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| Dig the confidence, Bristol. |
As part of my disjointed series on the history of American popular music, this post and the next two after it will make a quick introduction to country music and a few of the first major acts in the genre. What became popularized as “country music” existed long before it was recorded or played on the radio, of course, but it would also evolve due to its entry into the public sphere, not least by influences from other musical genres. But the two artists highlighted in this post - Uncle Dave Macon and the Carter Family, along with Jimmie Rodgers, who I profiled in an earlier post (whoops) - get you as close as you can get to what country music sounded like immediately before the first recordings. Which still leaves open the question: what is country music?
I didn't bite and claw for an answer, but I don't know that I could find better answers than the following (both from Wikipedia):
“…a genre of popular music that originated with blues, old-time music, and various types of American folk music.”
Its origins and influences fill in the picture a bit:
“Immigrants to the southern Appalachian Mountains, of the Southeastern United States, brought the folk music and instruments of Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean Basin along with them for nearly 300 years, which developed into Appalachian music.”
The “old-time music” and American folk music” tradition stands out a bit for me, in that country, as a genre, has long tended toward cultural conservatism. While other contemporary genres that became popular in the same period (e.g., jazz), or even before it (ragtime) embraced musical innovations like syncopation, a wider variety of instruments (e.g., brass and woodwinds), and more complex arrangements, country stuck with simpler, “folksy” musical structure, themes and sounds from popular 19th-century songwriters like Stephen Foster and traditional instruments like guitar, banjo, harmonica and fiddle. It never had any trouble borrowing from other genres - a tradition that runs from Western swing in the 1940s to country rap today - but country rarely drives musical innovation.
That’s my best stab at explaining the genre - and pardon any over-reach in the material on culture, not least because it's a little biased. I like and know about a couple “hipster-approved” country artists, but the cultural perceptions in the above touch on some of the reasons it’s never been a personal favorite. I'll get to histories of this post’s featured artists, but, first, some context for their stories.
Wikipedia divides the history of country music into six “generations" - the first in the 1920s, the second in the 1930s and 1940s, the third over the 1950s and 1960s, the fourth in the 1970s and 1980s, the fifth in the 1990s, and the sixth from 2000 to the present. All six artists I’m reviewing in this post come from the first and second generation - and both of today’s count as first generation. They were not the first country artists to record, an honor falls to Fiddlin’ John Carson and “Little Log Cabin in the Lane.” Another artist, Vernon Dalhart, recorded the country’s first hit when he put "Wreck of the Old 97” on one side of an old 78 rpm single, with “Lonesome Road Blues” on the other. The first recordings of country music happened the same way it did with other genres: a host of new recording companies - e.g., Okeh Records, Paramount Records, Columbia, the Victor Talking Machine Company, etc. - needed material, so they scouted for it. Other outlets offered pay-to-record arrangements that, as I understand it, look pretty close to what you saw in the Coen Brothers’ O, Brother, Where Art Thou?
Unlike the other genres, country music has a founding event: the Bristol Sessions. Those came about as one part of a broader 1927 expedition across the American Southeast, one arranged by the Victor Talking Machine Company and with a man named Ralph Peer running the show. Victor wasn’t looking exclusively for country music - they recorded blues, ragtime, gospel, ballads, etc. - but, the fact that two of country’s biggest early acts showed up at those sessions that made Bristol, Tennessee “the birthplace of country music.” Those artists were the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. The other original stars of country was not there. He didn't need to be. So I’ll start with him.
Uncle Dave Macon, The Grandfather of Country
At least that’s what music historian Charles Wolfe called him. Here’s a more personal recollection:
“Bandmate Kirk McGee later described Macon's personality as a never-ending performance— ‘All day long, from morning till midnight, it was a show.’ While playing, Macon would often kick and stomp, and shout sporadically, taxing the skills of WSM's early volume-control engineers.”
David Harrison Macon, later Uncle Dave Macon, aka the Dixie Dewdrop, did perform all his life, but his professional performing career didn’t start until he was 50 years old. He fell in love with music at an early age and picked up everything he could from the artists and vaudeville performers who stayed at The Old Broadway Hotel during their stops in Nashville, Tennessee. His short time in Nashville came to an abrupt, horrific end when his father was killed in “a street scuffle” with a federal revenue agent in 1886. When his mother moved the family back to the country - a town called Readyville, Tennessee, where they took over a stagecoach inn - the 16-year-old Dave Macon gave up whatever dreams he had of becoming a musician. He never gave up performing, though, and even set up a make-shift stage from which he’d entertain guests at his mother’s inn.
