Tag: The Carter Family

Tammy Rogers & Thomm Jutz Keep It Simple on ‘Surely Will Be Singing’ Debut

Posted on by Editor

Oftentimes keeping things simple yields the most profound results. Such is the case for accomplished fiddler Tammy Rogers of The SteelDrivers and well-traveled guitarist Thomm Jutz, the reigning IBMA Songwriter of the Year. Surely Will Be Singing, a new compilation of their co-writes, marks their first album together.

Having known of each other through bluegrass and roots music circles for years, the two finally met at a SESAC music industry dinner and awards show in 2016. Although neither won any awards that night, Rogers and Jutz were seated together, leading to the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship. After exchanging phone numbers on their way out of the gala while waiting in the valet line, the two met up at Rogers’ home the following week for their first songwriting session. Coming from that meet-up was “Old Railroads,” a song Jutz recorded for his 2017 album Crazy If You Let It as well as Eric Brace & Last Train Home’s Daytime Highs & Overnight Lows. Since then, Rogers and Jutz haven’t slowed down, writing on average one song per week for an cumulative total of over 140 songs and counting.

BGS: Considering you’ve written over 140 songs together, how’d you go about dwindling those down to the 12 that made it on the album?

Tammy Rogers: It’s a really hard process because we write so much together and love all the songs. They’re all like children to us. That being said, we don’t usually set out with the mindset of writing for Del McCoury or Tim McGraw. We just sit down and write whatever we’re feeling that day. Oftentimes a book, show, current events or just a random conversation will spark an idea. When we started talking about doing this record, the idea of keeping it simple kept coming up. Part of that was because when we began recording, we were still in serious lockdown mode. We knew we wouldn’t be able to get together in a big studio with our friends to record something really grand, so the simplicity was born out of necessity. The songs we chose lend themselves well to simple production.

Thomm Jutz: We also searched our catalogs for songs that would work well as duets. We’re also both big fans of the Carter Family, the Monroe Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys and other early country music. We didn’t necessarily want to make a full-band record. We wanted to have some bands on it, but at this point in my life with my own work I’m really intrigued by just whittling it down to duo and trio stuff with as much simplicity as possible.

Earlier y’all mentioned getting song inspiration from everything from current events to books and even television. Do you try to tie a lot of those themes back into your own lives with your songwriting or do you prefer going the fictional route? Or is it a bit of both?

Rogers: I don’t even know that I could even quantify how that would split because Thomm is the kind of writer who always has his antennas up. Whether he’s reading a book, watching a documentary or just letting his mind wander in conversation, I think he’s always listening for a phrase or thought that could turn into a song. I’m the same way. Just the other day I said something to a friend and immediately thought, “Hey, that’s a song!” I texted it to Thomm and he was on board. It’ll probably be the next song we work on. When you’re a writer and you’re really in the flow of it, anything can inspire. And if something catches your ear, whether it’s a fleshed-out story or a phrase that could be a title, you run with it. I do that all the time without thinking of a backstory. A phrase will pop into my head or I’ll say something and someone will follow up with something else and an idea snowballs from there.

Jutz: It’s important to pay attention. I think that’s the whole job description of a songwriter, or at least 90 percent of it. It’s also important to take good notes, whether it be a verse, one line, a title or just a general idea. I write all that stuff down, but like Tammy, I don’t try to overthink things. It’s important to keep an open mind because if you bring that into a co-writing session someone may interpret something completely different than you. But Tammy and I mostly write off of titles or general ideas. One of the nice things with bluegrass is that there’s a sort of vocabulary that goes with it. There are rules of what you say and how you say things that help us to focus on that structure when we’re writing. It’s like figure skating. You have to do certain poses or jumps to express yourself within the given parameters. That’s something I’ve always been intrigued about with bluegrass and American roots music. There’s a sense of structure already there and you have to try to do right by that.

Tammy, a moment ago you mentioned Thomm always having his antennas up. Going off that, what is it you each appreciate most about one another as songwriters and artists?

Tammy: One of the things I love most about writing with Thomm is that I’m from the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee and even though he’s from Germany, he’s studied my part of the world and is familiar with the culture. If I tell him we should try coming at something with a Carter Family approach or the Monroe and Stanley Brothers he knows exactly what I mean. That makes the process so fun and easy. I don’t think we’ve ever argued about a song and the direction it should go. It really allows us to get inside of a song and go to that place.

Jutz: I think what we both appreciate about each other is that we both take the work very seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. That’s not something that either of us came up with, but rather something that William Faulkner said when asked about writing for movies out in California. I think that mindset is a good recipe for a successful collaboration. In regards to Tammy, she’s just so musical. Not to say that other songwriters aren’t, but Tammy and I approach songwriting as instrumentalists. With that comes a different skill set that allows us to communicate differently than with people who work primarily as songwriters only. It’s very different writing with someone who’s a good instrumentalist, which Tammy obviously is.

That’s the second thing I find unique about our writing relationship, it just comes easy. We get along well and we’re close to the same age but have completely different life experiences. Tammy has children and I don’t, for example. Our lives are very similar and very different at the same time, which makes for a great exchange of ideas.

Speaking of the songwriting process, I love the song “Speakeasy Blues” and the Prohibition Era vibes it radiates. Can you tell me about the song’s story and how you pieced it together for the album?

Jutz: It doesn’t really tell the story of a book, but Tammy and I both had just read a book by North Carolina author Terry Roberts called The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival. It’s a really cool story about the prohibition era and a preacher who had his own train and would recruit misfits to join his crew, preaching to them and selling them liquor. It’s a wild story. One day we were talking about it and I remember Tammy saying that “Speakeasy Blues” sounded like a good song idea, and we ran with it.

Rogers: That song is a great example of how Thomm and I write. We share a lot of books and always share stories we enjoy with one another. It’s fun making music with literary sources because not everyone who hears the song has read the book, which leaves some nuances of the song up to interpretation. On that song in particular, after framing it into the Prohibition Era, we sought to make sure it had a fast tempo and driving beat similar to a train because in the book that’s how they traveled. There’s stuff like that that’s almost subliminal that you may not catch as a listener but that we were aware of when constructing it. Those little easter eggs are fun.

Jutz: Another interesting side to that song is that the book’s author, Terry Roberts, wrote the liner notes for our record. After sending it over and asking him to write for us he said he first listened to it while in London and upon hearing the first line of “Speakeasy Blues” said, “That’s Jedediah. That’s the preacher from my book!”

Rogers: I just started reading another book of his called A Short Time to Stay Here. I really like the title, so maybe one day it’ll become a song, too.

Photo Credit: Anthony Scarlati

The Bristol Sessions Get Another Look on ‘We Shall All Be Reunited’ CD

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For Dr. Ted Olson, Appalachian music has always been much more than a collection of songs. It’s been nothing short of a passion. The Eastern Tennessee State University professor has spent much of his life writing, researching, and documenting the music that has played and recorded throughout the southeastern United States during the 1920s and 1930s. His respected work on Bear Family Records box sets covering sessions in Bristol, Johnson City, and Knoxville, Tennessee, have brought those long-ago recordings to new generations of listeners. For example, the single-disc set Tell It to Me: Revisiting the Johnson City Sessions, 1928-1929 was named Best Compilation Album of 2019 by the Independent Music Awards.

