born. "Back then you played on the

Jr., Margaret Martin, Bill In the late 1880s and early 1900s, porch or in the yard, or wherever you Mansfield, George Holt, Chris with the expansion of the railroad could play," says Homer. "You'd get

Mayfield, Monroe Brinson, through the piedmont crescent, the together and play all day or half of a Metrotape, Inc., the John coming of the textile mills to the region, night. For square dances, you'd play in Edwards Memorial Collection and the growth of the furniture and one room with a high ceiling in an old- and the North Carolina tobacco industries, the number of small time country house. You'd put meal on Collection at the University of towns and villages increased the floor, make it slick for the dancers, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, dramatically. The sons and daughters of and you'd play in there. Just a fiddle and the Country Music Foundation farmers, loggers, and sawmill operatives banjo, or maybe fiddle and guitar. That's and the North Carolina moved into the piedmont towns where all you'd have. You'd take up a collection Museum of History. mill work or furniture factory jobs would each set, and maybe get a nickle apiece supplement the family's income. In many out of the dancers. You'd be covered in

cases, whole families moved into corn meal by the end; your eyebrows all

piedmont textile towns where father, full of it and everything else, too."

mother, and children all took mill jobs to The musicians who played for these stave off destitution. The rapid growth of get-togethers were special people to their

small towns and the frequent movement neighbors. Good fiddlers like J. E. of people between mill jobs and Mainer of Concord and his brother-in- communities created a variety of law Roscoe Banks, or Wilmer Watts in opportunities and places for piedmont Belmont, or Homer Sherrill in Hickory musicians to play, swap tunes, and entertain fellow workers. Music flourished in the villages and towns

Upper left: Dorsey Dixon and

Dorsey Dixon Jr.

Center: Rising Generation, Gregtown, Augusta, Georgia

Upper right:

Family with calf,

Wylie Mill, Chester, SC, November, 1908 were much in demand for local dances. Luther Baucom, and Reid Summey, songs—dressed 'em up and got 'em

If a piedmont singer or musician had a the Three Tobacco Tags of Gastonia, listenable." talent for songwriting, like Dorsey Dixon who were already recognized in People in the piedmont were listening of East Rockingham, he could be their communities as popular and to records in the 1920s, too. By the late expected to entertain friends gathered at gifted entertainers. twenties, both musicians and listeners in his house with humorous songs about Smaller, local radio stations (up to 500 the Carolinas figured it was high time local people, places, and events. In times watts of broadcasting power) were among the Carolina talent had a chance to of tragedy or suffering, a well-known the first commercial media to recognize record. The earliest piedmont musicians local songwriter like Dixon might be the talent in their own back yards. In to record commercially struck out on asked to compose a song or set a poetic competition with the more powerful, and their own or at the prompting of friends tribute to music in memory of his better-financed metropolitan stations that and family who believed they could pass neighbor's lost loved one. were usually affiliated with a national the record company audition. In 1927 Although a few musicians were network, these smaller stations played on Gwen Foster and two fellow mill hands socially suspect "rounders" whose their hometown image by broadcasting from the Gastonia area joined with Doc drinking habits and rambling urges were local talent. Short, live musical programs Walsh of North Wilkesboro and travelled on the outside edge of acceptable featuring musicians from the area who to Atlanta to audition for Ralph Peer of behavior, far more Carolina musicians played for the exposure and the fun of it Victor records. Foster and Walsh were hard-working farmers, mill hands, helped attract listeners within the broad- recorded together for the first time as or mechanics by trade. Their love of casting radius of the smaller stations. the Carolina Tar Heels during that trip. music filled their horn's off from work, Dave McCarn, son of a McAdenville Six months later when Peer held the first bringing good times, good tunes, and card room hand, played and sang with a Charlotte recording sessions, Foster and good friends together. Memories of these band called the Yellow Jackets over radio Walsh recorded again, this time much local musicians linger on in the station WRBU (100 watts) in Gastonia, closer to home. A year later Foster hitch- piedmont communities around Charlotte while working his regular shift in a hiked back to Atlanta with his friend fifty and sixty years after they played Belmont Mill in the late 1920s. Playing Dave Fletcher to record guitar duets as and sang. Gwen Foster, the harmonica initially without commercial sponsors the Carolina Twins. Stopping in small virtuoso who lived in and worked at the and just for the air time, musicians like towns along the way, they earned money mills of Gastonia, Belmont, and Dallas, McCarn and his fellow mill hands for their meals by playing in barbershops is seldom remembered by his given quickly demonstrated that there were or for local dances, relying on people name, but those who witnessed his plenty of listeners for "hillbilly" music they met to put them up for a night as playing still marvel at how the slight as well as the light classical and popular they made their way toward Atlanta. man of Oriental complexion they called sounds served up by metropolitan stations The persistence and adventurous spirit "China" drew such inventive melodies and the national networks. Fiddler of Foster and Fletcher in seeking out from his harmonica. To the long-time Homer Sherrill's first experience in front recording opportunities were not residents of Hannah Pickett, Entwhistle, of the microphone was also in Gastonia uncommon among the first generation of and Midway mill villages of Rockingham, in the late twenties. He was just thirteen piedmont musicians who succeeded in sixty miles east of Charlotte, the guitar when he played over WRBU (which getting their tunes and songs down on songs and duets of mill workers Howard would soon change its call letters to wax. Before the late thirties when Victor and Dorsey Dixon linger with the memories WSOC ("We Serve Our City"). began recording regularly in Charlotte, of front-porch gatherings and all-day Describing the sound he and his fellow the business of getting a crack at church singings in the 1920s and 1930s. musicians brought to the air waves, recording often took piedmont musicians

This widespread musical talent in the Homer remembers where it came from days away from the job and miles away

Carolina piedmont was a significant and why it was so popular: "Most from home. Wilmer Watts travelled to source for North and South Carolina everything came out of the hills, or out Chicago to record in 1927 and then to radio stations and Charlotte-based of the country in those days. We built on recording companies in the late 1920s that base, you know—the old-time folk and the early 1930s. The advent of radio and recordings widened the audience for piedmont musicians like Gwen Foster,

Wilmer Watts, J. E. Mainer, Dave McCarn of Belmont, and George Wade,

left: Musicians Gordon Buford, Gwen Foster, Avery Keever, A. 0. Fletcher, and unidentified farm owner (1930) ca.

Right:

Bill and Earl Bolick, June, 1936 New York in 1929 with his band the concept of royalty payments was Swingbillies, and the Briarhoppers. Lonely Eagles (formerly the Gastonia understood but much abused, invariably Crucial to many a musician was the Serenaders). In between jobs in the to the artists' disadvantage. Radio knowledge that there were people to Gaston county mills, Dave McCarn appearances rarely paid anything at all. turn to and a place to go, if one's hopes of happened onto a Memphis recording Earning a living from music was a risky earning a living in music didn't work out. session in 1930 while he was hoboing business, particularly in the years of the By the mid- to late-thirties, new across the country with his brother. He Depression. Many of the earliest opportunities opened up for Carolina auditioned on the spot and recorded one piedmont musicians to gain wider musicians because of the increasing of his most requested numbers back commercial exposure left their jobs at interest of commercial sponsors in using home, Cotton Mill Colic. Gradually, the mills and factories only sporadically local musicians in live radio programs to both the field recording crews and the to perform on local radio stations or sell their products. Hubert Fincher, son newly established radio stations of the record for a national company. of J. W. Fincher, general manager of piedmont came to see what folks in the Those young enough or eager enough the Crazy Water Crystals programs area had known all along: There were to set out on musical careers knew well throughout the Carolinas and Georgia, dozens of fine musicians in the piedmont the risks involved in the late 1920s and recalls his father's rationale for linking and thousands of eager listeners on early 1930s. Before fiddler J. E. Mainer over-the-air sales of health tonic with farms, in small towns, and in the mill left his doffing job at Cannon Mill Plant performances by Carolina musicians: villages of the region. Number Six in Concord for a twice-daily "Hillbilly music was used from the

For many Carolina musicians in the program on WBT in 1934, he checked beginning because of its great popularity, generation that included Wilmer Watts, with the superintendent of the mill to be wide acceptance, and the availability of

Gwen Foster, Dorsey and Howard Dixon, sure his job would still be waiting for talent." And talent was available in and Dave McCarn, the advent of radio him if he didn't make a go of it as an extraordinary numbers. A 1934 Crazy and records never fundamentally altered entertainer. Hank Warren, the Mount Water Crystals program book featured their working lives. Many of them had Airy fiddler who learned his violin articles on over a hundred musicians and been born in the 1890s and by the late techniques in the high school orchestra, singers, primarily from piedmont and 1920s had long-established trades in dance bands, and at fiddlers western North and South Carolina. The (Dorsey Dixon and Dave McCarn conventions throughout North Carolina Crazy Water Crystals performers followed family members into mill work and Virginia, received the promise of a appeared on broadcasts from fourteen at the age of twelve, Wilmer Watts began job from a friend back home before radio stations including WWNC working in the mills as a young setting out on a career which included Asheville, WBIG Greensboro, WBT teenager) or growing families (both tours with Jack Richie's Blue Ridge Charlotte, WPTF Raleigh, WIS Wilmer Watts and Howard Dixon Mountaineers, Warren's Four Aces, Dick Columbia, WATM Anderson and WFBC supported families of eight children). A Hartman's Tennessee Ramblers, the Greenville. From this collection of skilled loom fixer or weaver—even a talented and musically ambitious doffer, card room hand, or sweeper- could find regular employment at one mill or another, if not always for the best of wages. The opportunities for steady pay through radio and recording were few, if any, from the late 1920s to the early 1930s. Artists' recording fees were often only one-time payments; the

Whitey and Hogan amateurs emerged a new generation couldn't even get your breath hardly. Crutchfield at WBT in 1941: "At the of professional singers and musicians. And it being so hot inside. You 'djust Firestone Cotton Mill in Gastonia we had They made music a living by combining almost suffocate, that's how hot it was. fifteen dollars a week for forty hours at the exposure which radio gave them We'd put on two shows some times, and the mill. When Mr. Crutchfield called us with a continuous round of personal it'd be midnight before we even got up and offered us twenty-five dollars a appearances in hundreds of school- awayfrom there. Maybe crack of day week, we could hardly speak to each houses, movie theaters, community we'd get in. No necktie, no hair other. We was rich!" Twenty-five dollars auditoriums, and town halls across North combed, shoes not tied, and your eyes a week for half an horn of air time a day

and South Carolina. half shut (and on the radio that convinced Whitey and Hogan it was time

Initially, radio offered little more than morning) you sounded like you're to leave the mill behind. Although the

free advertising for a band's upcoming having the mostfun in the world! pay was better, the work was still hard. personal appearance. A group's real The thousands of nickels, dimes, and Early mornings or middays in the studio,

bread and butter was the fifteen, twenty quarter paid by men and women across hours in rehearsal, and long late road

or twenty-five cent admission to their the piedmont were the coin which kept trips were the rule. schoolhouse show date, and in the case piedmont musicians on the road and on As gruelling as the schedule of daily of the true musical entrepreneurs, the the radio. The emotional spur which radio broadcasts and nightly personal sale of nickle-a-sheet lyrics to their most kept piedmont musicians to six-nights-a- appearances was, the Carolina musicians popular songs. Homer Sherritl, who week personal appearance schedules and of the thirties and forties got through the performed on the original Crazy Water daily radio broadcasts was invariably lean times and the good with the support Crystals program over WBT in 1934, their deep attachment to the music they of family, friends, and fans. The recalls the days of the "kerosene played. Arval Hogan remembers, "The understanding and encouragement of

circuit," the round of show dates in rural real thing was that we loved the music. family members at home were critical for areas so small that only a kerosene After a while we seen that we could Carolina musicians who chose the risky,

lantern lit the stage: make a living off of it." hard road of a musical career. Although Back in those days you just rode and Gradually, as stations like WBT began the desire to play music was an rode and played and played. It didn't paying local musicians more, the living individual passion, for every individual matter- how small the buildings were, that musicians could make compared musician of the thirties who survived by you played 'em anyway, andjust put favorably with that of their Carolina his singing or playing, there seems to on thefull show. And you got up there neighbors. In 1935 seventeen-year-old have been a father, mother, brother,

and picked your heart out—with no Bill Bolick, later of the Blue Sky Boys, sister, cousin, uncle, aunt, or wife who p.a. system, sweat running off your was making S4.50 a week in an auto shared or respected that passion and

elbows, you couldn 't hardly feel the body shop. He jumped at the chance to encouraged it to grow. The wives and strings on thefiddle. Man, that was earn ten dollars a week playing over children of the piedmont's travelling rough days then. We played many a WBT's Crazy Water Crystals show. radio musicians were especially place that had no electricity. They'd Whitey and Hogan, who played their important to them. Whitey recalls with

have an old gas lantern, setting on first radio jobs over WSPA Spartanburg pride and awe how often he would arrive each side of the stage; that's all the in 1938 and WGNC Gastonia in 1939, home after a show date at one or two light you had. The windows would be initially kept their jobs on the mill's o'clock in the morning to find his wife settingfull ofpeople, and you just had second shift. Whitey recalls their Polly sewing clothes for the children 'em crowded around the walls. You unbelievable job offer from Charles while she waited up for him. "I sewed to

Sweeper and doffer boys, Lancaster Cotton Mills, Lancaster SC, December, 1908.