That continued when he opened a freight-line of his own between Murfreesboro and Woodbury, Tennessee around the time he turned 30 (this would be about 1900). He would play at stops along the line to entertain anyone who would watch. Twenty years would pass before anything unsettled Macon’s routine, but it came from an unexpected (yet expected) source when it did: circa 1920, most freight companies moved to switch to trucks, but Macon couldn’t abide the adjustment. He was mulling retirement when a chance meeting with a scout in a Nashville barbershop changed his life.
Among the 20 Things You (or I) Don’t Know about Uncle Dave Macon, as compiled by a site called Bluegrass Today, he’d performed on stage before the scout found him. His first performance took place in 1919, and in a town called Liberty, Tennessee. That was his first attempt to win a paying crowd and, according to Bluegrass Today, Macon bombed. For the record, Wikipedia calls a 1921 performance at a school in Morrison, Tennessee his first, but the Liberty story is better. Sources split again on how Macon fell in with the Loews Theater Company - the Country Music Hall of Fame’s history mentions the Nashville Barbershop, while Wikipedia talks about Marcus Loew himself seeing him perform at a Shriner’s gig in 1923 (and both could be true) - but his professional career started with regular shows in Birmingham, Alabama. Having a Loews theater as a platform opened up the entire Loews Theater circuit to Macon. Before long, he was touring, playing and recording mostly across the American Southeast, but he traveled as far north as Chicago and Boston. (For anyone trying to figure out how a man of 50 just drops everything to go a-touring, Macon lost his wife, Mary Matilda Richardson, in 1939 and he never remarried.)
Macon’s instrument was the banjo. While some have argued that he lacked the talent to play anything complicated, the Country Music Hall of Fame history noted 19 different picking styles in his recordings; moreover, Sam McGee, a guitarist and member of Macon’s traveling band, the Fruit Jar Drinkers (which they’d switch to the Dixie Sacred Singers when they recorded religious material), estimated that Uncle Dave knew over 400 songs by heart. All that aside, it was Macon’s talent as a performer that set him apart from his contemporaries. From the Country Music Hall of Fame:
“...a strong and clear singer, a skilled songwriter, an outrageous comedian, and a dedicated preserver of old songs and styles. Most of all, though, he was a master showman, bringing to the newly emerging country music field a professionalism and polish sorely needed to establish it as a viable commercial art form.”
He also earned his title as “the Grandfather of Country Music.” Bluegrass Today states that Macon had already recorded 115 songs before the Bristol Sessions. He played the Ryman Auditorium three weeks before it became the Grand Ole Opry. Macon would later perform with the Grand Ole Opry - he even appeared as himself in the 1940 film, Grand Ole Opry (where he played “Take me Back to My Carolina Home”) - but he never joined the WSM Barn Dance/Grand Ole Opry as a regular because he figured he made more money touring and recording. Macon did grace the Grand Ole Opry with his last performance on March 1, 1952 (age 82). It left him so exhausted that he had to be carried from the stage. He passed on March 22, 1952. Those that missed him would later establish the Uncle Dave Macon Days in Murfressboro on the second full weekend of every July, which features old-time clogging, buck-dance and old banjo competitions. Uncle Dave lives on…
Songs on the Sampler
I wouldn’t say every Uncle Dave Macon sounds the same, because they don’t, e.g., “Chewing Gum” and “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy” on a blues-leaning side versus, say, the fiddle-centric numbers (likely played by Fruit Jar Drinkers member, Sid Harkreader) “Soldier’s Joy” and “Sail Away Ladies.” Most of the other songs I added came in because the sources mentioned them. While none of these count as “my jam,” they do have a certain charm - some, like “Hill Billie Blues” have a touch of humor in them. You can hear Macon’s banjo work on “When the Train Comes Along,” “Cumberland Mountain Deer Race,” and “Bully of the Town.” You hear some banter on that one, as well as “Mountain Dew,” which gives a little insight to the traditions if you listen close enough. I rounded out the “Uncle Dave” section with “Arkansas Traveler” because that’s a oldie for the 1920s, and that's even if (fair warning) you will hear and/or see the “n”-word if you go poking around Uncle Dave's catalog.