Now, Olson has teamed up again with Bear Family to release We Shall All Be Reunited: Revisiting the Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928, a single CD distillation of these legendary sessions. Commonly called “the big bang of country music,” the recordings in Bristol by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and others became unexpected bestsellers, positioning country music as a viable commercial format. Along with reams of new liner notes, the CD delivers not just those familiar names, but also Ernest Stoneman, Blind Alfred Reed, and more, reminding listeners of the diversity that crowded around producer Ralph Peer’s microphone.

BGS: What inspired you to revisit the music from the original Bristol sessions for this album?

Olson: I found that the story of the Bristol sessions had grown significantly, for me. I’ve changed my interpretation of the Bristol sessions, its historical significance, and how one interprets that legacy. This gave me the opportunity to set the record straight about how that story needed to be told. That new narrative is in the liner notes, which are 44 pages. That is the maximum that can fit in a jewel box. I was pretty adamant that this is the story that needed to be told and this is the length it should be.

We have new documents to learn from, new research that was unavailable to us before. New interviews and new artwork. To me, it’s revisionist history in the best sense of the term. When Sony released a single CD of the Bristol sessions in 2003, they focused solely on the 1927 sessions. To my mind, the 1928 sessions are equal to the sessions of the previous year. With this new CD, we celebrate both of those sessions. We have new masters for the songs as well. An engineer in Germany, Marcus Heumann, produced new masters for this release. They’re very exciting and they sound like they were recorded yesterday.

Dr. Ted Olson

What emerges from listening to both the Bristol and Johnson City collections is that they each demand your attention, albeit with different qualities.

The Johnson City sessions were an essential part of the rest of the story. They were echo sessions, just months after the Bristol sessions. They involved many of the same musicians, and yet the Johnson City sessions explored a different side of the Appalachian music that the Bristol sessions didn’t get to. The Bristol sessions accomplished certain things that are valuable and important, but they didn’t explore other facets that Johnson City was able to get more deeply into, because it had a different producer. It also was a different company, with different priorities and fortunes.

Some people prefer the Johnson City sessions to the Bristol sessions. They find the Johnson City recordings wilder, more exciting. Less controlled by the producer. Ralph Peer was a very controlling producer, very interactive in shaping the sounds, whereas Frank Walker of Columbia had the attitude of anything goes in this music. He was more documentarian, in a way. “What do you have? Let’s hear it.” Rather than shaping something into a package, which is what Ralph Peer’s modus operandi was at the Bristol sessions. I love them both. I’m not going to play favorites, but I’m also not going to acquiesce into the idea that Bristol sessions were more important because they were a year earlier.

How did you come to choose one song from each artist for the new Bristol Sessions album?

I knew that I wanted to match the length of the Johnson City CD, which had 26 recordings. I committed to 26 tracks, because that’s as much as we could fit on a CD, but there was also a licensing limitation. I also wanted a new template, where the ’28 Bristol sessions were as important as the ’27 sessions.

There were 28 artists that performed at the Bristol sessions, which meant that I could include one track from everyone except two. I had committed to including performances that in 2020 would be enjoyable by those who aren’t initiated into the sounds of the 1920s musical world. The stylistic approaches back then have changed over the years. We’ve listened to the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers through the years, so they sound familiar to us. Other artists from those sessions were such talented performers that we can still appreciate their recordings for talent alone.

How did you select the song from the Carter Family? All six of the songs that they recorded in Bristol are amazing.

I came to the conclusion that while “Single Girl, Married Girl” or “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” had gotten a lot of attention from these sessions, it’s “The Poor Orphan Child” that, for me, is the one that has captured my ears as the definitive Carter Family debut performance. A.P. is part of it. He’s not on “Single Girl, Married Girl.” He was out fixing their car tires that morning. To my mind, his best singing at the Bristol sessions was on “The Poor Orphan Child.”

Jimmie Rodgers’ recordings in Bristol have always suggested to me a person with a distinctive musical identity that is still seeking a comfort level in front of the mic. His two songs seem a bit tentative, a little nervous. Rhythmically, he’s very loose, which was always part of his persona. I think those recordings show his great charisma. He didn’t invent the singing yodel, but he first demonstrated it on the track that’s on this CD, “Sleep Baby Sleep.” Several months later, he records “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T For Texas),” and that was his breakthrough record.

The Bear Family box set about the Bristol Sessions received two Grammy nominations in 2011. It should have been a high point for you. How did you come to realize that you had much more to do?

It was fascinating for me to watch the press reaction to the Grammy nominations as well as the box set itself. I found that the press reactions were a little bit uncertain of what the Bristol sessions were. It was as though they were all falling lockstep into rapt amazement at the mythic importance of this thing called the Bristol sessions. It was obvious to me that people were changed by a myth, which revolved around two notions. One was that the Bristol sessions were “the big bang of country music.” But what does that mean? It was where Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family made their first records, but there were many other artists there as well.

The other notion was that Bristol is the birthplace of country music, which has been promoted by both Bristol, and the state of Tennessee, but that statement has often left other important sessions to be overlooked. I came to see that critics didn’t know how to unravel the myth. So, there I was at the Grammys, and as a scholar I felt I had only cracked the surface of what these sessions really were. I, too, was under the spell of the myth. And I needed to get past that. It was quite clear to me that there was more to the story. I remember flying home from that event, thinking that this was a life’s work in front of me.

Photo of Dr. Ted Olson by Charlie Warden

With These Women Inducted Into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Who Should Be Next?

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

For the first time in the thirty year history of the International Bluegrass Music Association a class of Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductees includes a woman in every act. The Hall of Fame, helmed by the IBMA and housed inside the Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky, infamously lacks women. Before this year’s class it included ten women, total, and only one woman — Louise Scruggs — had ever been inducted as an individual. All others had been inducted as members of bands, duos, or organizations. 

This year Alison Krauss and Lynn Morris join the rarest rank of individual female inductees, alongside influential manager Louise Scruggs. The Stonemans — including Patti, Donna, and Roni — join the likes of songwriter Dixie Hall, who was inducted with her husband, Tom T.; Polly, Miggie, and Janis of the Lewis Family; Marion Leighton Levy of the Rounder Records founders; Sara and Maybelle of the Carter Family; and Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard.

To mark the occasion, we’re celebrating women in bluegrass who certainly deserve induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, beginning with this year’s inductees. The point is, there is no dearth of women in bluegrass, from way back in its earliest days before the genre even had a name to the big-tent-bluegrass present, and many of whom are more than qualified for inclusion in this hall of honor — as innovators, ambassadors, creators, pickers, and forebears, all.

Alison Krauss 

Arguably the most well-known bluegrass musician to achieve mainstream success, Alison Krauss is a no-brainer addition to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame. With her stellar collaborations — with Robert Plant, James Taylor, T Bone Burnett, and so many others — her bluegrass bona fides, her technical prowess as a fiddler, her crystalline and influential vocals, and her unparalleled skill for song interpretation she’s the perfect multi-hyphenate bluegrasser to demonstrate to veteran fans or the uninitiated passers-by what the Hall of Fame is all about. Because, no matter how far Alison Krauss may stray from bluegrass, everything she does remains firmly rooted in her ‘grassy foundations.