10 pass the time and stretch the budget," dedication of their audiences. In the a little town like Enoree, South Carolina, laughs Polly while remembering. "And early years, radios were not plentiful in someone would write in and invite them by the time he'd be home, why I'd have the villages and towns of the piedmont, to supper on the night of their another couple of little dresses for the but radio listeners were everywhere. Bea appearance. girls." The strain of long hours in Smith, Howard Dixon's daughter, recalls The musicians knew how close they rehearsal, on the air, and on the road the excitement generated all over East were to the people who enjoyed their were mitigated by hundreds of similar •Rockingham by the home-town Dixon music and came out to their shows. "At acts of patient dedication or words of Brothers' appearance on the Crazy Water that time," recalls Arval Hogan, "you encouragement from wives and family Crystals shows: "That was back in the had two classes of people— one that over the years. thirties, they'd be on the radio on listened to the pop music, which was A spirit of mutual help and good- Saturday nights. And our house would supposed to be the higher-class people, natured ribbing among the musicians just fill up, people all out in the yard and then we had the country people that themselves fostered camaraderie and listening to them on the radio. 'Cause listened to the country music." The kept them going through discouraging, everybody didn't have a radio in those Carolina radio musicians of the 1930s stressful, or boring times. Claude Casey days." Those who listened felt close to and 1940s valued the support of their was on the verge of throwing away his the music and the performers in ways listeners and the people who came to guitar and going back to the Schoolfield not familiar to present-day country music their shows, because it meant their cotton mills after his midwestern tour fans. Letters came in by the thousands. living; the audience was their bread and with Fat Sanders' Country Cousins and While at WWNC in Asheville in 1941, butter. They shared with this audience Effie the Hillbilly Striptease Dancer Wade Mainer and the Sons of the both a dedication to the music which (who peeled off to reveal a red union Mountaineers received over eight grew out of the region and the suit). The Rouse Brothers encouraged thousand pieces of mail in response to a experience of a hard-won livelihood in him to give singing another try and free picture offer. Whitey remembers the the piedmont. They also shared a asked him to join them on a Miami kinds of personal requests the knowledge of themselves independent of engagement. Schoolfield lost a potential Briarhoppers would receive. People stereotypes which others might foist hand, and later when Claude returned to would ask what key particular songs upon them. In the words of Homer

North Carolina WBT gained a singing were in, so that they could play along at Sherrill, "Those were hillbillies playing, star. Friends pitched in, too, when Hank home with the Briarhoppers on the air. but they were down-to-earth people, Warren needed a helping hand. Working Others would ask them to play a certain good people. They weren't sots, or for a time at WPTF in Raleigh, the home song on a day when their friend was tramps, or bums; they were people who station of the Swingbillies, Warren found coming over to listen to their radio. If the worked hard for a living." himself too broke to get back to his Briarhoppers announced a show date in Delia Coulter family in Mount Airy for Christmas. Swingbillies Dunk Poole, Harvey Ellington, Sam Pridgen, and Ray Williams took up a collection to get Hank home for Christmas Day. The musicians' generosity and compassion toward one another were well mixed with pure devilment, especially on road trips. Snuffy Jenkins and Homer Sherrill of the WIS Hillbillies wore out two Lincolns a year touring the small towns of South and North Carolina. The long hours on the road coming back from show dates with five men and a bass fiddle stuffed into one car were golden opportunities for pranks. Sleeping band members might awake to find their shoelaces tied together, or stumble into a restaurant for a late night supper before noticing their clothes had been disarranged while they slept. Even the radio studio was practical joke territory. More than one Briarhopper has glanced down in the midst of a live broadcast to find his script or shoe on fire. While they enjoyed and helped one another, the Carolina piedmont radio musicians lived on the attention and Briarhoppers (L to R) Homer Christopher, Shannon Grayson, Claude Casey, Sam Poplin

11 RECORDING IN Before the major recording companies and their heirs commissioned mansions CHARLOTTE set up shop in Nashville in the late in suburban Myers Park and Eastover; 1927-1945 1940s, several southern cities were downtown skyscrapers rose to hold the important centers of the emerging banks that financed the region's growth. Thomas W. Hanchett holds a country music industry including In 1930 the United States Census B.A. in history from Cornell Atlanta, Dallas, and Charlotte. declared that Charlotte had become the University and came to During the decade of the 1930s largest city in North and South Carolina. Charlotte to study the city's Charlotte ranked among the nation's While Charlotte itself had sizable mill historic architecturefor the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic most important locations for the districts, most factories were scattered in Properties Commission. The recording of country, blues, and gospel nearby towns and villages. Within a study will be published in 1986 music. RCA Victor made numerous trips hundred-mile radius of Charlotte, more as Charlotte's Neighborhoods: to the area, and Decca Records came as than six hundred mills drew thousands the Growth of a New South City, well, together recording more than 1,500 of rural families from piedmont or 1850-1930 by the UNCC Urban songs. Many of the best-known country mountain farms. This massive rural-to- Institute. In his spare time, performers of the era recorded in urban population shift shaped the South Tbm hosts folk and blues Charlotte, including the legendary Carter as we know it today. programs Saturday evenings Family, bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, The move from farm to town also on Charlotte's NPR affiliate WFAEFM91. banjo star Uncle Dave Macon, the helped give rise to commercial country influential stringrjands of the Mainer music. As rural folk moved into new, family, and many more. Additionally, unfamiliar surroundings, they formed a Charlotte sessions captured on disc a concentrated audience for professional broad range of bluesmen, gospel singers, entertainers who could play the old and amateur folk musicians, preserving a songs of home. As time passed, these rich slice of Southern culture in the musicians found that listeners were early twentieth century. equally hungry for new styles of playing that matched the faster pace of urban

Queen City of the Piedmont life, and for new songs that expressed their loneliness, longing for home, and It was no accident that Charlotte hope for better times ahead. became a recording center. The city lay Performers traveled an informal circuit at the heart of the southern piedmont, of cities across the piedmont: Atlanta, the broad band of rolling, red clay hills Georgia; Columbia, Greenville and between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Spartanburg, South Carolina; Charlotte, the flat coastal plain. Since the close of Greensboro, Raleigh and Durham, North the Civil War, Southerners had waged a Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and campaign to industrialize the piedmont, others in between. They would take up under the slogan "Bring the Mills to the residence in a city for several months Cotton Fields!" In the late 1920s.the until the area had been "played out," piedmont overtook New England as the and then move on. world's major cotton manufacturing For several reasons, Charlotte became area. Charlotte emerged as a trade hub a key stop on this circuit. Its very size of this mighty1 new empire. Textile and central location in the mill region Left to right: machinery distributors the world over WBT Program Guide, opened Charlotte offices; mill owners Downtown Charlotte, Uncle Dave Macon promised a large audience for country Recording Teams Come South selection, were carefully shipped back to musicians. This was aided by a web of company headquarters where records Meanwhile, the fledgling phonograph paved highways that radiated from the were manufactured. The longplaying industry had discovered country music. city, a legacy of North Carolina Governor 33% rpm album and the 45 rpm disc Beginning in 1923 and continuing into (and not coincidentally Charlotte would not be introduced until after the 1940s, many country, blues or gospel resident) Cameron Morrison's "Good World War II; before then, songs were acts were recorded in "field" sessions Roads" program of the 1920s. WBT released on 78 ipm discs with one tune throughout the South, as well as in New radio, begun by Charlotte investors in per side. (Today, musicians still speak of York or Chicago studios. Customarily, 1922, proved to be another important "cutting a side" or "waxing a side'.') northern executives earned portable drawing card. The first station in the equipment by car or shipped it by train Carolinas, it was purchased by CBS in The First Charlotte Sessions to southern music centers. For record 1929 and boosted to the legal maximum firms, this was often cheaper than In 1927 Ralph Peer, executive of the of 50,000 watts in 1933. WBT could be bringing musicians north; performers Victor Talking Machine Company, began heard all over the Southeast, and in liked the system because it meant fewer a series of southern recording trips that addition CBS soon made the station the interruptions in busy radio and touring put his company at the forefront of pre- linchpin of its regional Dixie Network, schedules. war country, blues, and gospel recording. feeding programs to sister stations For a typical session an A & R (artists- Victor teams visited many towns over the throughout the South. and-repertory) man lined up talent, years, but tended to concentrate on Before World War II, most radio selected songs, and oversaw the those where they had corporate contacts. stations relied on live performers rather recording process. One or two engineers The booming trade city of Charlotte was than records to entertain their usually handled the actual recording. the distribution headquarters for Victor's audiences. WBT filled much of its Equipment consisted of microphones products in the Carolinas, and it daytime programming with country (seldom more than two), a small control eventually became one of the company's shows. They seldom paid much, but panel, and a bulky cutting lathe that foremost southern recording locations. performers jumped at the chance to plug produced wax "masters." In the days Documents indicate that Peer first set personal appearances. Entertainers could before magnetic tape, songs were up his equipment in Charlotte August 9, easily schedule a daily program on WBT literally cut into wax. If a musician 1927. The visit formed part of the same (the most desirable times were early botched a take, technicians had to shave tour that resulted in Peer's discovery of morning—before mills opened—or at a layer off the disc or use a new one. The the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers in noon—when farmers came back to the complete masters, each containing one Bristol, Tennessee. In Charlotte, six days house for lunch), drive to an evening of hard work produced forty-six sides. show date at a small-town courthouse or Peer found no major stars at this stop, schoolhouse, and be back for the next day's broadcast.

Seated: Fred Kirby, Hank Warren

Standing: (I tor) Roy Grant, Shannon Grason, Arval Hogan but did record several important delivered blues songs backed by a (a location convenient both to WBT musicians including the country duo the slide guitar. performers and to singers on smaller Carolina Tar Heels, balladeer Kelly The Carter Family had already become South Carolina stations). Harrell, the Georgia Yellow Hammers major record sellers in the four years Recording conditions were not a great stringband, and bluesman Luke Jordan. since Peer had first signed them. Their deal more sophisticated than they had

Soon after, the Great Depression 1931 Charlotte sessions produced seven been during the early sessions. The 1936 sharply curtailed record sales. Country, songs. One, Let the Church Roll On, RCA dates took place in the warehouse blues and gospel were especially hard later entered the ranks of bluegrass space at 208 South Tryon Street (now hit, for many of the working-class fans standards through a top-selling album by replaced by the BB&T skyscraper). The who supported these styles lost their Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Another 1937 and 1938 Charlotte RCA sessions jobs. Victor only visited Charlotte once Carter Charlotte tune is still in print in were held in rooms on the top floor of during the early 1930s, in May 1931. By its original form as the title selection for the ten-story Hotel Charlotte (which that time, the company had merged with the RCA Camden album My Old Cottage today stands vacant at West Trade and the Radio Corporation of America to Home. The 1931 session led to a second Poplar Streets), while the Rock Hill become RCA Victor. Locally, the Charlotte date for the Carters in June of sessions took place in the Andrew Southern Radio Corporation now held 1938, this time with Decca Records, which Jackson Hotel (now the Guarantee the wholesale franchise to distribute produced twenty-two more sides. The Fidelity Building on Main Street). The RCA Victor radios, Victrolas, and records Carter Family returned again in the early field teams simply draped the walls of to retailers in the Carolinas. Southern 1940s to broadcast on WBT radio, and it the "recording studio" with heavy Radio's office and warehouse space was then that they made their last curtains and set up their equipment in occupied the top two floors of a performance together as the original trio. an adjoining space. handsome three-story building at 208 Musicians who waited in the hotel South Tryon Street, Charlotte's main corridors for their turn to record Charlotte Becomes a Major commercial thoroughfare. There, among remember the tension. Both new and Recording Center boxes of stored records, Peer set up his established artists worried that each makeshift studio. Charlotte recording resumed when the session might be their last: if discs did

Two six-day weeks yielded an even one worst of the Depression had passed. not sell, the musician probably would hundred sides. Among the artists were Victor representatives visited the Queen not be asked back. Once his turn came, two rising stars of country music, Jimmie City three times in 1936, twice in 1937, an artist had anywhere from an hour Davis and the Carter Family. Davis later and once in 1938. Decca seems to have and a half to three hours to cut his wrote You Are My Sunshine and rode made one substantial stay in June 1938. songs. Most tunes were recorded in one his musical fame to the governorship of In September 1938 and February 1939, or two takes—a far cry from the weeks of Louisiana in the 1940s. In his 1931 Victor set up shop in Rock Hill, South studio time invested in a single pop hit Charlotte sessions, he sang not only Carolina, a small textile and railroad today—and an experienced group could country tunes, but also several well- town some forty miles south of Charlotte wax a dozen or more numbers in one session. Financial arrangements varied, but most groups seem to have made twenty-

five or fifty dollars a person for each session's labor. Some received a small royalty from each record sold, as well.

Meager as it now seems, fifty dollars was a welcome sight for a picker who earned ten or twenty dollars for a whole week's radio work; to those who toiled at even

lower-paying jobs in the mills or fields, it was a princely sum.

Charlotte Recording Artists

The Charlotte recording sessions attracted top-flight musicians from across the Southeast. One of the most notable was Bill Monroe, who launched his recording career here February 17,

1936, and is today widely acknowledged as the father of bluegrass music. An expert mandolinist, Monroe and his guitar-playing brother Charlie came to work the radio and personal appearance Dick Hartman's Tennessee Ramblers with Happy Morris, Elmer Warren, Dick Hartman, Harry Blair, Cecil circuit in the piedmont textile region in Campbell and Kenneth Wolfe.

14 the mid-1980s. RCA A&R man Eli playing of Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Delmore Brothers in popularity in the Oberstein tried repeatedly to get the and others. The Delmores recorded their Southeast. Another brother duo who Monroes into the studio, but the duo, first hits in Atlanta, Chicago, and New debuted on record at the same time was based in Greenville, South Carolina, did Orleans, but cut nearly half their pre- Howard and Dorsey Dixon of Rockingham. not think that it was worthwhile to World War II sides in the Charlotte area Dorsey Dixon is remembered as a composer disrupt their radio schedule. "I believe in the late 1930s. Among the best known of cotton mill songs, and of the tragic we was playing two programs a day," Bill of their seventy-three Charlotte songs is tale that became a hit for Roy Acuff told interviewer Jim Rooney in the book Nashville Blues. under the title, Wreck on the Highway. Bossmen. "We played one in Charlotte Along with Smith and the Delmore Nearly every WBT performer tried his of a morning, say at seven o'clock, then Brothers, another Opry star who hand at recording when RCA Victor or we'd drive to Greenville for a twelve. We recorded more in Charlotte than in Decca came to town. Fred Kirby, Don had a hundred miles to drive." Nashville was Uncle Dave Macon. Macon White, Claude Casey, Bill and Cliff When Oberstein's persistence finally had been called the most popular banjo Carlisle, and Arthur Smith's brought Bill and Charlie up the stairs at player of the pre-bluegrass era, and he Carolina Crackerjacks (no relation to

208 South Tryon Street, he hit pay dirt. was a fixture on the Grand Ole Opry Fiddling Arthur Smith), are among those

Their initial release Wliat Would You from the mid-1920s into the 1950s. Born who waxed their early sides in the Give In Exchangefor Your Soul? became in 1870, Uncle Dave was much older Charlotte and Rock Hill sessions. Two one of the most popular country songs than most other early recording artists, stringband groups, both major WBT acts, of the 1930s," according to historian so his discs provide a rare glimpse of deserve special mention: the Tennessee

Douglas B. Green. It led RCA to record a folk, minstrel, and vaudeville songs that Ramblers and the interlocking organi- total of sixty Monroe Brothel's sides in had been popular in his nineteenth zations led by J. E. and Wade Mainer. Charlotte from 1936 through 1938. century youth. Macon made his last The Tennessee Ramblers were among

Bill and Charlie Monroe split in 1938, recordings for RCA Victor at the Hotel the longest-running bands in Charlotte. and Bill went on to shape a hard-driving Charlotte in August 1937 and January Under the leadership of Dick Hartman stringband sound that later became 1938. These range from old-fashioned (the lone Tennessean of the group) they known as bluegrass, in honor of his hymns like Fame Apart From God's were brought to Charlotte by Crazy native Kentucky. Although the style did Approval and Honest Confession is Water Crystals Company in 1934. not gel until the mid- 1940s, the Goodfor the Soul to rollicking tunes They cut their first Charlotte sides in Charlotte recordings hint at what was to about the pleasures of Country Ham 1936, and continued to record in come, especially numbers like Boll In and Red Gravy or Travelin' Down Charlotte and elsewhere into the early

