Clarence Ashley (1895 - 1967)
Born in the town that would later become the locus for the explosion of country music, Bristol, TN., Ashley was brought up by his mother and grandfather - his father having been forced to leave town after cheating on his wife and being caught out - and learned the banjo from age eight, being taught the local Appalachian folk ballads by his mother and aunts, and from listening to lumberjacks and railroad men who would lodge in the boarding house his grandfather ran. Like many musicians of his time he would often play in “blackface” - white men covering their faces in black boot polish to make them look as if they were negros - and took part in travelling medicine shows. As already mentioned, he and G.B. Grayson would walk to the mines in Virginia to entertain the workers there and earn a few coins.
Discovered by Ralph Peer (though he had made previous recordings for another record company) Ashley played with various bands, and then solo, up to the time of the Great Depression, when mostly recording of artists stopped as the money to buy records - and to make them - ran out, and Ashley was forced to join those miners he and Grayson had once played for, working in the West Virginia coal mines to make ends meet. Later, he founded a trucking company and then got into comedy.
He was the first musician to record the old ballad “House of the Rising Sun”, which his grandfather taught him, and which of course became a massive hit for The Animals in the 1960s. He also helped popularise the spiritual hymn “Amazing Grace”, now one of the most covered and loved songs in music. Another victim of the Big C, he died in 1967.
Dock Boggs (1898 - 1971)
In an interesting quirk of fate, Moran Lee “Dock” Boggs was born and died on the same day, February 7. Not sure I’ve heard of anyone else with that distinction. His father was, if not unique then certainly in the minority of musicians of the time who could read sheet music, and he taught his children to play banjo and sing. Boggs used a lot of African-American influences in his own playing, listening to bands and in particular following one guitarist up and down the railroad tracks, a man called Go Lightning. In 1927 he tried out for an audition for a record company (not Peer’s this time) and was so nervous that he had to have whisky to calm his nerves. He didn’t own a banjo so had to borrow one from a local music store, but he got the contract.
His fame began to spread, and he was in demand for gatherings of all kinds, dances, mining camps, parties and so on. His wife, however, was a devoutly religious woman and hated the secular music he played (though he also learned and played spiritual songs and hymns from his brother-in-law, a preacher) and in general he was looked down upon by his community as being someone who played “sinful” music. His big chance came in 1930 when he was offered a live audition on WSB by Okeh Records, but stage fright destroyed his performance and he eventually pawned his banjo, vowing never to play music again. His wife must have been delighted.
He did however play again, being sought out by Mike Seeger in 1963 and eventually recorded three albums during the folk revival of the sixties, and travelled throughout the US, at one point playing before 10,000 people at the Newport Folk Festival. Bad health, though, had dogged him and his newfound fame did not last, death claiming him in 1971. A remembrance festival was set up in his name, still going on today.
Wade Ward (1892 - 1971)
Another native of Independence - though this time in Virginia - Ward played banjo and was renowned for his style of
clawhammer playing. He learned to play the banjo at eleven years of age, and the fiddle at sixteen, and with his brother David Crockett (seriously? Davy Crockett?) Ward, he played local dances and festivities until in 1919 he joined the Buck Mountain Band, with Van and Earl Edwards. He recorded twice for the Okeh label, once, solo, in 1925 and once with his band in 1929. He later hooked up again with his brother in a new band, The Ballard Branch Bogtrotters, and though they won prizes at fiddlers’ conventions and were recorded by the Lomax folklorists for the Library of Congress, Ward’s band does not seem to have had any hit records and he lived his life on his farm in Independence, music merely providing extra financial support for him.
He was another whom Mike Seeger sought out during the folk revival of the sixties, and who came to more prominent public notice thanks to recordings made by Seeger and Eric Davidson, and even made the trip to the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife in Washington D.C., at Seeger’s invitation to play. Unlike some of his contemporaries such as Fiddlin’ John Carson and A.P. Carter, he did not enjoy travel and stayed within his home county. He died, as he had lived, on his farm at the age of 79.
Tommy Jarrell (1901 - 1985)
A man who had a profound influence on old-time music, Thomas Jefferson (come on, now!) Jarrell played fiddle and banjo, having come from a musical family in the Round Peak district of Surry, North Carolina. He was famous for his innovations, such as sliding along the fingerboard in what is apparently called “ornamentation”, and the complex rhythms he created. He received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage in 1982, this considered the highest honour given by the government for folk and traditional arts. He later hosted young musicians at his home, and his first fiddle is on display at the Smithsonian. Two documentaries were made about him, and an annual festival, started in 2002, is held every year in his honour in his hometown.