Lynn Morris

Lynn Morris remains a criminally underappreciated figure in bluegrass, partly due to her career being prematurely ended by a near-fatal stroke in the late 1990s. In the decades prior, this IBMA Award winner was a powerful and influential banjo player, bandleader, and community-builder, carving out a pathway to success in roots music for herself — given that no pathways were being made available to women like her. Morris’ brand of bluegrass was unflinching, driving, and gritty, and to this day it continues to defy stereotypes about what women can contribute to a music that often holds up maleness and horse race-style competition as currency. While at the same time, she retained a level of tenderness and openness rare in masculine-centered bluegrass. Hopefully this induction will spotlight Morris’ important role in bluegrass’ golden age during the ‘80s and ‘90s. “Love Grown Cold,” a semi-viral hit for Morris on many a bluegrass social media page, is merely the tip of the iceberg of what will be this Hall of Famer’s long-lasting legacy in this music.

The Stoneman Family

Ernest “Pop” Stoneman, father and figurehead of country’s legendary Stoneman family, was the man who started it all. No, literally. Pop is credited with being a keystone picker, performer, and pseudo-producer of 1927’s Bristol sessions, which later came to be considered as the “big bang of country music,” the beginning of the genre’s commercial fortunes. His family of pickers, including Donna, Roni, and Patti, became stars of stage and screen thanks to their showmanship, homespun vibes, and blistering-fast picking. The impact of this musical family on country, bluegrass, and Americana music — as a unit and as individuals — can simply not be overstated. From Hee Haw to the Grand Ole Opry to winning a CMA Award to international tours with their own group and as side musicians, the fingerprints of the Stoneman Family are all over American roots music across the globe.

Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper

At one point, Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper were perhaps the most famous bluegrass act in the world, landing several singles and tracks in Billboard’s Hot Country Chart in the ‘50s and ‘60s — notably landing four songs in the Top 10. Not on a bluegrass chart, because such a thing did not yet exist, but on the country chart! Granted, at that time bluegrass was still considered simply a subgenre of country and hillbilly music, but imagine not just one “Wagon Wheel”-level hit to their name, but a handful! And somehow, in modern times, Wilma Lee & Stoney are at best relegated to footnotes and asides. Bluegrass has always been a commercial genre and the commercial success of this pair is alone worth induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, all their other achievements and accolades notwithstanding.

Ola Belle Reed

Ola Belle Reed is more than “I’ve Endured” and more than “High on the Mountain.” A Western North Carolina songwriter and picker, Reed typified the politically- and environmentally-conscious, subversive, and grounded style of musicmaking by Appalachian women who lived through the many upheavals and uncertainties within the region and around the world during the twentieth century. Her songs, like “Tear Down the Fences,” highlight that the south, Appalachia, and the people who live there are not monoliths. Just as Reed’s catalog of influential music is not a monolith, either. Truly a glaring omission from Bluegrass’s hall of honor.

Sally Ann Forrester

Born Wilene Russell, “Sally Ann” or “Billie” Forrester — wife of fiddler Howdy Forrester — was one of only two women to have ever been members of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. (The other being Bessie Lee Maudlin, another prime candidate for Hall of Fame induction and inclusion in this list.) With the band, Forrester played accordion and sang as well as “keeping the books.” Inducting the women who were Blue Grass Boys, members of THE titular band of bluegrass, just makes sense! But with Forrester, it also represents an all-too-rare opportunity to canonize a bluegrass accordionist for the ages. Why wouldn’t we want to do that!? Take a listen to her accordion fills on “Rocky Road Blues” and just try to come up with a reason why bluegrass accordion isn’t more popular nowadays. Besides the obvious reasons.

Rose Maddox

Rose Maddox is traditionally credited as the first woman to cut a bluegrass album, recording Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass in 1962 for Capitol Records and including many a bluegrass hit, like “Footprints in the Snow.” Maddox also marked the beginning of a series of women vocalists and musicians in bluegrass who could accomplish the high lonesome sound for which men like Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, the Osborne Brothers, and others were famous. Women who sang old-time and country up to this point often had rounder, more full, resonant, and rich voices, where men in bluegrass were seemingly attempting to shout tenor to dog whistles. Sexists weren’t sure women could replicate that testicles-in-a-vise-grip sound, but Maddox’s powerful voice immediately commands the same attention – and respect – of the highest and most lonesome. To think there used to be a time when people actually thought (or pretended to think) women couldn’t sing bluegrass!

Elizabeth Cotten

A pillar of American folk music, Elizabeth Cotten’s influence and impact knows no bounds, reaching far from downhome blues, ragtime, and old-time and into bluegrass, folk, Americana, rock, pop, and beyond. Her songs and her playing style continue to influence bluegrass today, but Cotten’s true legacy, one that will stretch on into infinity, is that her existence stands as permission for the Other – for marginalized folks like herself, a Black, working class artisan and musician from the South – to exist and to take up space within these historically white and often forbidding and exclusive roots music communities. Elizabeth Cotten is proof positive that the contributions of Black folks to American roots musics, including if not especially bluegrass, were truly seminal, essential, and vital to the music growing and developing into the entity we all love today. Elizabeth Cotten would be an excellent and unimpeachable first Black and African American inductee into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Let’s make it happen.

Buffalo Gals

In the 1970s the group considered to be the first bluegrass lineup of all women was Buffalo Gals, including Martha Trachtenberg, Susie Monick, Carol Siegel, Sue Raines, and Nancy Josephson. Their first and only record, First Borne, is finally available digitally and via online streaming platforms, but up until recently was largely forgotten. We featured First Borne in our list of the 50 Greatest Bluegrass Albums by women and retold a now-infamous story about the Buffalo Gals performing in their sleeping bags when a festival promoter gave them a set early in the morning because, you guessed it, who would want to see women perform bluegrass!? Hearing this whimsical, zany mash-up of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “Loco-motion” we’d make this group headline. Just sayin’. With bands like Della Mae and Sister Sadie enjoying success and acclaim at all levels of the IBMA, perhaps it’s time to pay tribute to the all-women lineups like the Buffalo Gals who came before and blazed the trail.

Gloria Belle

A woman for a Sunny Mountain Boy! Gloria Belle is most famous as a member of Jimmy Martin’s backing band, but it would almost be an insult to reduce her career to having spent time in the shadow of the King of Bluegrass. She was a fantastic picker, multi-instrumentalist, and singer and the first woman to ever release an album on longtime bluegrass label Rebel Records. In 1999 she received IBMA’s Distinguished Achievement Award after a handful of decades of nonstop recording, touring, and performing in bluegrass. She even made an appearance on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s fantastically popular Will the Circle Be Unbroken album. Another case of an underrated woman who is constantly referred to on the back end of an ampersand after a man or men, Gloria Belle is a perfect example of a woman who deserves induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame on her own merits first and foremost.