My Sweet Baby 's Anns, and Roll On the Road. 1950s, by that time under the leadership Buddy, Roll On, both of which have Radio and recording opportunities in of Cecil "Curley" Campbell, one of become bluegrass favorites. the Charlotte area not only drew notable Hartman's original sidemen. At the same time that Bill Monroe was musicians from elsewhere, but also More widely remembered are brothers starting his recording career in helped a number of piedmont players J. E. and Wade Mainer and the influential Charlotte, a number of established stars achieve country music stardom. Bill and players they helped bring to record. The of Nashville's Grand Ole Opry visited the Earl Bolick of Hickory, North Carolina, Mainers came from the North Carolina Charlotte studios. Fiddling Arthur Smith formed the close-harmony duo the Blue mountains in the early 1930s to work in was one, a major innovator on his Sky Boys. They cut their first records for instrument who was dubbed "King of Victor in Charlotte in 1936 while still in the Country Fiddlers" by Roy Acuff. He their teens, and eventually rivaled the made the Tennessee-to-Carolina journey on four occasions, waxing a string of impressive instrumentals, including VICTCfi Bonaparie's Retreat and Florida BCJ1 Blues, as well as vocal compositions that have become lasting favorites. Walking in My Sleep, There's More Pretty Girls Than One, In the Pines, Beautiful Brown Eyes (later a pop hit for Rosemary Clooney), and the humorous Pig at Home in a Pen were first recorded in Charlotte or Rock Hill. Accompanying Smith was another soon- to-be-famous duo: the Delmore Brothers, Alton and Rabon. Alton and Rabon Delmore specialized in warm harmonies and dexterous guitar work. Their style, borrowing heavily from the blues, broke new ground in the

1930s and can still be heard today in the

15 the textile mills near Charlotte, but soon continue to be played by modern-day and a son. . . typical of thousands of broadcast on WSOC and WBT with J. E. folk musicians. amateur musicians, comparativelyfew Mainer's Mountaineers. In 1936 Wade Local radio stations did feature black of whom reached record, who created Mainer went out on his own as a recording gospel groups, and several became entertainment in the days before radio artist, eventually racking up some ninety- successful recording artists. The and television. four sides in Charlotte and Rock Hill Heavenly Gospel Singers, for example, sessions, making him one of the area's recorded nearly seventy sides for RCA in End of an Era

most prolific recording stars. J. E.'s Charlotte and Rock Hill, a number Recording in the Charlotte area Mountaineers also continued to record in greater than the Monroe Brothers. tapered off after 1940. Columbia Records Charlotte, and achieved national exposure Perhaps most famous were the Golden came in June 1941 to record the Rangers during a stint on high-wattage "border Gate Quartet. Norfolk natives, the Gates Quartet, popular white gospel singers of radio" which broadcast from Mexico launched their recording career in 1937 WBT. RCA held its last major Charlotte across much of North America. Historians in the midst of a broadcasting stint on session in 1945 and Capitol breezed point to the Mountaineers' sound as an WBT, and eventually sang in Carnegie through town in 1949. Several smaller important link between traditional string- Hall and at the White House. Today, they labels recorded at local stations in the band music and the new bluegrass style. reside in Paris, and enjoy great late 1940s and early 1950s. But the era A number of Mainer sidemen also popularity throughout Europe. of major label recording in Charlotte was recorded on their own. Fiddlers Homer Charlotte recording sessions produced basically over by the war's end. This Sherrill and Steve Ledford made early star performers and hit records, but they seems ironic in retrospect, for WBT's RCA records in the Charlotte area and also left us priceless documents of our CBS network country shows had just had long and active careers. Brothers cultural heritage. A local preacher, Elder entered their heyday. Zeke and Wiley Morris gained their first Otis Jones was recorded sermonizing to The explanation for Charlotte's decline recording experience with the Mainers, his congregation. Some of the best as a recording center lies in the broader and later had a major hit on their own comedy routines of Mustard and Gravy changes effecting country music as a with Let Me Be Your Salty Dog. DeWitt ("Dixie's Tastiest Combination"), a whole. Material shortages during the war "Snuffy" Jenkins brought to radio and vaudeville or minstrel style act, were led to cut backs in all field recording. records the distinctive three-finger banjo preserved on record in Charlotte. "We After the war, the large companies decided style that eventually became the would have made more records, but we to establish permanent studios in trademark of bluegrass music. He didn't bother to go back," said a member the South. Nashville, with its highpowered recorded his first discs in a 1937 RCA of the Blankenship Family stringband of clear-channel WSM which broadcast the date at the Hotel Charlotte as a member Alexander County, North Carolina who Grand Ole Opry, had attracted many of of J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers. Both cut a single disc in 1931. Comments the profession's top stars, so the record Earl Scruggs and Don Reno have pointed researcher Robert Coltman, the companies centered their activities to Jenkins as a key influence on their Blankenship recording was there. In the 1950s,WBT began to move banjo playing. important not in terms of record sales away from country music, and eventually but as a cultural document, just engaging the booming pre-war music era faded Other Musical Styles Recorded homemade music, centering around the from memoiy. in Charlotte gruff singing and rusty, archaic Today, Charlotte is proudly rediscovering Along with country music, Charlotte fiddling of a man born shortly after its role in the early years of country, recordings preserved other musical styles the Civil War, two of his daughters, blues, and gospel recording. The Charlotte popular in the area. Bob Pope's Hotel area sessions helped launch the careers Charlotte Orchestra, the Frankie and of such notables as Bill Monroe, the Johnny Orchestra, Jimmy Gunn and Golden Gate Quartet and Snuffy Jenkins, His Orchestra, and others offered jazz and contributed to the recorded legacies during the opening years of the big-band of many more. The wax discs captured in era. The Hawaiian Pals and the Honolulu song the hopes and feelings of a whole Strollers cashed in on the craze for generation of working-class Southerners. Hawaiian music that swept the nation In the early years of recording, in the 1920s and 1930s. musicians seldom considered their After white country artists, the most records as important to their careers numerous recording musicians in the as radio broadcasts or personal Charlotte area were black blues and appearances. But it is the records that gospel performers. Few of the bluesmen will enable the music to live on. And won the fame during this period that here and there in quiet rooms, young whites enjoyed, partly because the radio musicians bend their ears to phonograph stations in the area almost never speakers, learning the old songs and broadcast blues. One musician who is passing them on to new generations of remembered today is guitarist Luke listeners in the piedmont Carolinas and Jordan, who journeyed from Lynchburg, far beyond. Virginia to record in 1927. His Church Bell Blues and Cocaine Blues Golden Gate Quartet Tbm Hanchett

16 ARTISTS Briarhoppers and Crazy Bucklebusters, or occasionally Charles Crutchfield two bands at once. At the height of the Briarhoppeis and Charles The Briarhopper show originated Briarhoppers' fame there were even two Crutchfield about 1935 as a way to pitch patent touring versions of the band, dubbed Joe and Janette Carter medicine. Consolidated Drug Trade Unit One and Unit Two, crisscrossing the Claude Casey Products of Chicago asked WBT to create Southeast playing mill villages and

Tommy Faile a program to sell its Peruna tonic, Radio courthouse towns.

George Hamilton IV, Emcee Girl perfume, Kolorbak hair dye, and Many of the early Briarhoppers went on to careers as soloists or group leaders Snuffy Jenkins and Homer Zymol Trokeys cough drops. WBT "Pappy" Sherrill decided that stringband music and including Fred Kirby, Claude Casey, and Cecil Campbell. of the most Johnson Family Singers and country humor were the way to reach One Betty Johnson the rural and working-class audience of important of the early Briarhoppers is Fred Kirby the piedmont textile region, and they "Big Bill" Davis. Davis is a classically trained violinist who performed with the Roy Lear chose their young, warm-voiced Charlotte Symphony, but who doubled as Wade Mainer announcer Charles Crutchfield to head up the show. a country fiddler and bass player. He Bill Monroe Crutchfield had started in radio at formed a stringband called the Cotton Zeke and Wiley Morris station WSPA in Spartanburg in 1929. Blossoms in the late 1920s which was Sam Poplin After a stay at WIS in Columbia as certainly among the veiy first country Red Clay Ramblers announcer, Crutchfield joined the staff groups to broadcast on WBT. He was a Arthur Smith of WBT in 1933. He organized the regular on the Briarhopper show for Tennessee Ramblers with Cecil original Briarhopper show, bringing many years. Campbell and Hairy Blair together Johnny McAllister, Jane The Briarhoppers hit their peak of Bartlett, Bill Davis, Clarence Etters, popularity in the 1940s. During the Thoipe Westerfield, Homer Diye, and summer of 1945,WBT originated

Billie Burton as its founding members. Carolina Hayride, a Saturday afternoon Crutchfield's wit contributed greatly to barn dance broadcast coast-to-coast via the show's success. His programming and the CBS radio network. It starred the business savvy soon landed him the spot Briarhoppers along with Fred Kirby, of program director, then station guitarist Arthur Smith, and other manager for WBT. He eventually became Charlotte country notables. The Hayride president of WBT's parent company, was succeeded by Carolina Calling and Jefferson-Pilot Broadcasting. Dixie Jamboree, similar programs that The name "Briarhopper," says were aired throughout the 1940s over Crutchfield, came to him one day when much of the Southeast on CBS's Dixie he was out rabbit hunting with friends. Network. At their height, the They flushed a rabbit from a thicket and Briarhoppers' old-fashioned blend of someone exclaimed, "Look at that briarhopper!" Musicians Cecil Campbell and Harry Blair, early Briarhoppers who came to Charlotte in 1934 with the Tennessee Ramblers band, offer another explanation. They remember that the Ramblers had used "Briarhoppers" as a

pseudonym -whenever they needed to avoid contractual conflicts in their pre- Charlotte days. Scholars point out that the term was also slang for Kentucky migrants at the time. Early stringbands had a penchant for turning such

terms—hillbilly, tar heel, fruit jar drinker—to their advantage. However the name came to be, WBT listeners quickly

took it to heart. Over the years,the Briarhopper organization has included dozens of musicians. WBT country artists acted like members of a big club, rather than competing musicians. At various times a musician might play with the Briarhoppers, Tennessee Ramblers, Charles Crutchfield

17 breakdowns, hymns and heart songs winning fiddlers' contests as leader of textile mills. It was in 1935 at the could draw up to ten thousand pieces of Warren's Four Aces. Like Don White, massive Firestone Mill in Gastonia that fan mail in a single week. he spent time with the Blue Ridge they met and began playing together as

The Briarhopper show ended its run Mountaineers and the Tennessee the Spindle City Boys. Whitey and Hogan on WBT in 1951, a victim of changing Ramblers. He recorded with the Ramblers made their radio debut on WSPA public tastes in country music. Many of at the Charlotte sessions and appeared Spartanburg, then became regulars on

its alumni retired from performing, but with them in the 1936 film, Ride new WGNC Gastonia in 1939 where they

in the 1970s the band regrouped with Ranger Ride starring Gene Autry. He broadcast from the main street show- Whitey and Hogan, Don White, Shannon joined the Briarhoppers in the early window of a sponsoring furniture store. Grayson and Hank Warren. 1940s and became not only their fiddler, Decca Records brought them to New Don White was a member of the but also their baggy-pants comedian. York for their first recording session late original band from 1935 to 1939, and Photos of the band from that decade that year. In 1941, they joined the WBT also for a second stint in the early 1940s. feature Hank—made up with freckles, Briarhoppers in Charlotte, and were

Born Walden Whytsell in the West fake glasses and blacked-out teeth- featured vocalists with the band until it Virginia mountains in September of cutting capers with his fiddle or even broke up in the early 1950s. 1909, he learned to sing hymns and play standing on his head. Few listeners Today the Briarhoppers are performing guitar from his mother. He first visited realized that he had enough formal once again, and recording for the Lamon Charlotte in 1933 with the Blue Ridge training to play with the Charlotte and Old Homestead labels. They have a

Mountaineers, but did not settle here Symphony, or that his skill at sight- busy schedule of bluegrass festivals all until 1935 when he arrived with the reading allowed him to act as the over the Southeast, and recently Crazy Bucklebusters (a Crazy Water Briarhopper musical director during the travelled to St. Paul, Minnesota, for a

Crystals Barn Dance band) and stayed on busy days following World War II when guest appearance on public radio's to become a Briarhopper. Cowboy tunes composers deluged the band with song hugely popular Prairie Home and old-fashioned heart songs are his sheets. After the Briarhoppers went off Companion. Since 1978,school children love, and he made his RCA recording the air, Hank became chief photographer in North Carolina have been treated to debut here on June 19, 1936 singing for WBTV, and his work files have proved the Briarhoppers as part of the "Folk such songs as Mexicali Rose, What a an important resource both for that Arts in the Schools" program sponsored Friend We Have in Mother, and a duet corporation and for historians. by the North Carolina Arts Council. with Fred Kirby My Old Saddle Horse is Roy Grant and Arval Hogan form the Students who ordinarily listen only to Missing. During the 1940s Don White duo "Whitey and Hogan" within the pop idols on a.m. radio are spellbound by journeyed to Hollywood with the Briarhoppers, and historians at the the Briarhoppers' music and humor, and Tennessee Ramblers to appear in a Country Music Foundation have declared clamor for encores and autographs. number of cowboy movies. The high them country music's longest-running The Briarhoppers' enthusiasm and point of his career came in 1946-1952 duet. Grant was born in Shelby, North charm combined with finely-honed when powerful WLS Chicago made Don Carolina, April 7, 1916, and Hogan was musicianship make everyone happy to White and the Sage Riders featured born on July 24, 1911 in Robbinsville, hear the refrain that has been their performers on its highly popular National North Carolina. Like many other young signature since the 1930s: "Do y'all

Bam Dance heard throughout the Midwest. men and women raised in the piedmont know what 'hit is?—Hit's Banjoist Shannon Grayson hails from Carolinas they went to work in the Briarhopper Time!" Sunshine, North Carolina. Born September 30, 1916, he started his career playing mandolin and guitar for Art MLx, brother of cowboy movie star Tom Mix. In 1937 he began working with western singers Bill and Cliff Carlisle. They played on radio in Charlotte, Knoxville, Asheville, and Charleston, West Virginia, and recorded frequently at the RCA sessions in

Charlotte. In 1943 he left to join the WBT Briarhoppers and remained with them for most of their network years. At the end of the 1940s he struck off on his own as leader of the Golden Valley Boys, an early bluegrass group which recorded for RCA.

