If you look for country music’s Big Bang, there is nothing more momentous than Bristol, 1927. Within four summer days, two stars appeared that would change the cosmology of country – remap the sky. And it all happened in a disused office building in a quiet mountain town perched on the state line between Virginia and Tennessee. Why Bristol? What brought Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family to Bristol? Atlanta would have ...
In the nineteenth century, country music belonged to fireside and family, to the frontier town and the backwoods hamlet. Four decades into the twentieth, it was utterly transformed, driven headlong into the new world of the new century. First, fiddlers’ conventions and other public events provided a context of competition and offered the musician the chance of going professional. Then radio and records carried the notes of old-time songs and ...
(Vocal/instrumental duo, 1930s–50s) Raised near Louisville, Kentucky, Cliff Carlisle (1904–83) was attracted as a boy to blues and Hawaiian music. His fusion of the two would make him one of the most distinctive musicians of his time. Playing the dobro resonator guitar with a slide, he transmuted the blue yodels of Jimmie Rodgers, becoming a popular performer on radio and records. In the 1930s he worked on WBT in Charlotte, North ...
(Vocals, fiddle, 1880–1956) Reed, a singer and fiddler from Princeton, West Virginia, made his living playing at dances and church meetings and giving music lessons. Recording in the late 1920s, he observed contemporary life in songs like ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?’– a catalogue of the ills that afflicted Depression-hit rural southerners. His favourite theme was the tragicomedy of marriage, epitomized in his line ‘God made ...
(Vocals, songwriter, 1885–1957) The Rev. Andrew Jenkins, a blind Georgia minister, made numerous records in the 1920s, both solo and with family members, but his importance lies chiefly in his huge folio of songs, particularly topical pieces like ‘The Death Of Floyd Collins’ and ‘Ben Dewberry’s Final Run’ (recorded by Jimmie Rodgers), and gospel songs such as ‘God Put A Rainbow In The Clouds’. He and two stepdaughters formed The Jenkins ...
(Piano, vocals, songwriter, publisher, 1895–1955) A Memphis riverboat pianist and bandleader, Miller got into the publishing and songwriting business in his twenties. Moving to New York, he worked for several labels as a record producer, supplying acts like Gene Autry and Cliff Carlisle with material of his own, such as ‘Twenty-One Years’, ‘Seven Years With The Wrong Woman’ and ‘Rockin’ Alone (In An Old Rockin’ Chair)’ and often playing keyboards on ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1895–1991) The Kentuckian singer-guitarist was a superstar of early country radio, appealing to the vast mid-western audience of the WLS National Barn Dance with gentle renditions of old songs like ‘Barbara Allen’ and ‘The Fatal Wedding’. In the 1920s and 1930s he sold hundreds of thousands of songbooks and records. After retiring to run a music store in Springfield, Ohio, he returned to a studio in 1963 and over ...
(Banjo, vocals, 1900–76) A trained musician who thought he had left old-time music behind him in rural Kentucky, Kazee nevertheless became an important early country recording artist. His banjo-accompanied versions of traditional American ballads like ‘East Virginia’ and ‘The Wagoner’s Lad’ influenced generations of singers, incuding Joan Baez. His career didn’t outlast the Depression, but by then he was a Baptist minister, and his later years were devoted to writing operas ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1890–1957) Initially a New York session guitarist (with a talent on the side for whistling), Kansas-born Robison became the regular accompanist and vocal duet partner of Vernon Dalhart on hundreds of recordings in the 1920s. He also learned the skill of songwriting for the hillbilly market, specializing in topical subjects like bank raids and train crashes, but extending to local-colour compositions such as ‘When It’s Springtime In The Rockies’ ...
(Vocals, banjo, 1892–1931) A textile-mill worker and banjo player, Poole led one of the finest of old-time bands, The North Carolina Ramblers, with guitarist Roy Harvey (1892–1958) and a succession of fiddlers headed by Posey Rorer. Their first release, ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues’ and ‘Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister?’ in 1925, sold in six figures. With his rowdy lifestyle and endearingly creaky singing, Poole was ...
(Vocals, banjo, 1895–1967) Tom Ashley (as everyone but record companies called him) learned his trade as an entertainer by working on travelling shows. In the 1920s he played in The Carolina Tar Heels and recorded exceptional banjo-accompanied versions of ‘The Coo Coo Bird’ and the traditional ballad ‘The House Carpenter’. As late as the 1950s he was working with Ralph Stanley, performing in blackface. His Folkways LP Old-Time Music At Clarence ...
(Vocal/instrumental duo, 1940s–50s) The hard-driving, bluesy fiddling of Tennessee-born Curly Fox (1910–95) had been heard on radio, and on records by The Shelton Brothers, but his career took an upswing around 1936 when he teamed with Texan singer-guitarist Ruby Owens (1909–63), whom he subsequently married. Over 25 years they had spells on the Grand Ole Opry and WLW’s Boone County Jamboree, as well as on television in Houston. Fox’s recordings of ...
(Vocals, banjo, guitar, 1883–1977) A singer, banjoist and guitarist from southern Kentucky, blinded in a shooting accident in his early twenties, Burnett wrote (but did not record) ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’, made famous again through its use in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? He and his playing partner, the fiddler Leonard Rutherford, were one of the most gifted duet acts on early country records, and even today there are ...
(Vocals, banjo, 1898–1971) Boggs grew up in south-western Virginia at a time when mountain people were reluctantly quitting the backwoods for the hell of the coalmines. His music, too, reflects adaptation – ‘Country Blues’, ‘Pretty Polly’ and ‘Down South Blues’ making an eerie connection between the dispassionate narrative of the hillbilly ballad and the personal testimony of the blues. His 1920s recordings having achieved almost legendary status, he was tracked down ...
(Fiddle, 1887–1975) To fiddler Eck Robertson, and his often overlooked partner Henry Gilliland, goes the credit for recording, in June 1922, the first unequivocal country record: ‘Arkansaw Traveler’, an intricate fiddle duet, and ‘Sallie Gooden’, a virtuoso version of the traditional tune played by Robertson alone. He recorded again in the late 1920s with his family band, and reappeared at folk festivals in the 1960s, wearing a goatee like the cartoon ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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sweep of incredible photographs.