Dolly Parton

Though she’ll often refer to it simply as “mountain music,” Dolly Parton is as bluegrass as they come. Albums like The Grass Is Blue, Heartsongs, and Trio demonstrate this fact to an obvious degree, but it’s worth pointing out — especially within the context of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame — that Parton’s bluegrass runs deeper than just being an offshoot of her musical expression. With the shows and festivals at Dollywood, her collaborations with artists like the Grascals, Rhonda Vincent, and Alison Krauss, and her longtime commitment to philanthropy in her home region of East Tennessee and abroad, Dolly is the perfect example the Hall of Fame could utilize to communicate the importance and value of taking bluegrass ideals and spreading them around the world. Plus, who wouldn’t want a ticket to the IBMA Awards show at which Dolly Parton would be inducted? (Pro tip: Dolly has actually attended the IBMA Awards and performed once before, when The Grass Is Blue was nominated in 2000 and Marty Stuart hosted. Let’s please recreate that show. Please.)

We could continue this list into infinity, and that’s exactly the point. Artists and bands like Alison Brown, Laurie Lewis, Missy Raines, Kathy Kallick, Blue Rose, Emmylou Harris, The Whites, Patty Loveless, and so many others are waiting in the wings, qualified, ready, and willing to step up and thrive under the mantle of Bluegrass Hall of Fame induction. And plenty of young women, femmes, and non-binary folks are waiting to have examples to look up to, to signal to them that bluegrass can be a place where they can also make a home. The concept of a Hall of Fame may seem like an unimportant or inconsequential or self-serving enterprise at times, but it can be so much more than that! We can supply those examples. Let’s do it.

LISTEN: Cat Clyde & Jeremie Albino, “Hello Stranger”

Posted on by Editor

Artists: Cat Clyde & Jeremie Albino
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Song: “Hello Stranger” (The Carter Family cover)
Album: blue blue blue
Release Date: May 21, 2021
Label: Cinematic Music Group, Majesticsilk (CAN)

In Their Words: “It’s amazing to think the first recording of this old folk song was done about 80 years ago. It feels sad, but also beautiful. Playing with the perspectives brings out the vulnerability in the song. We’re all strangers really — but great connection can come from this knowing and an openness can unfurl that may not be there with someone you are already close to.” — Cat Clyde & Jeremie Albino

Photo credit: Second Prize

LISTEN: Angela Autumn, “Sowin’ Seeds”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Angela Autumn
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee (originally from Zelienople, Pennsylvania)
Song: “Sowin’ Seeds”
Album: Frontiers Woman
Release Date: June 4, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Sowin’ Seeds’ is the oldest song on the record; I wrote it in 2017. It explores the could-be life of the musician; one of imagined ease, free from sacrifice. Once, after a show, a construction worker asked that I play this song again. It was in Pittsburgh, a town full of blue-collar workers. The chorus is a reference to the African American spiritual, ‘Working on a Building,’ which was recorded and later popularized by The Carter Family. The song features Nate Leath on fiddle, Keagan Justice on banjo, Mickey Justice on mandolin, and Kate Haldrup on drums.” — Angela Autumn

Photo credit: Dana Kalachnik

Bluegrass Memoirs: Old-time, Ragtime, & Mrs. Etta Baker

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On October 3, 2020, during IBMA’s Virtual World of Bluegrass, I watched the Bluegrass Situation‘s presentation of Shout & Shine Online, the fifth annual showcase celebrating equity and inclusion in bluegrass and roots music. This year it featured Black performers, including Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton, the blues, folk, bluegrass, and jazz multi-instrumentalist and vocalist from South Los Angeles. Not only do I enjoy his music, I also relish his asides and introductions. He knows a lot about musical sources, histories and meanings.  

Introducing his music, Paxton explained that “ragtime” was the word people in his home community used to describe what others might call “old-time” or “traditional” — music that rekindled a shared past. At neighborhood and family social gatherings, he said, people would ask for his music by saying, “Play some of that ragtime music!” 

For many people ragtime evokes the aural image of a piano played in the style of early 20th century composer Scott Joplin, an African American whose “Maple Leaf Rag” starred in the soundtrack of the 1973 hit film The Sting. (Paxton performed an arrangement of “Maple Leaf Rag” on five-string banjo for his Shout & Shine Online set.) The basic structure of this solo piano music involves the left hand keeping the rhythm often with large leaps in the bass register — often referred to as “stride” — while the right hand plays syncopated melody on the upper register. 

In this form, ragtime is thought of as an urban phenomenon, straddling the border between popular and classical, and as the musical precursor of jazz. Joplin, for instance, composed an opera in 1911, and Julliard piano professor Joshua Rifkin’s 1971 LP of Joplin’s works earned a Grammy nomination. Pioneer jazz pianists like Jelly Roll Morton included ragtime in their repertoires.

Ragtime had another manifestation in the southeast, where Black musicians adapted it to the guitar in a fingerpicking style. Here, the right hand did all the work: the thumb picking the rhythm on the bass strings while the index and middle fingers ragged the tune on the higher strings.

The guitar was more affordable and portable than the piano. Ragtime guitar was featured by early 20th century itinerant musicians like Arnold Shultz in western Kentucky and Blind Boy Fuller in North Carolina. But it was not just the music of popular entertainment, it was also, as Paxton explained, social community music, performed for friends and neighbors. 

In 1957, ragtime fingerpicking was a “new thing” within the folk music world that I was becoming acquainted with as a college student. I switched from nylon- to steel-string guitar and started wearing picks on my right hand. One of the recordings popular with us at Oberlin College was a track Peggy Seeger fingerpicked and sang on her 1955 Folkways LP, Songs of Courting and Complaint: “Freight Train.” She’d learned the song and its guitar accompaniment from the Black woman who worked as her family’s maid, North Carolinian Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, its composer.

In 1958 Peggy’s brother Mike Seeger produced Cotten’s first album for Folkways. “Freight Train,” already her best-known song, was on it:

Another tune we were trying to fingerpick in our dorm rooms and dining hall jam sessions was “Railroad Bill.” That song had been recorded by Virginia multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso Hobart Smith back in the ’40s. 

“Discovered” at the White Top (Virginia) folk festival in 1936, Smith and his sister, singer Texas Gladden, subsequently performed at the White House and were recorded for the Library of Congress by Alan Lomax in 1942. In 1946, Lomax introduced Hobart to New York record company owner Moses Asch. One of Asch’s new Disc label 78s launched Smith’s version of “Railroad Bill” into aural tradition among ’50s fingerpickers. Lomax recorded Smith again in 1959:

Smith had studied and learned fiddle and banjo with African American musician neighbors at a time when the realities of segregation forced him and his friends to visit them surreptitiously. He was inspired to take up the guitar when he saw an itinerant Black bluesman, whom he identified as Blind Lemon Jefferson. 

“Railroad Bill” was a well-known song in the southeast. Another song with a similar melody was “The Cannon Ball,” which Maybelle Carter of the famous Carter Family learned from Burnsville, North Carolina, native Lesley Riddle. In the late twenties and early thirties Riddle, an African American, accompanied A.P. Carter on song collecting trips and taught the family several songs they later recorded. Here’s a 1936 radio transcription of Maybelle singing and picking “The Cannon Ball”:

Mike Seeger recorded Riddle several times between 1965 and 1978; in 1993 Rounder issued a CD with 14 performances, including “The Cannon Ball”:

Riddle’s version, with its C to E chord change, is even closer to “Railroad Bill” than Maybelle’s. But in the mid-’50s, when I first became interested in this tune, no LP recordings of it were available. 