"Fiddlin' Hank" Warren (his first name is really Garnett) has long been one of the most versatile of the

Briarhoppers. in Airy, Born Mount North Briarhoppers: (L to R) standing, Arthur Smith, Bill Davis, Fred Kirby, Jack Gillette, Claude Casey. Cecil Carolina, April 1, 1909, he got his start Campbell; seated, Roy "Whitey" Grant, Don White, Arval Hogan, Hank Warren

18 Joe and Janette Carter the Cailer Family earned the right to be traditional music fans are undoubtedly called legendary. More than any other Joe and Janette Carter. The youngest If you were tuned to WBT Charlotte at group, they brought the time-honored children of Sara and A. P. , Joe and six a.m. in 1941, you heard the last mountain ballad tradition to records. Janette Carter continue to present the radio broadcasts of the famous Carter They composed or popularized the now- classic Carter Family material in its Family trio of A. P., Sara, and Maybelle classic Will the Circle Be Unbroken, original, unvarnished acoustic form. and the Carter children: Joe, Janette, Wildwood Flower, Hello Stranger, Keep Janette Carter was born in 1923 and Gladys, and June. On the Sunny Side, Let the Church Roll Joe in 1927. Janette learned autohaip The Carter Family lived in Maces On, Angel Band, My Old Cottage Home, from her mother and at age twelve began Spring, Virginia, a tiny mountain hamlet It Hikes a Worried Man, I'm appearing with the Family. By the late near Bristol and Kingsport, Tennessee. Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyes, and 1930s she and Joe were regularly adding Cousins Sara and Maybelle Addington dozens more. Sara helped bring the their voices to the Carter Family married brothers A. P. and Ezra Carter, autohaip into favor as a concert broadcasts on border radio and over and in the mid- 1920s A. P. (which stood instrument. Maybelle's innovative WBT. Along the way she helped her for Alvin Pleasant), Sara, and Maybelle accompaniment methods are now copied father gather traditional tunes from rural began singing together as the Carter by dozens of accomplished guitarists singers. A. P. would write down the words Family. In August 1927 an RCA Victor today. In 1970 the Carter Family became and Janette would commit the tunes to field recording team visited Bristol and the first group elected to the Country memory. "She was my tape recorder," captured on wax the Carters' mix of old Music Hall of Fame. A. P. is quoted as saying proudly. mountain ballads and original tunes. The three original Carters have passed Today Joe plays fiddle, banjo, and piano Their 78s quickly found favor with rural away, but the clan continues to be quite as well as guitar, and composes hymns. listeners, selling well throughout the active in music. Perhaps best known are Janette plays autohaip and guitar, and United States, Canada and Australia daughter June Carter, the Nashville has written her own songs in the old during the years between the wars. singer married to Johnny Cash, and Carter style. Her uncompromising Three Carter recording sessions took granddaughter Carlene Carter, a top- rough-hewn singing style is heard regularly place in Charlotte. The first two were selling rock vocalist. But the favorites of in concerts across the United States, arranged by RCA Victor in May of 1931; the final session was undertaken in June of 1938 for Decca Records. Twenty-nine

sides were recorded in all. The year 1938 proved to be especially successful for the Cartel's. They were hired by Consolidated Drug Trade Products—the Chicago-based maker of Peruna tonic, Kolorbak hah' dye, and Radio Girl perfume—and sent to Texas where they broadcast daily over high- wattage border radio stations just inside Mexico. The border stations reached much of North America and introduced the Carters to hundreds of thousands of new fans. When not broadcasting on border radio, Consolidated Drug brought the Carter Family back to powerful 50,000-watt WBT in Charlotte. A Charlotte Observer radio listing for June 1939 indicates that the Carters were then broadcasting a "farm time" show with announcer Grady Cole each weekday morning, and a second half- hour program every afternoon. This schedule seems to have continued into early 1940 when the family returned to Texas for more broadcasts and transcriptions. Historians report that the

family returned to Charlotte in late 1941 or early 1942 for a final six months of

work for WBT. It was here that A. P. and Sara parted company bringing an end to

the famed trio.

In their decade and a half together, Janette, Joe, Sara, A. P. Carter

19 among them a recent pair of appearances and reformed a number of times during with the Rouse brothers. By 1940, Casey on public radio's popular Prairie the thirties with shifting personnel who had reformed the Pine State Playboys, Home Companion. included, in addition to Casey, Jake this time with Kelland Clark, Clinton In 1974,in an effort to encourage the King, Johnny Stafford, Willie Coates, Collins, and Jimmy Colvard, to record for continuance of old-time music traditions Lawrence and Carl Boling, Jimmy Rouse RCA Victor in Atlanta.

Janette reopened A. P.'s general store as and Roger Morris. Casey earned his stage In 1941, Casey walked into Charles the Carter Family Fold, a museum and name "Carolina Hobo," hitchhiking and Crutchfield's office at WBT one day and performance center. Today its simple playing music as far away as Texas and asked him for a job. Crutehfield stage attracts pilgrims from around the New York. But when jobs ran out he auditioned him, hired him, and put him world who come to hear old-time returned to the Danville area where his on the air that day. Casey became a acoustic music in the Carter Family family still lived. featured singer on the Dixie Farm Club tradition. This summer the state of Casey set out again with thumb and and the Briarhopper show. "Everybody Virginia honored Janette Carter with a guitar for New York in 1936. He won an that worked at WBT was a Briarhopper," Governor's Award for the Arts honoring appearance on Major Bowes' Amateur recalls Casey, who soon joined the her efforts to keep alive the folk music Horn in New York and toured with the Briarhoppers and the Tennessee heritage of the southern mountains. Bowes organization throughout the Ramblers in their schedule of personal Southeast. When he returned to Danville appearances throughout the piedmont.

Claude Casey from his successful debut with Major He made his first movie with the

Born in Enoree, South Carolina on Bowes, even the mayor came over to Tennessee Ramblers, Sitting Your September 13, 1912, Claude Casey greet the hometown boy. Partner in 1943, and went on to make comes from a long line of Carolina By the late thirties, Casey had realized ten more films in the coming years. musicians. His grandfather, father, and a major ambition—to make records. He Casey remained with WBT for twelve mother played fiddle and his aunt played first recorded in New York for Art years appearing on local and CBS banjo. "This is how my mother and Satherly of the American Record network shows including the Carolina father first met, playing for a dance," Corporation in 1937, showing his local Hayride, Carolina Calling, and the roots with such as for remembers Claude. "So I was around numbers Memories of Dixie Jamboree which he was host music back in my younger days; that's Charlie Poole and Moonshine in the and scriptwriter. His association with what gave me the bug." His first North Carolina Hills. Back in North WBT became more than just another instrument was the harmonica and Carolina, the 1938 ensemble of Claude radio job. "Working at WBT was one of before long he learned to accompany his Casey and his Pine State Playboys the greatest things that ever happened to father at square dances. When the recorded for RCA Victor in Charlotte and me. I made a world of friends and found family moved to nearby Whitmore, Rock Hill. Casey's polished vocals and a beautiful woman that I married." Claude met Lawrence and Carl Boling fine yodeling foreshadowed the talent Claude and Ruth Casey married in 1942 who introduced him to guitar playing. and popular appeal which would mark and settled down in Charlotte. In his early teens, Claude moved with his radio, songwriting, film, and After World War II, Casey's his family to the Shenandoah Valley of television careers. increasing success with Western music, Virginia and then into Danville. He was Casey's travelling days were by no led him to form his own band at WBT, impressed by the music around his home. means at an end. The next few years Claude Casey and his Sage Dusters. The Danville area in the late 1920s saw him in Kinston with the Pine State Still closely tied to the WBT family of teemed with influential stringband Playboys, in the Midwest with Fat performers, Casey toured at the same musicians including banjo player Charlie Sanders 'Country Cousins and in Florida time with Sam Poplin, Homer Christopher Poole, fiddler Charlie Laprade, and and Shannon Grayson as Briarhopper guitarist Elton Biggers. While in Danville, Unit Number Two. Claude began playing guitar with local After the breakup of the Briarhopper stringbands the Piedmont Serenades show in the early 1950s, Casey moved and the Schoolfield Woodchoppers and with his Sage Dusters to WGAC in gradually took up singing. Augusta, Georgia and then to WFBC-TV In 1929, at the age of sixteen, he made in Greenville, South Carolina. In the his first appearance on radio over WBTM early 1960s, the Caseys moved to Ruth's in Danville. He landed a fifteen minute home town of Johnston, South Carolina program on Saturday mornings billed as where they founded radio station WJES the Carolina Hobo and soon began broad- which they continue to own and casting on WBTM with friends Jake King, operate today, with their son Michael Tex Isley and Marvin Fowler as the Pine acting as general manager. State Playboys. Casey was just eighteen and had worked intermittently as a mill Ibmmy Faile hand, apple picker, and plumber's apprentice, but his heart was set on music. Tommy Faile was born in September of The early thirties were lean times for 1928 and raised in Lancaster, South most Carolina musicians and for Casey as Carolina, a younger generation musician well. The Pine State Playboys broke up Claude Casey than most of the artists honored at The

20 Charlotte Country Music Story. He watehing the cowboy matinees starring In 1972, after years of extensive remembers getting his first guitar at age Tex Ritter and Gene Autry. touring, Hamilton returned to North ten: "I used to attend a school directly Hamilton belongs to a younger Carolina to settle in Matthews, outside across the street from my house. One day generation of country performers than Charlotte, and work with Arthur Smith

I was looking at the school window and the WBT radio musicians. By the time on his syndicated television series. Today saw the postman deliver a package to my he made his 1956 debut, television was he continues to tour, record, and perform home. I could tell it was a guitar and rapidly replacing radio as the most and is one of country music's best-loved couldn't wait to get home to start popular entertainment medium; he got stars and most articulate spokesmen. practicing." his start on WMAL-TV in Washington,

At the age of sixteen, Faile had worked D.C. , on Jimmy Dean 's Country Showcase, Snuffy Jenkins in a local mill for a year and a half, but rather than on a radio program. Early in and Pappy Sherrill he had his eye on a career in music. In his career, he produced several pop

1945 he was playing with a hometown music hits, such as A Rose and a Baby Country music historians point to band when Fisher Hendley invited him Ruth and Break My Mind, but soon Dewitt "Snuffy" Jenkins as a pivotal to Columbia to join his band the returned to his North Carolina country figure in the development of bluegrass- Aristocratic Pigs on WIS. But after a roots with the country classic A bilene style banjo. He and fiddler Homer year, Faile tired of the rigorous touring and She's A Little Bit Country. "Pappy" Sherrill have been making schedule and in 1946 joined the Hired Because of his talent and dedication to music together since the 1930s. Hands with Snuffy Jenkins, Homer country music he became a member of Homer Lee Sherrill was born on March "Pappy" Sherrill, Ira Dimmery, Larry the Grand Ole Opry in 1960. Yet, he 23, 1915, outside Hickory, North Ruff, and Marion Kyser. His guitar work, found his greatest popularity in Canada, Carolina, in the village of Sherrill's Ford beautiful baritone voice, and snappy Europe, and Great Britain. He has had a some twenty-five miles north of comedy routines earned him many fans. long-running weekly television show in Charlotte. At seven, Homer got a tin He remained with the Hired Hands until Canada, number one records in England Sears & Roebuck fiddle for Christmas. 1951 and then replaced Roy Lear in the and Australia, and fans as far away as Soon he played well enough to help his Crackerjacks band which included Hong Kong. His extensive overseas father draw a crowd when they went Ralph, Sonny and Arthur Smith. He touring schedule and a concert in into town to sell watermelons from the appeared on WBTV's Arthur Smith Moscow earned him the title of family garden. Show, beginning in the early 1950s, and International Ambassador of Country Homer debuted on WSOC radio (then in 1969 he launched his own WBTV Music from Billboard in 1974. in Gastonia) at age thirteen, and in 1934 program called The Tommy Faile he joined the Crazy Water Barn Dance at Show, which ran until 1975. WBT Charlotte as leader of Homer In addition to his talents as a musician Sherrill's East Hickory Stringband. The and performer, Faile is a prolific song Crazy Water management soon renamed writer. One of his songs, Ptozfora 309, the band the Crazy Hickory Nuts and was recorded by country singer Red sent it to WWNC Asheville. When the Sovine and became a hit in 1967. Today band dissolved, Sherrill stayed on as Faile continues write to songs and do fiddler for Bill and Earl Bolick, brothers freelance radio work, hosting a Sunday- who gained fame as the Blue Sky Boys. night early country show on WLVK About this time Homer began appearing called Country Gold. His long career in on records. RCA was holding frequent field radio and television makes him a familiar sessions in Charlotte, and Homer added personality to many Charlotteans. his talent to several of the dates between

1936 and 1938. The first seems to have been June 22, 1936, when he teemed George Hamilton IV (Emcee) with the duo Shorty Watkins and Mac Born and raised in Winston-Salem, McMillen to form the Blue Ridge Hill George Hamilton IV North Carolina, George Hamilton IV Billies. In October of that year, he backed grew up listening to country music on Hamilton blends the traditional Wade Mainer and Zeke Morris as they cut the Saturday evening Grand Ole Opry country music of his youth with the eight tunes, including the delightful broadcasts. Like the performers honored gentle sounds of the folk revival nonsense classic, Hop Along Peter. in The Charlotte Country Music Story, musicians of the 1960s and 1970s. With In 1938, Homer broadcast on WPTF Hamilton comes from a tradition of his warm voice and fine musicianship, he Raleigh with the Smiling Rangers, a "down home" music. He says, "My has introduced many new songs and song band which included Zeke and Wiley people were originally farmers from the writers to country music audiences. Like Morris and at times Wade Mainer. The mountains. Their heritage was mountain the early radio stars of WBT, Hamilton band broke up in 1939, but not before music—string bands, fiddles, and the comes from a background rich in gospel being captured on wax by RCA at the like. It seemed the natural thing to do to music and he has recorded several gospel Hotel Charlotte on January 26, 1938. learn to play an instrument and sing." albums. In the last several years he has After the split Homer retired from He remembers listening to his grand- worked as a guest soloist on Rev. Billy performing briefly: "I was so tired and father's records of Jimmie Rodgers, and Graham's Crusades, both here and abroad. I'd been moving about and I already