That changed in 1956, when a new version of “Railroad Bill” was released on an album, Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians. The first piece on the “B” side, it was fingerpicked by Mrs. Etta Baker: 

By the time I arrived at Oberlin College in 1957 it was an underground favorite; the hip older students spoke about trying to play like Mrs. Etta Baker. Copies of the album were passed around.

This album was on the new folk music label Tradition. Based in New York, Tradition hit the ground running in 1956 with at least 14 albums representing Greenwich Village trends in the mid-’50s folk revival: lots of ballads, plenty of Irish and English singers, popular radio performers, folklore collectors, flamenco artists, new concert sensations, and two albums of field recordings in the style of Folkways — one from Ireland, and this one from Appalachia. The recordings for Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians were made by Tradition owner Diane Hamilton along with Liam Clancy and Paul Clayton in the summer of 1956. 

Diane Hamilton was the pseudonym of Diane Guggenheim (1924–1991), an American mining heiress with a lifelong interest in traditional music, particularly Irish. At the time of the recording, Liam Clancy, soon to become part of the famous Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, had just arrived in New York, following an attachment with Hamilton. His brother Paddy was president of her new company.

New Englander Paul Clayton had studied folklore at the University of Virginia while pursuing a career as a folksinger. He recorded many albums from the mid-’50s until his troubled life ended in 1967 at the age of 36. Today he’s perhaps best known as a songwriter. His “Gotta Travel On” was a country hit in 1958, and his friend Bob Dylan borrowed from one of his songs to compose “Don’t Think Twice.” In 1956 Tradition had just released Paul’s album, Whaling and Sailing Songs from the Days of Moby Dick.

In his notes for Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians, Clayton described the album as “the result of a folk-song collecting trip during the Summer of 1956.” Hamilton and Clancy had recently arrived in New York from Ireland; Clancy was keen on collecting southern folk songs, and Clayton, who’d done a lot of that, was the obvious choice for expert guide. 

The three met in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and headed west for a collecting trip to Appalachia. Their exact itinerary is unknown, but they went as far west as Beech Mountain, the highest point in the eastern U.S., well-known for its folk traditions. There they recorded folktale collector and performer Richard Chase doing three old-time dance tunes on the harmonica. In nearby Banner Elk, Mrs. Edd Presnell played three old-time tunes on her Appalachian dulcimer — an instrument then rarely heard on recordings that Clayton had studied and used in his performances. 

The trio also visited Hobart Smith in his Saltville, Virginia, home, seventy miles north of Beech Mountain, recording four fiddle tunes and one banjo piece. 

Their travel also took them to Blowing Rock, about a 25 mile drive from Beech Mountain, where they stopped in at the Moses H. Cone Mansion (also known as Flat Top Manor) a popular regional park on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Etta Baker, her father Boone Reid, and other family members were vacationing in the area, visiting the mansion. Reid, a musician himself, noticed Clayton was toting a guitar. He told Clayton of Baker’s musical talent and asked him to listen to Etta play her signature, “One Dime Blues.” According to Baker, “Paul was amazed. He got directions to our home and he was over the next day with his tape-recorder along with Liam Clancy and Diane Hamilton.”

They recorded five pieces. “Later,” says Clayton, “We met more of… a very talented family living in Morganton or Gamewell,” and they recorded two banjo pieces each by Boone Reid, then 79 years old, and Etta’s brother-in-law, her sister Cora Phillips’ husband Lacey. 

Clayton’s notes indicate that they recorded “considerable instrumental material,” from which they chose “typical and best-performed” examples. This considerable material subsequently disappeared, leaving us today with only the album’s 20 tracks. 

These include many familiar pieces from the local old-time repertoire. By following Harry Smith’s precedent in not identifying the color of performers’ skin, Clayton made the point that these musical traditions were regional, not racial. Perhaps since dulcimer player Mrs. Presnell’s first name was not given, all of the musicians were identified on the album notes as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” This lent an air of respect to the names of people often described elsewhere as “informants.” 

Because of her fine guitar playing Mrs. Etta Baker was, for us, the most memorable performer on the album. A word of explanation — Mr. Hobart Smith was a fine fiddler, but in 1956 the fiddle hadn’t caught on in the folk revival. That wouldn’t start to happen until a few years later when the New Lost City Ramblers appeared.

With the exception of Smith, who led a string band for a while, the folks on this album made music as part of their social life, playing for their own enjoyment and that of family and friends. Sometimes they provided music for dancing — square dancing, and solo step dancing.

Here’s a good example of ragtime guitar used for solo step dancing: Earl Scruggs playing “Georgia Buck” live in 1961. 

Another version was released in 1964 on the The Fabulous Sound of Flatt & Scruggs (Col CL 2255/CS 9055). The album notes say: “Georgia Buck, played by Scruggs on the guitar, represents the rhythmic beat of the old-time buck dancers.” 

According to NCPedia, “buck dancing is a folk dance that originated among African Americans during the era of slavery. It was largely associated with the North Carolina Piedmont and, later, with the blues. The original buck dance, or ‘buck and wing,’ referred to a specific step performed by solo dancers, usually men; today the term encompasses a broad variety of improvisational dance steps.” 

The Traditional Tune Archive describes “Georgia Buck” as “a black Southern banjo song,” so it’s interesting that Earl played it on the guitar in a style resembling that of Baker, Smith, Riddle and Carter. Where did he learn it that way? We don’t know, but Lester makes a point of describing his music as “hot” during the video and other musicians can be heard saying the same thing off-camera, seemingly endorsing the idea that this is good ragtime.

There are many stories of young white southern musicians learning from older black musicians in their hometown. One example: In 1972-73, Kenny Baker, then playing fiddle with Bill Monroe, did two albums with Buck Graves of guitar fingerpicking he’d learned from his brother, who’d taken lessons from “Earnest Johnson, a blind, black guitarist who sold peanuts in Jenkins, Kentucky during the thirties.” Rebel reissued them in 1989 as The Puritan Sessions (CD 1108).

Listening to Etta Baker on Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians was as close to taking lessons in that style of guitar as most of us undergrad folkies got. After the release of the album, she was not heard again on records for many years. Like Libba Cotten, Baker was a working woman with little time for making music. By the time she retired in 1973 from the Skyland Textile mill in Morganton, North Carolina, she’d endured family tragedies — the deaths of her husband and a son. After retirement she began accepting requests to perform and her music career developed. More about that next time…

Neil V. Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo of Neil V. Rosenberg: Terri Thomson Rosenberg

MIXTAPE: Ocie Elliott’s Favourite Folk Through the Ages

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Folk music, especially acoustic ballad folk, country folk, and early blues, has always held a special place in my heart and soul. From a young age, my dad would pull out his acoustic guitar when we’d go camping and around the campfire he would sing the family a folk song or two, mostly acoustic versions of Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans” and “Sink the Bismarck.” The sound of the acoustic guitar and voice and their telling of a tale touched something deep inside me and my love for folk music was begun. Here are some of my (and our) favourite songs in this genre through the ages. — Jon Middleton, Ocie Elliott

The Carter Family – “Chewing Gum”

While not necessarily my favourite song by the Carter Family, there is something unique and uplifting about this one. I’ve always thought that Kurt Cobain would have loved it.

Lead Belly – “The Grey Goose”

Lead Belly is definitely one of the best ever, such an incredible songwriter. To me his power lies in the uniqueness of his sound; no one wrote songs like him either. The first time I heard this it filled me with so much joy: I could hear it being performed with a big group of people all singing the “lord, lord, lord” part. I’ve also always imagined Toots and the Maytals covering this song.

Blind Willie Johnson – “Trouble Will Soon Be Over”

My favourite blues artist of all time, Blind Willie Johnson’s voice and slide-guitar playing are otherworldly. This tune has such a beautiful melody and feel, it also displays the softer side of his voice and the female accompaniment adds a lovely depth to it all.

Mississippi John Hurt – “Spike Driver Blues”

The first time I heard his 1928 recordings my mind was blown. He has had the biggest influence on my fingerpicking without a doubt. The melody he picks in this song is just so beautifully circular, bouncy and perfect.

Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley – “Old Ruben”

I love the recordings these two did together — there is something very vibrant, authentic and alive in them. I think this song is my favourite of all of them, although “The Coo-Coo Bird” is a close second.

Johnny Cash – “Dark as a Dungeon” (Live at Folsom State Prison)

This whole album is amazing, but this song has always stood out, partly because it sounds like something to be sung around a campfire, but also because his voice is so rich and deep — it’s the perfect voice for this song.

Bob Dylan – “I Threw it All Away”

It’s impossible to pick a favourite from someone who has written more classics than most songwriter’s output in total. But I choose this one because oddly enough, this album (Nashville Skyline) was what led me into Dylan’s universe (I purchased it because it had Johnny Cash singing with Dylan on one song). Needless to say, I fell in deep.

John Prine – “Mexican Home”

We cover a number of John Prine’s songs, including “In Spite of Ourselves” and “Long Monday,” but one of our favourites that we don’t cover is “Mexican Home.” Both recorded versions are great in their own way, but the studio version feels truer to the content.

Guy Clark – “Anyhow, I Love You”

One of our favourite duets. A friend of ours showed us this song a few years back and we immediately started to learn it and sing it. It’s a very special and unique tune, especially in the lyrical phrasing.

The Country Gentlemen – “Fox on the Run” (Live)

I love that this was first recorded as a rock ‘n’ roll song by Manfred Mann. The Country Gentlemen’s version and harmonies literally sound like the lyrics, especially the line: “Her hair shone like gold in the hot morning sun.”

Loudon Wainwright III – “The Swimming Song”

We were also introduced to this by a friend and ever since then we’ve been in love with it. It’s uplifting, but also has this tinge of melancholy to it.

Mason Jennings – “Crown”

A favourite songwriter of ours, I’ve been in love with his music ever since I bought one of his albums on a whim in L.A. and drove with it the whole way back up the coast to San Francisco. Once there, I immediately pulled into Amoeba Records and purchased another.

Gillian Welch – “Winter’s Come and Gone”

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are one of our biggest influences as a group. When Sierra and I first met, our first connection was made over a mutual love for Gillian Welch, and the first song we ever played together was “Look at Miss Ohio.” Something about this song though, the whole album really.

Gregory Alan Isakov – “Amsterdam”

This song has a rich, wonderful vibe to it — the recording quality, the playing, the mixing and of course, the tune itself. It feels like a warm blanket on a rainy day.

Photo credit: Dustin Rabin

Billy Strings Brings Nine Shows from Five Nashville Venues to Your Screen

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It’s rare for Billy Strings to play a show in Nashville. This month, he’s doing nine of them.

The reigning IBMA Guitar Player of the Year will be hopping from venue to venue as part of a livestream series that serves as a fundraiser for important organizations, as well as a reunion with his band. He’ll launch the series at Nashville’s newest venue, Brooklyn Bowl, for a pair of shows on July 16 and 17. The run concludes on July 26 at 3rd & Lindsley. (Get the details.)

“Those are my boys and I’m just lucky to play with them,” he says of mandolinist Jarrod Walker, banjo player Billy Failing, and bassist Royal Masat. “I haven’t been able to hang with them a bunch. We went from being around each other 24/7, for months and months and months on end, to never seeing each other, period. So I’m just excited to get back together with my band, and not only play music, but just to be with them, and hang out, and make jokes. I just love those guys, you know?”

With time off the road, Billy Strings says he’s been redirecting his attention to his other hobbies, including fishing and hot rods. Looking ahead, he’ll also compete for IBMA’s 2020 Entertainer of the Year – his first time nominated in that category. (He’s also the reigning champ in the New Artist category, as well as Guitar Player of the Year.) In between visits to the lake and the garage, he called in to BGS.

BGS: Do you think you’ll approach each of these nine shows differently?

Billy Strings: Yeah, we usually try to do that anyway with the set lists. Each show has its own set list and its own vibe. It depends on where we are and where we’re playing. When I write the set list, a lot of times I take into consideration geographic locations or famous people that may have lived around there. Anything like that I can throw into the set to make it relevant. So, yeah, for each show, we’re going to approach them just like we would in that way.

Also, we might cater to the specific venues. We’re playing the Station Inn and that’s a classic bluegrass place, so we might play a bunch of bluegrass that night. We’re playing Exit/In and City Winery and those are different vibes. City Winery can be our real classy, Frank Sinatra show, and at Exit/In we can get really psychedelic and rock out.

You’ll have an international audience tuning into these shows, so this is a chance for people who have never been to Nashville to see what it’s like. For those who may not understand the diversity of the music community here, how would you describe it to them?

It’s a big melting pot. Like you said, it’s very diverse. And there’s a lot of younger musicians that are on fire! Marcus King and Molly Tuttle and Sierra Hull… just so many people that are killing it. They all live around there. It’s a really great place to be as a musician. There are always people to make music with, and to pick with, and write music with. We’ll see if we can get a couple of guests to come down. Yeah, Nashville’s just crazy, man. You walk into the grocery store and you run into your favorite musician.

There’s money being raised through these concerts, and one of the beneficiaries is Backline, which supports mental health in the music industry. What is it about Backline that made you want to include them?

I, myself, personally have struggled with anxiety and panic attacks on tour, on the bus, on stage, and there’s a lot of people in the industry that suffer with the same shit. A lot of people may not speak out about it, or try to hide it, or don’t know who to look to for help. We just lost Jeff Austin and we just lost Neal Casal. There are a couple of other folks that are good friends of mine, that are traveling musicians that have been working so hard, and I think that has a huge deal to do with anxiety and depression.

I mean, when you’re in the limelight and you’re on stage and everybody wants to take your picture all the time, a lot of times it almost can be lonely. You never get any alone time and it can get weird. I know Jeff probably struggled with that. He told me about how he struggled being in the limelight and everybody critiquing his every move and everything he does is under scrutiny. That’s not a good place to be. …

The music industry can be really tough, believe it or not, for people who are on the stage and for people who are in the crews. There are plenty of organizations that help with that, whether it’s getting musicians health insurance or dental work or finding somebody a therapist. Backline is a huge, generalized hub where you can research and find all those different organizations and read about what is the right direction for you. You can even get with somebody on Backline and they’ll help you figure it out.

You also have the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as beneficiaries of this event. Why was it important for you to include them?