21 gained a little girl in my family and I folklorists Ivan Tribe and John Moms, wanted to drift around and take it easy." despite the fact that Bill Monroe was still and clear as in the 1930s, even as But before 1939 was out, crack two years from forming his first organi- he approaches his seventy-seventh birthday. announcer Byron Parker persuaded zation of the Bluegrass Boys: "Four sides Johnson Family Singers Homer Sherrill to move his family to feature the group with Snuffy's three- and Betty Johnson Columbia, South Carolina, and join the finger banjo being quite audible and the WIS Hillbillies with Snuffy Jenkins. entire band sounding quite similar to The singing of hymns and gospel Dewitt Jenkins was born on October bluegrass on Don't Go Out Tonight, songs was a staple of country music 27, 1908 in Harris, North Carolina, not Don't Get Trouble in Mind, and Kiss Me performances in the 1930s and '40s. One far from the city of Shelby. He grew up Cindy."One cannot help but wonder of WBT's best-loved groups, the Johnson hearing the distinctive three-finger banjo whether young Monroe was listening. Family Singers, specialized in sacred style played by amateur musicians in In fact, Snuffy Jenkins directly music and were known to many as that part of the piedmont. Its rolling, influenced the two men who later "radio's sweetest singing family." bubbling sound, in stark contrast to the brought three-finger banjo playing to Lydia and Jesse Johnson, known more traditional and percussive trailing Monroe's band. Earl Scruggs grew up affectionately as Ma and Pa, lived in the and clawhammer styles, delighted the near Jenkins and remembers listening White Oak community of Greensboro, young man. closely to the older player. Don Reno, North Carolina and worked at Cone

In 1934, Jenkins became the first to who followed Scruggs in the Bluegrass Mills. They raised four children, each of use the new style on radio, debuting on Boys, took lessons from Jenkins. Reno whom had musical talent: Kenneth, WBT's Crazy Water Barn Dance as has written: "Snuffy taught me the basic Betty, and the twins, Bob and Jim. leader of the Dewitt Jenkins Stringband. three-finger roll on the five-string banjo In 1937, Pa Johnson attended the

Promotional material noted that they were when I was just a little boy. . . That's Stamps-Baxter Music School in Dallas, "playing the old-time mountain tunes what turned me on to banjo. Before Texas and learned the shape-note system like very few can, and in that 'peppy' Snuffy's style, banjo sounded harsh and of musical notation. After his return he style that is peculiarly their own." After crude to me." taught his family the shape-note method a brief stint as bandleader, Jenkins After Mainer moved on from and led singing schools in the community. joined J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers, one Columbia, Byron Parker (affectionately Soon the family began performing at of the period's most popular stringbands, known as "The Old Hired Hand") kept church programs and family reunions. In and broadcast with them over WSPA the band together as the WIS Hillbillies, 1940 they were invited to sing on WBT Spartanburg and WIS Columbia. recruiting Homer Sherrill, the late comic radio. They were so well received that In August 1937 Jenkins put his three- "Greasy" Medlin, and others as needed. the station offered them a contract to finger banjo style on record. In a The group broadcast daily over WIS and broadcast five times a week. Their drapery-shrouded room on the tenth played the "kerosene circuit" of success persuaded them to try to make a floor of the Hotel Charlotte, he and the schoolhouses and courthouses. Shows living with their music and they took to

Mountaineers recorded with J. E. on included both music and comedy. Snuffy the road to supplement the income fiddle, George Morris (Zeke and Wiley's (his nickname resulted from some now- provided by WBT. brother) on guitar, and Leonard Stokes forgotten skit), clad in immense baggy With the encouragement of WBT on mandolin. The sound "came pants and size twelve shoes, played the pianist Larry Walker, they added popular frightfully close to bluegrass," write washboard and acted the fool in such songs to their repertory. Walker was a bits as "Hookeyville School" and "Snuffy classically trained musician and greatly Cures a Snakebite." influenced the family's musical style and During the 1940s, the group recorded development. Under his direction they for RCA in Atlanta, DeLuxe Records in produced the "sweet, mellow, .... and Columbia, and Capitol Records in blended sound" that, along with Pa 1 /% Charlotte. By the end of the decade, Johnson's guitar accompaniment, Homer had gained his nickname of became Johnson Family trademarks. "Pappy" (part of an on-the-air contest to Their signature song on WBT was name his second child), and the band There's a Little Pine Log Cabin; favorite had taken the name the Hired Hands hymns included The Old Rugged Cross and Precious Memories. Veteran WBT ^ _^^«^h^^HJuKbv*^WM^^^^t\ During the 1950s the Hired Hands hosted a weekly television listeners may also fondly recall their show on WIS-TV called Carolina in the renditions of popular songs such as Morning. They found a new audience Goodnight Irene, Moonlight on the Bay during the 1960s folk music revival and and Carolina Moon. began recording anew and touring In the early 1940s, Betty Johnson festivals across America. Recently they appeared as a soloist on the Briarhopper performed at Carnegie Hall. show with Whitey and Hogan, Hank Today, Pappy Sherrill's limber-wristed Warren and Claude Casey. She sang

fiddling is still in fine form. Snuffy's popular numbers of the day with the baggy pants and washboard are just as accompaniment of the Briarhopper

WIS Hillbillies (I to r) Tommy Faile, Ira Dimmer,', corny, and his banjo just as loud musicians and regularly joined Claude "Pappy" Sherrill, Dewitt "Snuffy" Jenkins. 22 and Whitey and Hogan for duets and trios. became Charlotte businessmen. Ma and cousin had friends and Fred was left During the 1940s, the Johnsons toured Pa Johnson retired to Orangeburg, South alone for a few minutes in the station's with Bill Monroe and Arthur Smith and Carolina where they continued to sing in lobby. Thrilled with the chance to see appeared with the Carter Family on the family tradition. the inside of a radio station, Fred walked

WBT. In 1947 they made their first In 1958, the Johnson Family Singers into an empty studio, stepped up to the appearance on Nashville's Grand Ole reunited for two appearances on the Ed microphone with his guitar and started Opry. They remained regulars on WBT Sullivan Show and a year later they singing, pretending that he was making for over ten years, receiving carloads of recorded an album in Nashville. a live broadcast. Unbeknownst to Fred, fan mail. Their broadcasting career came It has been many years now since the announcer Charles Crutchfield, to a close in 1951 when sponsors chose Johnsons have been heard in public, but overheard the complete performance! to invest their advertising budgets in they are well remembered by thousands Surprising the embarassed young singer, newspapers rather than radio. of Carolinians who listened to WBT four Crutchfield offered him a job on the decades ago. spot. "You'll do," he told Kirby, "you can start tomorrow." The next year, at age eighteen, Fred Fred Kirby Kirby moved to WBT Charlotte. He spent To generations of youngsters growing ten years there, perfecting a cowboy up in the Charlotte area, Fred Kirby has singing style inspired by blue yodeller been the friendly cowboy on a series of Jimmie Rodgers and influenced over the WBTV children's shows. But his early years by Gene Autry, Ernest Tubb and success came in the 1930s and 1940s Eddie Arnold. He teamed with Bob when he was one of the area's most Phillips during the early 1930s, but more romantic radio and recording stars. often sang solo, billed as "The Hillbilly

Fred Kirby is a native Charlottean, Cavalier." During one brief period on the born July 19, 1910 the son of an Crazy Water Barn Dance the billing was itinerant Methodist minister. He learned changed to "The Crazy Cavalier," in to play guitar and sing hymns from his keeping with the sponsor's wishes. The Betty Johnson mother, but says his professional career new name somehow didn't fit the But by then, the Johnson children had started by accident. When Fred handsome young man in the promotional grown up and were ready to pursue was seventeen, his family was pictures, dressed like a young Bing careers of their own. Kenneth attended living in Florence, South Carolina. Crosby in smart white pants, dark blazer Dickenson College and prepared to enter While visiting his uncle in Columbia, and tie and seated in a swing shaped like the ministry. Betty began a highly Fred went with a cousin to a music store a crescent moon. successful career as an actress and across the street from station WIS to buy In 1939-Fred Kirby and Don White professional singer which eventually a new set of strings for his guitar. They struck off for the Midwest as a cowboy carried her to Broadway. The twins decided to first stop in at WIS where his singing duo. They broadcast together on WLW Cincinnati and WLS Chicago before their paths parted, Don's to

Nebraska and Fred's to St. Louis. By now

World War II was on, and Kirby earned a special citation from Secretary of the Treasurer Henry Morganthau for his work selling war bonds over St. Louis

radio as "The Victory Cowboy." It was in

St. Louis, Kirby remembers, that he began his transition to an entertainer of

children. "It was at a benefit at the St.

Louis Shriners Hospital— I simply fell in love with the kids." Nonetheless, he was happy to return to Charlotte in 1943 when Charles Crutchfield called and urged him to come back to WBT. Kirby returned as a featured soloist with the Briarhoppers in their local show and on the CBS network programs Carolina Hayride and Carolina Calling. In addition, he hosted one of WBT's first disc-jockey shows and began his first Saturday children's show, The Johnson Family Singers and Grady Cole: (L to R) Grady Cole, Pa, the twins Bob and Jim, Betty, Kenneth, Ma Cowboy Roundup Time.

23 Roy Lear in 1945 for Super Disc in Washington, D.C. After leaving the Tennessee Ramblers A native of Pineville, North Carolina, when that group split up in 1946, Lear Roy Lear first learned guitar from his became a member of Arthur Smith's father, David Lear, who played banjo in band, the Crackerjacks, playing bass the WOW (Woodsmen of the World) fiddle. From 1946 to 1951 he appeared Stringband over WBT's Crazy Water with Smith on WBT's Carolina Crystals Barn Dance in 1934 and 1935. Hayride and Carolina Calling radio By the age of seven, the younger Lear programs and in a host of personal was seconding his father on guitar at appearances all over the Carolinas. local dances. Though he was never an official In the late 1930s, fiddler Sam Poplin Briarhopper, Lear often played with was broadcasting on WIS in Columbia, them on barn dances. He also recorded South Carolina and needed two with Betty Johnson of the Johnson musicians for his band. Lear hitchhiked Family Singers. to Columbia with his neighbor Lonnie In 1951,Lear rejoined Cecil Campbell Smith to audition, and won a spot in the and the Tennessee Ramblers whose line- group singing and playing guitar. Lear up now featured Campbell on steel worked the early morning and noon time guitar, Jimmy Lunsford on fiddle, Millard radio shows with Poplin's group and Pressley on mandolin and Lear on guitar played hundreds of schoolhouse dates and bass. The band appeared on WBTV's and dances until the band broke up at The Hitching Post for a year and the start of World War II. continued to tour locally. In 1943, after his discharge from the Although Lear continued to play army, Lear joined the Tennessee regularly with the Tennessee Ramblers, Ramblers who had just left WBT and by the mid-1950s he needed to supplement were touring theatres on the T. D. Kemp Fred Kirby his performing income and started work circuit throughout the Southeast and as It was during this busy period of the at Cone Mills. He later switched to a job far away as New York and New Jersey. mid- 1940s that Fred Kirby had his in a sheet metal factory where he stayed Lear recorded with Ramblers Cecil biggest hit as a composer and recording for thirteen years before retiring. Campbell, Don White and Jack Gillette star. He had begun recording for RCA Lear was an active member of the Victor in Charlotte in February of 1936 Tennessee Ramblers up through the and had become a prolific songwriter. 1970s when the band stopped playing The morning after the bomb dropped on out regularly. His interest in music, Hiroshima in August 1945, he rushed however, has not stopped or been limited down to WBT's Wilder Building studios to his country and western background. and composed a new song entitled He is active today writing sheet music for Atomic Power. Today historians say the aspiring songwriters and helping young

gospel-influenced lyric was the first ever people who are trying to break into the written about the atom bomb. Kirby music business. performed it on his radio shows and

recorded it for Sonora Records. By the Wade Mainer end of 1946 more than half a dozen

other artists had recorded it, and Kirby During the late 1930s, Wade Mainer knew he had a hit on his hands. was probably the most-recorded country

In 1951, WBTV signed on the air, and musician in Charlotte. Today his distinctive

Fred Kirby was there with the third live two-finger banjo style and old-time music show on the new station, a children's continue to make him popular at festivals program called Fred Kirby 's Junior across the United States. Rancho. Since that time he has been a Wade Mainer was born on April 21, fixture at WBTV with his horse Calico 1907, near Weaverville, North Carolina, and sidekick "Uncle Jim" Patterson. in the Blue Ridge Mountains above Currently you can see him each Saturday Asheville. In the mid-1920s,he moved to morning on Channel 3 at 7:30 with Concord to join older brother J. E. who

Fred Kirby 's Cartoon Corral. Kirby is had found work in the cotton mills there. in his thirty-fourth year on television, Both young men had learned music from one of the most enduring children's stars a fiddle-playing uncle in the mountains. in the medium. "I'm now on my fourth They formed a band called Mainer's generation of bringin' up little ones to Mountaineers to play at social big ones," he says, "and I am very proud events and fiddlers' contests. J. E. played of all of them." Rov Lear fiddle, Wade picked banjo, and John

24 of Steve Ledford or Homer Sherrill on During the 1960s folk music revival, a fiddle. When Zeke married, Wade replaced new generation of old-time music him with Clyde Moody, who soon went on enthusiasts sought Mainer out and

to become a member of the very first persuaded him to take up banjo once line-up of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. again. Some of them founded Michigan- The voice of young Julia Brown was based Old Homestead Records—now a featured in one Charlotte session in major folk music label— in part to January 1938, in the song WJien rerelease his early recordings. Wade

Romance Calls. The title was apt, for became something of a celebrity as one Julia was to become Wade's wife, and of the few old-time southern musicians

she still sings with him in concerts today. easily accessible to northern audiences. A high point of Wade Mainer's career When he retired from General Motors in came in February 1941 when he received 1973,he began performing more often at

an invitation to perform at the White folk festivals, and today he and Julia House for President and Mrs. Franklin D. spend part of each year crisscrossing the Roosevelt. "His most vivid recollection of United States in their camper and the event came when he spilled some ice playing music. cream on the First Lady's dress," say Wade Mainer historians Ivan Tribe and John W. Bill Monroe Morris. "Fortunately she didn't seem to Love and Zeke Morris joined in on guitars. mind, and helped to put the embarrassed Most people think of bluegrass as The Mountaineers made their first music, old as the hills. in radio appearance on WSOC (then a mountaineer at ease." mountain But After II, country music truth the hard-driving mix of fiddle, Gastonia station) and caught the World War attention of Crazy Water Crystals veered from the old-time sounds of the mandolin, guitar, three-finger banjo, and 1930s, and in 1951 Wade Mainer hung bass first came together in the 1940s and distributor J. W. Fincher of Charlotte. his banjo. moved to Flint, Michigan, reflects varied musical influences. Bill He hired them for WBT's Saturday-night up He to in plant Monroe introduced it on the Grand Ole Crazy Water Barn Dance in 1934, and work a General Motors and active in church. He Opry, and because he his band later sent them out to broadcast daily became an area named remains resident of Michigan. the Bluegrass Boys, his style of music shows on stations in New Orleans, a Asheville, and Raleigh. Along the way they stopped at an RCA field session in

Atlanta to record their first records. The initial release, Maple On the Hill, became one of the 1930s major seller's and remains a country classic. Wade estimates that the disc earned the band $18,000— at a royalty rate of one-half cent per record sold. Today, historians point to Mainer's Mountaineers as one of the most influential stringbands of the pre-WWII era, "an important link in the evolution from the older stringband sounds of the 1920s to the new bluegrass style of the 1940s," one scholar says. Wade began a recording career as a band leader in his own right in 1936, though he continued to play with J. E. off and on. His first session took place at

208 South Tryon Street on February 14,

1936, and almost all of his pre-World

War II records were waxed in Charlotte or Rock Hill. By 1939>he had recorded nearly one hundred sides. This number far surpassed the sixty songs cut by the popular Monroe Brothers, for instance, and it indicates that Wade Mainer was one of the best selling artists of his day.