Well, because there’s a huge movement happening right now that I think is very important. Black people have been treated like shit, a lot, for a long time. And I just want to be on the side of history that is not an asshole. I got a lot of Black friends and my niece is Black. I’ve got family and friends and people that I love — and it shouldn’t even matter. …There’s a lot of miscommunication, a lot of divide, a lot of crazy shit going on in the country right now. I’m just all for love, man. I’m all for equality, I’m all for peace, so I wanted to donate a portion of the proceeds from these events to those organizations, just to help out.

Who are some Black musicians that influenced you?

Jimi Hendrix, definitely. Right off the bat. That’s the first guy I think of. He was amazing. Mississippi John Hurt, you know, he was a huge influence on Merle and Doc Watson. That’s who I grew up listening to, and I heard all that Mississippi John Hurt flavor in Merle Watson’s playing. That comes from the blues, the Delta blues. It goes on to Muddy Waters, B.B. King, all those cats. James Brown, come on!

I mean, without Black music, would there even be rock ‘n’ roll? I don’t even know if there would be bluegrass! Bill Monroe learned the blues from Arnold Schultz, a Black man who got him his first job. If you think about “bluegrass” – the word “blue” is in there from the blues. It’s got blues notes in it. A lot of bluegrass is just fast blues. And that’s Black music. Arnold Schultz taught Bill Monroe about that, and then he incorporated it into his music. All the music that we’re all inspired by has roots in Black music.

You mentioned Doc Watson, and of course he was loved by the folk community and the bluegrass community. Did folk music influence you, coming up?

Yeah, I think there was a point where I really got turned onto Bob Dylan and his lyrics. A lot of the old songs that I grew up playing is considered folk music. The Carter Family stuff and a lot of the Doc Watson stuff. …My friend Benji’s family used to have these gatherings, like family reunions, where they would all play bingo. I went to one of those and won a bingo, so I got to go up to the table and pick a prize. And I picked Blonde on Blonde. …I started really getting into those lyrics and all of those words.

That’s where I started realizing, OK, I like Doc Watson a bunch because he’s such a beautiful guitar player and singer, among many other reasons. Bob Dylan does what Doc Watson does on his guitar with his words. … And then I got into John Hartford really heavy, and if you listen to John Hartford’s early music, man, it is some of the most lyrically proficient stuff you’re ever going to hear! It’s amazing! There’s that old saying, “Three chords and the truth.” I really think there’s something to that. A lot of those old folk songs are so simple, but what they’re saying is so real that it cuts you.

Photo credit: Jesse Faatz

June Carter Cash Connects the Classic Eras of Country Music

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You can’t tell the story of country music without June Carter Cash.

Her mother, Maybelle Carter, helped usher in the era of commercial country music through the 1927 Bristol Sessions as a member of The Carter Family. When that group disbanded, Maybelle eventually gathered her three daughters – June, Anita, and Helen – and started performing radio shows, with June playing autoharp and cracking jokes. (They even had Chet Atkins in their band.)

In time June teamed up with comedians Homer & Jethro for a corny duet of “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” which charted for one week in 1949, and by 1950, the Carter Sisters debuted at the Opry just a month before June’s 21st birthday. The ensemble opened shows for Elvis Presley in 1956 and 1957. June also stepped out as a duet partner with her first husband, Carl Smith, on the eye-rolling (but quite hilarious) “Love Oh Crazy Love,” from 1954.

If your entry point to country music is the 1960s, June Carter is all over it. Still married to Smith, she shared the stage with Johnny Cash for the first time in 1961 as part of his touring package. Two years later Cash scored a major hit with “Ring of Fire,” which Carter co-wrote after seeing the phrase “love’s burning ring of fire” underlined in a book of Elizabethan poetry owned by her uncle, the Carter Family’s A.P. Carter.

By 1967, she and Cash landed a major hit (and soon their first Grammy) with “Jackson,” then got hitched in 1968. It’s important to remember June’s role on Cash’s landmark 1968 album, At Folsom Prison, performing a lively rendition of “Jackson” that got the captive audience hollering. They encored the performance for Cash’s 1969 album, At San Quentin.

June Carter Cash did pretty well for herself in the next decade, too, having her own 1971 country hit with a song she wrote, “A Good Man.” Johnny Cash produced her sole album of that era, 1975’s Appalachian Pride, even as they dug periodically into the folk canon for duet recordings and she won her second Grammy for the Cash/Carter duet, “If I Had a Hammer.”

She appeared regularly on the groundbreaking series The Johnny Cash Show, sang on Cash’s records, and almost always toured with him. Considered more of a comedian than a vocalist, June nonetheless charmed audiences around the world. In the rarely-seen 1979 performance of “Rabbit in the Log” below, she steals the spotlight with a banjo on her knee, cracking jokes and sharing her talent with a Century 21 real estate convention in Las Vegas.

Even listeners who came into country music in the ‘80s and ‘90s can find a tie to June. She harmonizes with her sisters, as well as Johnny Cash, on “Life’s Railway to Heaven” on Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s seminal 1989 album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Volume Two. Around this same time Carlene Carter, her daughter with Smith, emerged as a force in country and rock, and later paid homage to Mother Maybelle as well as June’s stepdaughter, Rosie Nix (from June’s second marriage), on the sweet song, “Me and the Wildwood Rose.” Carlene also wrote one of that era’s most enduring compositions, “Easy From Now On,” and charted multiple singles like “I Fell in Love” and “Every Little Thing.”

Meanwhile, Rosanne Cash (June’s stepdaughter) placed 11 No. 1 singles on the country chart, including the modern classic, “Seven Year Ache,” and she’s now a cornerstone of the Americana community. John Carter Cash, the only child born to Johnny and June, continues to carry on the brilliant legacy of his parents, through books, museum presentations, and reissues. He also produced Loretta Lynn’s past three albums at the Cash Cabin recording studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Johnny Cash, incidentally, was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1977 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980. A.P. Carter joined the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, “Ring of Fire” co-writer Merle Kilgore followed in 1998, and Rosanne Cash entered in 2015. However, June Carter Cash is not yet a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame or the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame — omissions that deserve reconsideration. A spiritual and religious woman, she shared the stories of her life in two memoirs: 1979’s Among My Klediments and 1987’s From the Heart.

Always a natural on stage, June actually trained at the Actors Studio in New York City after being spotted by Elia Kazan at the Grand Ole Opry in 1955. In the late ‘90s, she drew upon those thespian skills with roles on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and the acclaimed film The Apostle. Not to be overlooked is her heartbreaking role in Johnny Cash’s 2002 video, “Hurt,” where the viewers sees the devastation of an American music legend through her shocked and tearful eyes.

Carter remained a legendary presence in the final years of her life — and beyond. Her 1999 collection, Press On, won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album, while the Carter Family classic “Keep on the Sunny Side” resurfaced in a major way due to its inclusion on the O Brother, Where Are Thou? soundtrack in 2000, as sung by The Whites.

Following June’s death in 2003, she was awarded two more Grammys – one for her own performance of “Keep on the Sunny Side,” and the other for the folk album, Wildwood Flower. Nashville native Reese Witherspoon collected an Oscar for portraying her in the 2005 film, Walk the Line. A two-disc compilation released that same year surveyed her remarkable career. She is buried next to Johnny Cash in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Photo credit: Don Hunstein, Sony Music Archives

Junior Sisk Hitches His Wagon to the Stars of Traditional Bluegrass

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Junior Sisk is on a mission. Although he’s been a fan of traditional bluegrass since childhood, he’s now fully focused on keeping that history alive. That passion for tradition is evident in Load the Wagon, the award-winning vocalist’s first release since disbanding Ramblers Choice.

“The Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Jim & Jesse, and all of them had big hits, but they also had hidden treasures on all those LPs. A lot of them that were never played and they’re not a jam tune. That’s what I’m looking for,” Sisk says. “It’s going to be like new tunes to a lot of folks. That’s what I’m after – to still pay tribute to the founding fathers of traditional bluegrass music, but in the Junior Sisk style.”

The Virginia musician’s recovery mission has unearthed a number of gems on Load the Wagon, like Flatt & Scruggs’ little-known “Lonesome and Blue” and the heartfelt “Lover’s Farewell,” a Carter Family gem suggested by his new bandmates Heather Berry-Mabe (guitar, vocals) and Tony Mabe (banjo, guitar, vocals). Jonathan Dillon (his mandolin player from Ramblers Choice), Gary Creed (bass, vocals), and Douglas Bartlett (fiddle, vocals) round out the lineup.

Sisk also re-cut the song that remains his most requested number, “He Died a Rounder at 21,” from his time with Wyatt Rice & Santa Cruz in the mid-‘90s. Leading up to a show at Station Inn, he invited BGS on the bus for a chat.

BGS: The first song on this album, “Get in Line, Buddy,” will be a familiar tune for fans of the Country Gentlemen. What made you want to record it here?

Sisk: Me and Bill Yates got to be good friends there for a long time right toward the end, and every time we’d play together at a festival, I’d always get together with him and ask him to do “Living on the Hallelujah Side” that he’d done with the Country Gentlemen, and this one right here — “Get in Line, Buddy.” Those are a couple that he sang solo on. It was just great, great singing.

It’s like what I’m trying to do right now. I’m in line with Flatt & Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, and all that. I’m way down the line, but I’m in line anyway. And it still rings true today when you come to Nashville. When you walk the streets, you see them on the streets. You see them in all the clubs and everything. Everyone’s standing in line. I feel like I’m still standing in line for traditional bluegrass music.

With “Get in Line, Buddy” and “Best Female Actress,” there’s a sad story there, but you find a way to put humor into those songs. It’s not an easy thing to pull off. How do you approach that?

Well, when I go into the studio and start to record, I’ve always done a lot of tongue-in-cheek songs. I’m noted for that, but I sing with a lot of emotion. I sing with a lot of feelings. That’s why a lot of times I’ll lose my voice, to tell you the truth, because I’m singing so hard and with as much feeling as I can.

I love to look out in the crowd and see them either crying, if I’m singing a pitiful song, and if I’m singing a tongue-in-cheek song, I like to see them laugh and carry on. It just makes for a good show, I think. And Charlie Moore has been one of my favorites. He’s one of the most underrated bluegrass artists ever. He’s a great singer.

You also have some songs on here, like “Just Load the Wagon,” which are plain-and-simple funny. I’m curious, where did you get your sense of humor? Was there someone in your family where you picked that up?

Yeah, my dad. He’s a songwriter. He’s probably got a thousand songs at the house for me to choose from. But every song he writes, at the top of the page he writes the date he wrote it, and he writes, “Sing in the key of D and sing like Carter Stanley.” [Laughs] I said, “Dad, you can’t sing ‘em all like Carter Stanley and they can’t all be in D!” But if he had his druthers, that’s what it would be. That’s pretty much me, too. I was raised, born and bred, on the Stanley Brothers’ music.

This one here, I thought the folks would really enjoy, and now that I’ve gotten rid of the Rambler’s Choice name and went to the Junior Sisk Band, I’m trying to pay tribute to traditional bluegrass music, so we brought back the old-style banjo, the mountain-style banjo-playing with the clawhammer on this one. And it’s turning out to be one of my favorite tunes that we’re playing now. It’s a lot of fun and the crowd can react to it. It’s a toe-tapping tune.

You mentioned that the Ramblers Choice name is gone. Why was that an important move for you to shift to Junior Sisk Band?

Well, Jason Davis, Kameron Keller, and a couple of guys left. My dad always says when wintertime comes around and things start getting slow, somebody blows a whistle and everybody switches. It’s pretty much like that. If you don’t have any work, I’m going where the work is. But I was actually straying away from my heart – I was straying away from traditional bluegrass music a little bit. I just did not want to do that. I finally came to the conclusion that what I’m going to do until the end of my career is pay tribute to traditional bluegrass music, and try to keep it alive as long as I can. That’s what we’re trying to do today, is keep it straight-ahead bluegrass, right in the middle of the road, and turn the younger fans onto traditional bluegrass music.

Why is it important for you to carry that torch for traditional bluegrass?

I’m just tickled to death to see the young’uns out here today that come to our shows, or to see them out jamming at festivals and playing the old-style music. You don’t see that a lot anymore. It seems that the younger generations is trying to play every note they know. …When I hear somebody with real emotion, and real feeling, who’s a traditional young’un coming up, I love it. Because we’ve lost so many — Ralph Stanley, James King, and a lot of traditional artists here lately. I think I’m a torch holder and that’s what I hope to be until the end of my career. As long as I’m able to breathe and sing, I’m going to keep their music alive.

It hurt to lose James King, didn’t it?

Oh, it was hard. I was there holding his hand on the day he died, in the hospital. I was on one side and Dudley Connell was on the other. And we told him we would keep his music alive. I’m getting chills now, but it meant the world to me, just to be there. He was a torch holder as well.

You re-recorded “He Died a Rounder at 21” from your days with Wyatt Rice & Santa Cruz. What’s it like to sing about that guy now, 24 years later? Does it bring out a different emotion in the song for you?

It’s still the same. The story in that song is awesome. I’ve grown up with a lot of folks in the bluegrass industry and I’ve seen a lot of ‘em pass away from alcoholism and just the hard life, the bluegrass life. People around home say, “Wow, you’ve got it made. You go on stage and play 45 minutes…” They don’t know about the 15 hours you travel to get there. It’s a hard life. You don’t eat right. You don’t take care of yourself. And I can understand where this guy came from. He only lived 21 years – but 21 years was like a thousand years in his time. I understand that, and that’s why I put everything I got in that song. Because it rings true.

Was there a pivotal moment for you when you decided to go into bluegrass full-time?

In my early teens, I lived and breathed it. I sat at the end of the bed in my mom and dad’s room with an old LP player and played Dave Evans, Larry Sparks, the Stanley Brothers, just trying to learn everything George Shuffler ever did on guitar. I was in it hot and heavy, and eat up with it.

In the early ‘80s, I moved up around the DC area and that’s when the Johnson Mountain Boys came on the scene. I followed them everywhere they went. They brought me back to life, and still today if I get to feeling sad, or get down about the music, I can put a Johnson Mountain Boys DVD in, and it will bring me right back. There was so much excitement and energy, they just tore me all to pieces. That’s what it’s all about.

Photo credit: Susie Neel