Mainer's most frequent partner in his Charlotte area sessions was guitarist Zeke Morris. On several occasions the duo expanded to a trio with the addition Bill Monroe

25 eventually came to be known as last Charlotte session in January, 1938, Grand Ole Opry in October 1939 and

"bluegrass." Monroe launched his the Monroes had left Greenville for cutting its first records in Atlanta on

recording career during the years 1936 Raleigh and a daily slot on WPTF there. October 7, 1940. By the end of the to 1938 in Charlotte. The Monroe Brothers' sixty forties the South was wrapped up in a

Born the son of a Kentucky farmer on sides constitute their entire recorded craze for the music it appreciatively

September 13, 1911, Bill Monroe was output as a duo. Among the discs are called "bluegrass" after Bill Monroe's the youngest of a musical family. He versions of Roll On Buddy, Nine Pound band. ended up playing mandolin because the Hammer, On Some Foggy Mountain Scholars today argue over the forces more glamorous instruments—fiddle and Tbp, and Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms, that shaped bluegrass. Monroe will be guitar—were already taken. When Bill whose popularity helped make those the first to tell you that its roots are in was in his teens his brothers Birch and tunes become standards in bluegrass and his Kentucky upbringing. But historians Charlie joined the regional movement country music. point out that the new sound came to

from farm to factory. They journeyed to The earliest Charlotte recordings life not in the mountains but in the

the Chicago area to work as laborers for sound very little like bluegrass, industrial towns where country people

Standard Oil, and Bill joined them about particularly the many hymns with their had migrated to find work. You may find, 1929. They played music together in slow pace and plaintive vocals. "Our influences of the musicians that Bill

their spare hours and won a part-time music then didn't have no drive," says Monroe heard during his first years in the

role as exhibition square dancers with Bill Monroe today. But even on the very Carolinas—J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers

the WLS radio barn dance roadshow. first tune of that Feburary 1936 session, String band, the revolutionary three In 1934 Bill and Charlie quit Standard My Long Journey Home, one can hear finger banjo style of Snuffy Jenkins, the Oil for full-time careers as a country music the unmistakeable mandolin style he hot style of Fiddlin' Arthur Smith.

duo. Charlie Monroe, then thirty-one, was soon to make famous. On later In fact Monroe drew many, if not most,

played guitar, sang lead, and worked recordings it becomes more insistent. of his early Bluegrass Boys from the

hard to get the audience to enjoy itself. Monroe credits his improving sound in Carolina piedmont around Charlotte. Bill, just twenty-three, was by contrast large part to his constant work on WBT Earl Scruggs and Don Reno, who gave

quiet and inner-directed. He and the other Crazy Water stations: "Oh, the band its trademark three-finger concentrated on picking out melody lines yes, radio was very important. You knew banjo style, grew up within the sound of

on the mandolin—a task usually left to people were listening to you close every WBT. So too did guitarist/vocalists Carl the fiddle in mountain music—and day so you worked to play right." Story and Clyde Moody, and fiddlers Jim

developing high, 'lonesome-sounding As time passed, Bill became dissatisfied Shumate and Art Wooten. vocal harmonies. with the old-time sound of the duet. Today the tight, crisp stringband sound The Monroe Brothers started singing Charlie, on the other hand, had no wish that Bill Monroe fashioned "with the

daily on the radio for the patent to alter what so obviously pleased the farmer in mind" is enjoyed across medicine Texas Crystals in Shenandoah, crowds. In the summer of 1938, while in America and in Europe and Japan.

Iowa, and then Omaha, Nebraska. After Raleigh, Bill Monroe left to form the Nearly fifty years after those first only a few months, the company sent stringband that would gain fame as the Charlotte sessions, Bill Monroe continues them east to the piedmont textile region Bluegrass Boys. Charlie spent much of his performing and recording career,

where they appeared on WIS in the rest of his career in the Carolinas, richly deserving of his title, the "Father Columbia, South Carolina. There, sales working from a home base in Greensboro of Bluegrass." of Texas Crystals "gave out," recalls Bill, and recording for RCA at the 1938 and

and the brothers moved to a stronger 1939 Rock Hill field sessions. His band, Zeke and Wiley Morris competitor, the Crazy Water Crystals the Kentucky Pardners, became an company, which maintained its regional important training ground for future As a brother duet or as members of office in Charlotte. bluegrass stars, including Lester Flatt, other ensembles, Wiley and Zeke Morris By 1936 they were doing two Crazy Curly Seckler, Dave "Stringbean" were among the most active performers Water radio shows a day with popular Akeman, Red Rector, and Ira Louvin. in Charlotte's country music heyday in announcer Byron Parker—one in Among the numerous stations where the the 1930s and '40s.

Greenville, South Carolina, where they Kentucky Pardners spent periods doing Claude was born on May 9, 1916 at lived, and the other over WBT Charlotte. daily radio shows was WBT Charlotte, Old Fort, North Carolina, a few miles The Monroe Brothers' popularity where they joined announcer Grady Cole east of Asheville and learned to play the attracted the attention of RCA Victor for a 5:45 a.m. "farm time" program mandolin as a young man. Wiley, born

executive Eli Oberstein when he visited during early 1946. Charlie retired to February 1, 1919, became proficient on

Charlotte for a week of recording in Kentucky in the late 1950s but returned guitar. In 1933, Claude left his mountain February, 1936. It took a telegram and to the Charlotte area for a last perfor- home for the mill villages at Concord persuasive phone call from Oberstein mance at the Lake Norman Opry House. near Charlotte. He came at the urging of before the busy duo consented to record. While Charlie continued as a much- former neighbors J. E. and Wade Mainer RCA's initial release from that session, loved entertainer in the Southeast, Bill who had taken jobs in the mill but soon the hymn What Would You Give In Monroe went on to forge the new sound found they could earn money by playing

Exchangefor Your Soul, proved to be of bluegrass. The first organization of the the old mountain music for appreciative

one of the biggest-selling records in the Bluegrass Boys played in Atlanta and fellow workers. J. E. gave Claude the South in the 1930s. By the time of their Asheville in 1939 before joining the hayseed nickname Zeke, in keeping with

26 the music's rural image, and together brother Wiley down from the mountains. Sam Poplin with Concord resident John Love they For the remainder of the 1930s and formed the stringband Mainer's into the mid- 1940s, Zeke and Wiley Sam Poplin's grandfather was an old- Mountaineers. Morris broadcast and recorded in a time fiddle player in his seventies when

J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers debuted variety of settings. Together they Sam first started stealing a lick on his on WSOC and WBT radio stations in recorded for RCA in Charlotte on fiddle while the old man was out at

Charlotte and quickly became one of the Jaunary 26, 1938 and on November 14, work. Sam kept on trying to learn most popular stringbands of the day. 1945, and in nearby Rock Hill, South Redwing as his grandfather had played it Crazy Water Crystals patent medicine Carolina on September 29, 1938 and on and soon he had traded a hard-earned company sent them on a tour of radio February 5, 1939. Zeke also worked as a ten dollars for a fiddle of his own. His stations throughout the Carolinas and as sideman on some Charlie Monroe grandfather began to take Sam's interest far south as New Orleans. In 1935, the recordings during the two Rock Hill in music seriously and sat down with Mountaineers recorded their biggest sessions. Separately the Morrises spent him to teach him the old tunes like selling song, Maple on the Hill, for RCA periods on radio in Raleigh, Danville, Arkansas Traveller, Hook and Line, and Victor. The recording featured the vocal Asheville and Johnson City. Together Old Jimmy Sutton. duet of Wade Mainer and Zeke Morris. they appeared on WBT Charlotte for BC While still a youngster in his

Wade and Zeke made their first records Headache Powders, and in Knoxville and hometown of Albemarle, Sam learned to on their own in Charlotte February 15, Spartanburg. While in Spartanburg they read music and play a bit of clarinet in

1936. Included were Maple on the Hill, hired an unknown, young banjo player the local mill brass band. But the fiddle

Part 2, and Going to Georgie, still a named Earl Scruggs, and helped launch landed Sam his first musical job with favorite with old-time stringbands. The the career of one of the giants of Fisher Hendley's Carolina Tar Heels. At duo remained with the Mountaineers bluegrass. seventeen Poplin travelled to New York until later that year. A dispute with their In all, Zeke and/or Wiley Morris with Hendley's group, broadcasting over radio sponsor in Raleigh caused Wade contributed to well over one hundred of the radio by day and playing in a New and Zeke to go out on their own while the more than fifteen hundred songs York club by night. By the time he

J. E. and the rest of the Mountaineers recorded in the Charlotte area by RCA up returned to North Carolina, he had continued to play for Crazy Water through 1945. Of the thirty-three sides recorded square dance tunes for Crystals. (An older brother, guitarist that featured the Morris Brothers as Brunswick and had begun writing songs

George "Sambo" Morris, did a later stint band leaders, the most famous is Let Me of his own. with the Mountaineers.) Wade and Zeke Be Your Salty Dog. They first recorded In the early 1930s,Poplin divided his added fiddler Homer Sherrill to their the tune on September 29, 1939 in the time between music and carpentry work line-up, performing on radio as the Andrew Jackson Hotel in downtown with his father in Albemarle. Around

Smiling Rangers, and recording as a trio Rock Hill. The song was released on an 1934 he appeared with Fred Russell's for RCA in Charlotte on October 12, RCA Bluebird disc, the budget label on Hillbillies on the WBT Crazy Water

1936. When Wade left in late 1937 to which all of that company's country Crystals Barn Dance. When the Russell's form a new band, the Rangers brought recordings were issued. In the early Hillbillies job played out, Poplin returned

1940s,RCA discontinued its Bluebird to Albemarle. There Fisher Hendley

line, but asked the Morris Brothers to called on him again, this time for a

record the song again for then' main fiddling job in Greenville, South Carolina label. The second recording, entitled with the Aristocratic Pigs. Salty Dog Blues, was cut at the Hotel In 1938,Fisher Hendley Charlotte in November of 1945, and moved to WIS in Columbia and

proved to be a major seller. The new Poplin pulled out of the group shortly arrangement featured Zeke's rapid-fire afterward to front his own band. He mandolin and sounds very much like Bill formed a four member group and Monroe's instrumental style of a few approached the Allen brothers of

years earlier. Columbia, auditioning for them in their Shortly after the 1945 session,Zeke Adluh flour mill and convincing them to and Wiley gave up the lives of sponsor his band on WIS. Sam Poplin professional musicians. Both were now and his Adluh Musical Millers proved so

in their late twenties and were ready to popular that Royal Crown Cola sponsored

settle down to a more stable home life. the band for a second daily show on WIS

Since the late 1940s, they have lived in as the Royal Crown Rangers. While at Black Mountain, North Carolina, a few WIS, Poplin's group toured extensively miles from their birthplace, and worked through the Carolinas. Booked for most as auto body repairmen. They continue every night in the week, their show to enjoy playing, having appeared at the combined Poplin's popular songs and prestigious Newport Folk Festival in the trick fiddling with acrobatics, comedy, early 1960s and recently on the magic and even a dog show.

Nashville Network's highly rated Fire When military service and the tire

Zeke and Wiley Morris (on right) on the Mountain television show. shortage broke up Poplin's music and

27 comedy group in the early 1940s, he left harmonica. Fiddler Bill Hicks left the Europe. It was a 'coming together' of show business for a time and entered the band in 1981 and was replaced by Clay literally global proportions." shipyards. After the war, he resettled in Buckner. Among the vintage Charlotte recording Albemarle, buying a small farm and The band immersed itself in the pre- or performing artists whose music the working as a machinist at Badin's bluegrass stringband tradition, not only Red Clay Ramblers feature from time to aluminum plant. studying with living musicians but time are the Delmore Brothers, Uncle He soon took up music again, playing learning fiddle tunes and novelty Dave Macon, Fiddling Arthur Smith, and fiddle with Curly Williams and the numbers from old 78 recordings. Before the Carolina Tar Heels. No Rambler

Georgia Peach Pickers at the Barn in long they were composing their own performance is complete without a "Venice, California in 1945. There they songs and tunes borrowing from the superbly harmonized rendition of a shared the stage with Spade Cooley and idioms of early jazz, vintage gospel, Irish Carter Family song or two. Mike Craver, his band and Bob Wills and the Texas music, western swing, and more: in Jim Watson, and Tommy Thompson have Playboys. Back in Carolina by 1946, he short, creating their own performing collaborated on an all-Carter LP entitled joined the WBT family of musicians. At style much the way the 1930s Carolina Meeting in the Air, and their strong WBT Poplin appeared with Claude Casey radio bands did. voices fully realize the potential of this and the Sage Dusters and the The Red Clay Ramblers' music has classic material. Briarhopper Unit Number Two, who proved widely popular. They have toured with the car and trailer from released six alburtts and appeared on Arthur Smith Poplin's Columbia days. stage in the 1975 off-Broadway musical Poplin's mechanical skills vied with his Diamond Studs, and more recently with Arthur Smith, nationally known for musical interests and eventually he Roger Miller in a production based on his recording of Dueling Banjos and turned to his engineering talents for his Mark Twain's Adventures of Guitar Boogie, has been an important livelihood. From an engineering job at Huckleberry Finn. Tommy Thompson part of the Charlotte-area music scene Queens College, he got into the clock has recently written and starred in a one from the early days of field recording up business. He retired in 1980, but is man show named The Last Song of John to the present. stilled called on today to repair and set Profitt. They spend over half of each Born April 1, 1921, Arthur Smith (no up grandfather clocks. Although Poplin's year touring North America, with relation to Fiddling Arthur Smith) grew major interest these days is composing, occasional forays into Europe and Africa. up in the cotton mill town of Kershaw, his talent for fiddle playing remains In their concert and workshops at South Carolina, some sixty miles south undiminished. Spirit Square, the Red Clay Ramblers of Charlotte. His father worked as a loom will share the music of some of the early fixer in the Springs Mills plant there and Red Clay Ramblers Carolina musicians who are no longer in his spare time directed the town's

with us. Banjoist Thompson believes brass band, a familiar part of village life The old-time stringband music and that the music is not merely good in many Southern mill communities country songs celebrated at The entertainment but a uniquely American then. Arthur's first instrument was Charlotte Country Music Story remain cultural achievement: "Two musical trumpet, and he still counts jazzmen vital thanks to many talented young traditions collided in America—the Louis Armstrong, Stephane Grappelli, musicians (often of urban upbringing) European (especially English and Irish) and Django Reinhart among his major who draw inspiration from older and the African. The first stringband influences. Soon he picked up fiddle and generations of rural folk and country was when a fiddle and banjo played guitar and before long, he remembers, artists. One of the most accomplished, together. The banjo was a product of "could get around on most any stringed creative, and influential of the younger Africa and the fiddle a product of instrument." bands who has helped to rekindle interest in traditional forms of country »i«i. music is the Red Clay Ramblers.

The Ramblers got their start in Chapel

Hill, North Carolina in 1972, deriving their name from the rolling red clay hills of the North Carolina piedmont. Founders Tommy Thompson, who plays banjo and guitar, and mandolinist Jim Watson learned tunes in the 1960s from master Carolina fiddlers, and desired to form a band that would bring this infectious old-time dance music to younger urban audiences. They were joined in the early 1970s by Mike Craver, Bill Hicks, and Jack Herrick. Craver plays piano and guitar. Herrick provides support on a multitude of instruments including bass, tin whistle, trumpet, and The Red Clay Ramblers: (L to R) Jack Herrick, Tommy Thompson, Clay Buckner, Mike Craver, Jim Watson

28 Mill children in the 1920s went to number one on the pop lists. record version entitled Dueling Banjos. work early. Before Arthur Smith reached Today Arthur Smith is best remem- Smith sued to be acknowledged as his teens he had a job in the Springs bered by Carolinians for his quarter of a composer, and continues to collect

card room. Music offered a welcome century as a regular on WBT radio and royalties to this day. alternative to mill labor, and at thirteen television. He joined WBT radio about Over the years, Arthur Smith has been

Smith won his first regular spot on radio. 1943 and in 1945 became a featured successful at numerous business ventures The Arthur Smith Quartet didn't play performer on Carolina Hayride (later outside performing. Among the earliest stringband music at first: they played Carolina Calling) which aired was a grocery chain, which he sold to Dixieland jazz. In a 1977 article in nationally on CBS from Charlotte each the Red & White Company with the Bluegrass Unlimited, Smith told Saturday afternoon. Smith also broadcast agreement that he produce their com- interviewer Don Rhodes: a daily local program for years called The mercials. Long-time Charlotteans still

We nearly starved to death until one Corner Store. In the early 1950s,the pro- grin remembering the jingle in which day we changed our style: we had been gram featured Arthur and his brothers Smith's down home drawl rhymed "buy doing a daily radio show over WSPA Sonny and Ralph with announcer Clyde it" with "White." In 1959 Smith opened Radio in Spartanburg, South Carolina, McLean in a mixture of music and his own independent recording studio. as the Arthur Smith Quartet. One cornball comedy. The two-story brick building at 5457 Friday we threw down our trumpet, When WBTV signed on in 1951, Monroe Road became a leading producer clarinet, and trombone and picked up Arthur Smith took part in the first live of syndicated radio shows for performers, thefiddle, accordian, and guitar. . . telecast in the Carolinas. During the including Johnny Cash. Hundreds of The next Monday we came, back on the 1950s and 1960s he broadcast a live country albums and advertising jingles radio program, as Arthur Smith and morning show and a weekly evening were recorded there, and even a 1965 hit the Carolina Crackerjacks. program that was syndicated on over a for soul singer James Brown, called

Smith recalls the Crackerjacks made hundred TV stations at its peak. In the Papa's Got a Brand New Bag. In 1977, their first records at an RCA Victor field process he aided the careers of popular Smith and partner Christian M. Haerle session at the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Carolina musician Tommy Faile and founded CMH Records, a major bluegrass

Rock Hill, South Carolina: "Our best bluegrass banjo star Don Reno, both of label which made many of its albums in song from that was one called Going whom spent extended periods as Smith Charlotte.

Back to Old Carolina. RCA session sidemen. Today.Arthur Smith is largely retired sheets indicate that the date was While at the WBT/WBTV studios in from performing and has sold his studio. September 29, 1938. the now-demolished Wilder Building in He keeps as busy as ever, though, with During the 1940s, country music downtown Charlotte, Arthur Smith diverse business interests from music changed dramatically. The major worked up Dueling Banjos. One day in publishing (he has written nearly one recording companies fixed their gaze on 1955,Smith picked up his tenor banjo hundred hymns including Acres of

Nashville and its top-selling recording and motioned Don Reno to strap on a Diamonds and controls rights to more stars. Independent studios arose to 5-string banjo, saying, "You just follow than five hundred songs) to a series of record less commercially viable artists, me." Monument Records released the fishing tournaments. He remains a either leasing the masters to larger result as Feuding Banjos. In 1973, prolific producer of television and radio companies or marketing records Warner Brothers used the melody for the ads, and a leading citizen of the themselves on new small labels. The movie Deliverance and released a hit Charlotte community. country sound began to absorb commercial pop and jazz influences.

Most noticeably of all, musicians began to use electric instruments. These changes adversely affected the careers of many pre-World War II entertainers, but Arthur Smith turned these developments to his advantage. He had always loved jazz, and he had begun featuring electric guitar on the radio as early as 1938: "One time the guy at a pawnshop had an amp and guitar. He got me to play the thing, and when its owner didn't come back to claim it, I ended up buying it." In 1945 he recorded a jazzy guitar instrumental called Guitar Boogie for the small label Super Disc Records. Guitar Boogie, which was based on a classic blues chordal progression, rocketed to the top of the country charts—the first instrumental to do so—then crossed over to rise to Arthur Smith

29 Tennessee Ramblers was given the job and followed the band Virginia. But soon thereafter, he heard with Cecil Campbell up to Rochester and then back home to Hartman dedicate a song to him on the and Harry Blah- North Carolina. He has remained based radio and then announce that he wanted in Charlotte ever since. the young musician to come back to Campbell has stayed close to home for Pittsburgh to join the band! Blair recalls Organized by Dick Hartman in the late the past thirty years or so, but has been with mixed emotions the countless 1920s, the Tennessee Ramblers an active composer and performer. He is dances the group played for in depressed transferred to Charlotte from Rochester, a prolific songwriter with dozens of coal mining towns. "We were lucky to New York in 1934 under the sponsorship published songs to his credit. He has also earn seventy-five cents to a dollar for our of Crazy Water Crystals. At that time, recorded a number of albums, several of services back then," he remembers. the band featured Hartman, "Horse which feature him on Hawaiian steel Blair remained with the Ramblers Thief Harry" Blair, Kenneth "Pappy" guitar. Every year, Campbell, along with until 1943 when he entered the service. Wolfe, Jack Gillette and native North other veterans of the old western films He returned to the group following his Carolinian Cecil Campbell. The including Claude Casey, will perform a discharge in 1945 and performed often ensemble quickly established themselves favorite number or two at the popular on theBriarhoppershow with Tex Martin as WBT's most popular stringband, western film festivals held in Charlotte (Martin Shope), Cecil Campbell, Jack receiving over one hundred thousand and Raleigh. Gillette, and Claude Casey. Also during pieces of fan mail by the end of their William Blair who came to be known the 1940s,he toured with the Grand Ole first seven months of broadcasting here. as "Horse Thief Harry" is another Opry Tent Show with some of Nashville's After a stint of about a year at WBT, original Tennessee Rambler participating biggest stars. At the end of the decade the Ramblers moved on to Atlanta to in The Charlotte Country Music Story. he worked for a time as a solo act in work at stations WSB and WGST. They Like Cecil Campbell, Blair joined the Newport News, Virginia and Nashville, returned to Charlotte the following year group in Pittsburgh in the early 1930s. Tennessee. to perform again on WBT for the Blair was born in August of 1912 in In 1949, Blair married and moved to Southern Radio Corporation. New Martinsville, West Virginia. He Columbus, Ohio. Here the couple gave In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the went to work for Wierton Steel as a birth to a son and Blair decided to quit Ramblers were in and out of Charlotte, young teenager and picked up guitar the road to raise his family. Eventually visiting Pittsburgh, Cincinatti, and from an uncle who also worked in the he returned to work at Wierton Steel Louisville for radio work. (Dick Hartman plant. Around the beginning of the Great where he stayed until 1968. Blair and his left the band in 1937.) Also during this Depression, he travelled to Pittsburgh to wife then retired to Murrell's Inlet, near period the group was beckoned to audition for Hartman's band. He wasn't Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where Hollywood to make several successful offered a job and returned to West they reside today. western films with cowboy singing stars such as Gene Autry and Tex Ritter. Titles included Ride Ranger Ride, Ridin' the Cherokee Trail, Swing Your Partner, with Dale Evans and Oh My Darling Clementine, featuring a young Roy Acuff. In the mid- 1940s, Cecil Campbell took the reins of the band and led various organizations of the Tennessee Ramblers up into the 1970s. Born in 1911, Campbell was raised on a tobacco farm in Stokes County, North Carolina near Belews Creek and took an early interest in the folk music which surrounded him as a child. He learned hundreds of songs and became a skillful player of several stringed instruments. As a young man he determined that he would try to make a living as a country musician and songwriter. He was given his first opportunity to perform on radio by station WSJS in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Seeking new opportunities, Campbell hitchhiked in 1932 to Pittsburgh where he lived with his brother. He soon auditioned for Dick Hartman who was looking for a guitar player to join his

Crazy Tennessee Ramblers. Campbell Harry Blair and Cecil Campbell

30 ,

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS EVENING CONCERTS

Friday The Briarhopper Show featuring Charles Crutchfield, Announcer, Whitey and Hogan, October 25, 1985 Shannon Grayson, Hank Warren, Don White, Claude Casey, Fred Kirby, Betty Johnson,

8:75 PM The Tennessee Ramblers with Cecil Campbell and Harry Blair, and The Johnson Family Singers.

INTERMISSION

George Hamilton IV, Emcee, Arthur Smith, Joe and Jannette Carter and The Red Clay Ramblers.

Saturday The Briarhopper Show featuring Charles Crutchfield, Announcer, Whitey and Hogan, October 26, 1985 Shannon Grayson, Hank Warren, Don White, Claude Casey, Betty Johnson and The 8:75 PM Johnson Family Singers.

INTERMISSION

NCNB/Performance George Hamilton IV, Emcee, Wade Mainer, Wiley and Zeke Morris, Snuffy Jenkins, Pappy Place Sherrill and the Hired Hands and Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys.

SATURDAY WORKSHOPS

All workshops arefree and open to the public. Entertainment Place is located on the Saturday groundfloor, directly opposite the Seventh Street entrance to Spirit Square Arts Center. October 26, 1985 Rehearsal Place is located on the second floor. From the ground floor, take the Tunnel 1:00-5:15 PM Gallery elevator up one floor. Rehearsal Place is straight aheadfrom the elevator. Entertainment Place Rehearsal Place Spirit Square Entertainment Place Rehearsal Place Arts Center

1:00 The Piedmont in Transition 1:00 It's Briarhopper Time 1880-1940 with Shannon Grayson, Molly Davis, Glenn Hinson, Hank Warren, Don White, James Leloudis, Allen Tallos Whitey and Hogan 2:00 MiU Hands and Musicians: 2 :00 Western Music Eastern Style Country Music in the Piedmont Claude Casey with Kelland Clark, with Whitey and Hogan, and The Tennessee Ramblers with Pappy Sherrill Cecil Campbell and Harry Blair, 2:30 Kent Revisited: Perspectives Don White, Sam Poplin in Culture and Society in the 3:00 Country Music and Comedy Carolina Piedmont with Snuffy Jenkins, Pappy Hylan Lewis and Sherrill and the Hired Hands John Kenneth Morland 3:45 Country Music Comes of Age

These workshops and the 3:15 Old-time Music in the Carolinas Arthur Smith with Clay Smith, accompanying exhibits with Wade Mainer and Friends Tommy Faile, Roy Lear The Charlotte Country 3:45 Masters of the Banjo 4:30 The Red Clay Ramblers Music Story and Weave and Shannon Grayson, Snuffy Spin have been funded by Jenkins and Wade Mainer a grant from the North Carolina Humanities 4:30 The Johnson Family Singers Committee. featuring Betty Johnson

FORUMS AND EXHIBITS

Charlotte's role as an early music and recording center was in large part a function of

its status as the hub of the piedmont industrial region. Many of the artists, radio listeners and buyers of new recordings made in Charlotte lived and worked in the surrounding mill villages and towns. Many mill workers and town dwellers had only recently moved from the farm and were part of a massive rural-to-urban shift that

transformed the Carolina piedmont in the first half of this century. Textile mills of that era provided jobs for whites only. Blacks in the piedmont took part in the economic transformation of the region through other industries, most notably tobacco processing, and in services and small businesses in the urban centers. This history of country, blues and gospel music in the piedmont and its relation to the

31 people who lived there can best be appreciated in context with the larger economic, social and cultural forces of the times. With a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Committee, The Charlotte Country Music Story will present two public forums and two exhibits examining the development of country music in light of the changing environment.

Forum The Piedmont in Transition, 1880-1940 Saturday, Four scholars will discuss economic and social change in the piedmont Carolinas October 26, 1985 beginning with the rise of Southern textile mills in the latter part of the nineteenth 1:00-2:00 PM century and will suggest how industrialization influenced the music and culture of the Entertainment Place people. A discussion with the audience will follow presentations by: Spirit Square Molly Davis, Professor of American history, Queens College; Director of North Carolina Arts Center Humanities project, "Traditions in Transition: Impact Urbanization Free Committee The of in the Charlotte Community."

James Leloudis, PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; staff member of the Southern Oral History Program; co-author of the forthcoming book, Like a Family: An Oral History of the Textile South, 1880-1940. Glenn Hinson, Folklorist; PhDcandidate at the University of Pennsylvania; specialist in medicine shows"and Afro-American traditional music. Allen Tullos, Editor, Southern Changes, bimonthly journal of the Southern Regional Council; recently completed dissertation on industrialization in the Carolina piedmont, American Studies, Yale University.

Forum Kent Revisited: Perspectives on Culture and Society in the Carolina Piedmont. Saturday, In the late 1940s and early 1950s the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at October 26, 1985 2:30-3:15 PM the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, sponsored a series of field studies in the Entertainment Place modern culture of the South. Anthropologist John Kenneth Morland and sociologist Spirit Square Hylan Lewis lived and conducted research in a town they called "Kent." "Kent," a

Arts Center pseudonym for York, South Carolina, was the base of their study because it seemed to Free epitomize the piedmont subculture of the South. Using the experiences and stories gained from living in the community, Lewis and Morland produced scholarly analyses of the culture of Kent which were filled with the voices and insights of the people themselves. In an informal discussion, Drs. Lewis and Morland will share with the audience perspectives on culture and society in the Carolina piedmont. Hylan Lewis, Professor Emeritus, Brooklyn College; Visiting Professor, Graduate Center of the City University of New York; author of Black ways ofKent; Culture, Class and Poverty. John Kenneth Morland, Chairman, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Randolph Macon Woman's College; author of Millways ofKent, Social Problems in the United States; Race, Color and the Young Child.

Exhibit The Charlotte Country Music Story Spirit Square A photographic exhibit on the history of early country music radio and recording in Aits Center Charlotte from the 1920s to the 1940s displayed at Spirit Square will be available for

schools, libraries, and other public spaces beginning November 1, 1985. Contact Paul Hultburg, Director of Development, Spirit Square Arts Center, for information on borrowing the exhibit.

This exhibit is made possible through funds and materials provided by the North Carolina Humanities Committee, the Country Music Foundation, Southern Radio Corporation, the Mint Museum of History, and Spirit Square Arts Center.

Exhibit Weave and Spin October 5-31, 1985 photographic exhibit on textile mills and mill village life in the Charlotte area from Tunnel Gallery A will Spirit Square the 1900s to the 1940s illustrate Charlotte's key place in the piedmont textile region Arts Center and celebrate the workers who made the mills hum. This exhibit is made possible with funds and assistance from the North Carolina November 16, 1985- Humanities Committee, the Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina- January20, 1986 Chapel Hill, the Mint Museum of History and Spirits Square Arts Center. Hezekiah Alexander Homesite

3500 Shamrock Dr. Charlotte, NC

32 RECOMMENDED General Gwen Foster and Dave Fletcher LISTENING The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Old-Time Mountain Guitar (County 523) Country Music Selected and annotated by Singers of the Piedmont (Bear Family

Bill Malone. (Smithsonian Institution) Records FV 12505) Most of the albums below are reissues The Early Days ofBluegrass, Vols. 1-9 of early recordings and are available in The Golden Gate Quartet 1013-1020, libraries as well as purchase. (Rounder 1022) some for The Gospel Sound, Vol. 1 (CBS 88172) are not listed as The original recordings Afro-American Piedmont The Best of the Golden Gate Quartet they are generally collectors items. Musicians (Pathe Marconi 72153) cannot be However, even the reissues Blind Boy Fuller Truckin' My Blues Away All Over This World (Pathe Marconi 14953) record stores. They are found at most (Yazoo 1060) Thirty-five Historic Recordings of the most easily purchased by mail, directly Anthology Play My Juke Bar—East Coast Golden Gate Quartet (German RCA the distributors listed at the end from of Blues (Flyright 4711) CL 42111) the discography. These companies deal Henry Johnson Union County Flash Sherrill extensively in both reissues early Snuffy Jenkins and Pappy of (Trix 3304) current Crazy Water Barn Dance (Rounder 0059) country and bluegrass and Blind Gary Davis Blind Gary Davis, Years Pickin' Pluekin' recordings these same musicians. Tliirty-Three of and of Vol. 1 & ;? (Biograph 12030, 12034) (Rounder 0005) Blue Sky Boys Carolina Bluegrass Snuffy Jenkins

Blue Sky Boys: A Treasury of Rare Song and the Hired Hands (Arhoolie 501 1) Gemsfrom the Past (Pine Mountain Uncle Dave Macon Records 305) Early Recordings (County 521) The Sunny Side of Life (Rounder 1006) Go Long Mule (County 545) The Blue Sky Boys (RCA AXM2-5525) Laugh Your Blues Away (Rounder 1028) Presenting the Blue Sky Boys (JEMF 104)

J. E. Mainer Briarhoppers J. E. Maimer's Crazy Mountaineers, Hit's Briarhopper Time (Lamon 10017) Vols. 1 and 2 (OldTimey 106, 107) Hit's Briarhopper Time Again (Lamon 10039) Wade Mainer Whitey and Hogan with the Wade Mainer and the Sons of the Briarhoppers, Vols. 1 and 2 (Old Mountaineers. Early Radio, Vols. 1 Homestead 90089, 90169) and 2 (Old Homestead 124-125) Sacred Songs of Mother and Home Carlisle Brothers (Old Homestead 135) Cliff Carlisle, Vols. 1 and 2 Wade Mainer and the Sons of the (OldTimey 103, 104) Mountaineers (County 404) Carolina Tar Heels Bill Monroe Can't You Remember the Carolina Tar Feast Here Tbnight Bill and Charlie Heels (Bear Family Records 15507) Monroe (RCA, Bluebird AXM2-5510) The Carolina Tar Heels (Old Homestead 113) Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys The Carter Family Classic Recordings, Vol. 1 and 2 The Original and Great Carter Family (County 104, 105) (RCA Camden CAL 586) The Early Bluegrass Sound (Camden The Carter Family on Border Radio CAL 774) (JEMF 101) Bill Monroe with Lester Flatt and Earl The Country Sounds of the Original Scniggs (Rounder 06) Carter Family (Harmony 7422) Morris Brothers More Golden Gemsfrom the Original Early Bluegrass (RCA LVP-569) Carter Family (RCA Camden CAS 2554) Wiley, Zeke and Homer The Morris Joe and Jannette Carter Brothers and Homer Sherrill Carter Family Favorites (County 706) (Rounder 0022)

Delmore Brothers Dave McCarn The Delmore Brothers, 1933-1941 Singers of the Piedmont (Bear Family (County 402) Records FV 12505) The Delmore Brothers, Vols. 1-4 Poor Man, Rich Man: American Country (Old Homestead 153, 154, 160, 161) Songs of Protest (Rounder 1026) Dixon Brothers Red Clay Ramblers Beyond Black Smoke: The Dixon Meeting in the Air (Flying Fish 219) Brothers Original Recordings (Country Hard Times (Flying Fish 246) Turtle 6000) Arthur Smith The Dixon Brothers, Vols. 1 and 2 Jumping Guitar (Electric Muse) (Old Homestead 151, 164) (forthcoming) Fiddlin' Arthur Smith Guitarists Galore (with Clay Smith) Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, Vols. 1 and 2 (Monument 6643) (County 546, 547)

33 Tennessee Ramblers Selected Record Distributors: Hartman's Heartbreakers (Rambler 104) County Sales Box The Tobacco Tags 191 Floyd, Virginia 24091 Songs of the Tbbaeco Thgs (Old (703) 745-2001 Homestead 156) Down Home Music Company Wilmer Watts and the Lonely Eagles 1031 San Pablo Avenue Paramount Old Time Tunes (JEMF 103) El Cerrito, California 94530 (415) 525-1494 Round Up Records

P. 0. Box 154 No reissuefor thefollmmig artists: North Cambridge, Mass. 02140 Fred Kirby (617)354-0700 Roy Lear Tommy Faile Rounder Records Johnson Family 186 Willow Ave. Claude Casey and His Pine State Playboys Somerville, Mass. 02144

Country Music: Tradition and the RECOMMENDED Crying for the Carolines. Bastin, Bruce. READING The Paul Oliver Blues Series. New York: Individual Talent. Winchell, Mark Royden, Legacy Books, 1984 ed. Special Issue of the Southern Quarterly Journal. Hattiesburg, MS: The Southern Bluegrass Breakdown. Cantwell, Robert. Quarterly Journal. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1984. Kentucky Country. Wolfe, Charles K. Country Roots: The Origins of Lexington: Univ. Press ofKentucky, 1982. Country Music. Green, Douglas B. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1976. Tennessee Strings. Wolfe, Charles K. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1977. Country Music, U.S.A. Malone, Bill. 2nded. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1985. The Grand Ole Opry: The Early Years. Wolfe, Charles K. London: Old Time Music, Southern Music, American Music. 1975 Malone, Bill. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1979.

Stars of Country Music. Malone, Bill and Judith McCulloh, eds. Urbana: Univ. or Illinois Press, 1979.

The Listener's Guide to Country Music. Oermann, Robert K. with Douglas B. Green. New York: Facts on File, 1983.

Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters. Rooney, Jim. New York: Dial Press, 1971.

Rambling Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole. Rorrer, Kinney. London: Old Time Music, 1982.

Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys: An Illustrated Discography. Rosenberg,

Neil V. Nashville: Country Musk Foundation Press, 1971.

Blacks, Whites and Blues. Russell, Tony. New York: Stein and Day, 1970.

The Country Music Story: A Picture History of Country Music. Shelton, Robert, and Burt Goldblatt. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1971.

Country: The Biggest Music in America. Toshes, Nick. New York: Stein and Day, 1984. Mountaineer Jamboree: Country

Music In West Virginia. Tribe, Ivan M. Lexington: Univ. Press ofKentucky, 1984.

34 PLANNING AND State of North Carolina Presenters PRODUCTION James G. Martin, Bill Mansfield Governor Wayne Martin North Carolina Margaret Martin Department of Glenn Hinson Cultural Resources John Rumble Patric Dorsey, Joe Wilson Secretary Advisory Committee North Carolina J. Dagenhart Arts Council Larry Mary B. Regan, Kenneth R. Harris Executive Director Charles H. Crutchfield

Folklife Section Thomas J. Jamison George Holt, Arthur Smith Director Special Thanks Delia Coulter, AfroAmerican Cultural Folklife Specialist Center Mary Anne McDonald, Brenda Alfieri Folklife Specialist Joe Ellen Banks Gladys Gooch, Secretary William Barnes Hal Bouton Spirit Square Arts Center Doug and Chris Campbell Roberto Suarez, Tom Carter President, Claude and Ruth Casey Board Directors of Jeannie Caudle Boris Sellars, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Executive Director Historic Properties Program Staff Commission George Holt, Charlotte and Mecklenburg Producer/Director County Public Library

Delia Coulter, Carolina Room Assistant director Columbia University Press

Tom Hanchett, Andrea Cooper

Project historian/ Alice Cotton Exhibit coordinator County Sales Mary Anne McDonald, Bill Davis Participant coordinator Discovery Place Paul Hultberg, Bill Dooley Development assistant Russell Ford Ginger Parker, Designer Dave Freeman

Mark Nichols, Frye Gaillard

lectin ical coordinator Kays Gary

Jim Scancarelli, Gaston County Museum Photo researcher Dallas, North Carolina

Monroe Brinson, Kathy Gay

Audio visual consultant Meg Glaser

Randy Mullis, Amy Glass Audio visual coordinator Brent Glass Stuart Schwartz, Ray Gooding Exhibit maker Roy and Polly Grant Anna Upchurch, Peter Grendysa Publicist Larry Harding Leslie Shinn, Publicist Brenda Hatchell

Luke Powers, Susan Hewitt Documentation coordinator gary hixson

Sally Craig, Arval and Evelyn Hogan Research assistant William Huffman

35 William Jennings, Jr. Photo Credits Page 25: Ken Johnson Cover: The John Edwards Memorial Collection of The University of Wallace Jorgenson Gerin Choiniere North Carolina at Chapel Hill, SiKahn Insidefront cover: courtesy of The Country Music G. B. Warren Ron Lawrence Foundation Library and Media Page 4: (I tor) Alison Lee Center, Nashville, Tennessee Courtesy of Jim Scancarelli, Jim Leloudis Page 27: G. B. Warren Library of Congress, The John Edwards Memorial Page 5: Prints & Photographs Collection of The University of Charles Crutchfield Division North Carolina at Chapel Hill Page 6: Betsy Locke Page 28: G. B. Warren Lauren Deutsch Ed Martin Page 7: (top left) Page 29: Art Menius The John Edwards Memorial Courtesy of Jim Scancarelli, Kathy Merritt Collection of The University of Page 30: William Napier North Carolina at Chapel Hill Courtesy of Cecil Campbell National Archives Page 7: (right and center) Lewis Hine, right and center, National Council for Lewis Hine Collection, University the Traditional Arts of Maryland, Baltimore Jay Orr Lewis Hine, Lewis Hine Daniel Patterson Collection, National Archives. Mill Store, Patterson's Page 8: (I tor) Durham Wayne Martin, Courtesy of Lew Powell The Country Music Foundation Ronnie Pugh Library and Media Center, Nashville, Tennessee Betty Chafin Rash Page 9: Ralph Rinzler Courtesy of Arval Hogan Jennifer Roth Page 10: Susan Rosser Lewis Hine, Lewis Hine Elliott Sanderson Collection, National Archives Carol Sawyer Page 11: Charlie Seemann Courtesy of Claude Casey

Mary and Jim Semans Page 12: (I tor) Doug Seroff G. B. Warren, Courtesy of Countiy Music Foundation Homer and Dot Sherrill The Library and Media Center, Joann Sieburg-Baker Nashville, Tennessee Smithsonian Institution, Page 13: Office ofFolklife Programs Courtesy of Arval Hogan Paul Stribling Page 14: Doug Swaim Courtesy of Cecil Campbell Frank Talbert Page 17: Ivan Tribe Courtesy of Charles Crutchfield

UNC Chapel Hill, Page 18: Southern Oral Courtesy of WBT History Program; Page 19: John Edivards Courtesy of The Country Music Memorial Collection; Foundation Library and Media North Carolina Collection Center, Nashville, Tennessee UNC Charlotte, Page 20: Archives and Special Courtesy of Claude Casey Collections Page 21: University of Maryland, Courtesy of George Hamilton IV Leivis Hine Collection Page 22: Michael Van Hecke Courtesy of Arval Hogan Hank Warren Page 23: Joe Washam Courtesy of Betty Johnson David Whisnant Courtesy of Arval Hogan

Beverly Young Page 24:

Steve Zeitlin Courtesy of Arval Hogan Courtesy of Roy Lear

36 Sponsors Contributors

North Carolina Arts Council Arts and Science Council of Charlotte/Mecklenburg Spirit Square Arts Center „.,_.. , (Grass Roots Program) National Endowment for QyMe Folk Musk. theArts Society Metrotape Producer Country Music Foundation Services, Inc. Charles H. Crutchfield Jefferson Pilot Larry Dagenhart Communications Arthur Dye

North Carolina Foundation For The Humanitees Committee Carolinas William E. Poe, Sr. NCNB Corporation Southern Radio MaryJ Duke Biddle „ , ,. Coiporation Foundation

Mint Museum of History WFAE WTVI

Design: Ginger Parker Design

Photography (cover) Gerin Choiniere

Photography Art/Director (cover) gary hixson

Printing Classic Graphics, Inc.

Typesetting City Graphics •jsx^

Presented by North Carolina Arts Council Folklife Section Spirit Square Arts Center