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The Carter Family, the First Family of Country
“They wander in. He's dressed in overalls and the women are country women from way back there. They looked like hillbillies. But as soon as I heard Sara's voice, that was it. I knew it was going to be wonderful.”
- Ralph Peer to Lillian Borgeson, 1959
The only member originally named Carter was Alvin Pleasant Delaney Carter, who went by A. P. Carter. He married Sara Elizabeth Dougherty in 1915 - the Country Music Hall of Fame history of the Carters says he first saw sitting under a tree playing “Engine 143” on an autoharp - and they later added Sara’s sister-in-law, Maybelle Carter (born Maybelle Addington) to complete the trio. All three grew up in southwestern Virginia and all three learned music through the gospels and a tradition called shape note singing. Politeness aside, Peer wasn’t far off in calling them “hillbillies.” They might have chased fame in their own way, but they never got used to it:
“Time and again they kept returning to their beloved Clinch Valley, disgusted or puzzled by the show business world.”
A. P. grew up with music in the household, his father a “respected” banjo player (by whom is not clear) and his mother a fan of old folk ballads. Maybelle stared playing guitar from an early age (12), a fairly rare instrument in southwestern Virginia at that time, but she proved to be a natural, all the way up to developing her own technique for playing rhythm and lead guitar solo, later called “the Carter Scratch”:
“Maybelle came up with her own style of picking the melody on the bass strings while the fingers kept rhythm by down-stroking the higher ones—the ‘thumb brush’ technique.”
Because he’d communicated with them prior to the recording, Peer had some sense of what to expect before he met the Carters and, by 1927, he likely understood an audience existed for country music. The Carters recorded four songs during that first session - “Wandering Boy” and “Poor Orphan Child” - which became their first 78 rpm single on its release in November 1927. They followed that just over a year later with “The Storms Are on the Ocean” b/w “Single Girl, Married Girl,” which, as Wikipedia notes, “became very popular.” Another significant detail:
“The band received $50 for each song recorded, plus a half-cent royalty on every copy sold of each song for which they had registered a copyright.”
Sara and Maybelle did most of the singing, while A. P., though he dropped in here and there, realized that he made money on every song he copyrighted before anyone else did. As such, his main job became finding and claiming as many popular, uncopyrighted country, folk and gospel songs as he could. He took trips to do this, even enlisted others - e.g., a black female guitarist from Kingsport, Tennessee named Lesley “Esley” Riddle - to join him as he collected songs. He used them as a foundation for arrangements of songs for the Carter Family to perform and composed a few of his own; before too long, they’d built quite a repertoire.
When record sales collapsed during the Great Depression, the Carter Family did what a lot of other artists did: switched to radio. They landed their first regular radio show, a twice-daily affair they broadcast from a town called Villa Acuna just across the border from Del Rio, Texas on a channel called XERA. That show ran from 1938-42 and, when they recorded live shows, both A. P. and Sara’s kids (Janette and Joe) and Maybelle’s kids (Anita, June, and Helen) played with them. Their personal lives fell apart along the way - Sara divorced A. P., then married a cousin of his by the name of Coy Bayes, and moved to California. They continued by keeping the relationships professional and landed one more radio show, this one in Charlotte, North Carolina, before disbanding as a regular act in 1944.
All three continued to perform and record after the split (makes you wonder about that breakup), only separately and/or with their kids; Mabyelle and her daughters became The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle, while A. P., Sara, and her kids recorded as the A. P. Carter Family. The Maybelle branch got pretty tight with the Grand Ole Opry during the 1950s and, after some business-related dancing around bringing in Chet Atkins on the electric, they became regulars. A. P. passed in 1960, but the two sisters lived to the late 1970s; they even did a reunion tour during the folk explosion of the 1960s. Several of their children continued in music and, through June Carter, became entwined with Johnny Cash. Maybelle’s daughters reunited as late as 1987 for an episode of Austin City Limits (I think this is a snippet), where they played a show with Johnny Cash. Helluva a legacy. And I haven’t even mentioned most of their famous songs yet.
Songs on the Sampler
I found The Carters’ material easier to listen to and, for lack of a better word, a little more modern. It not doubt helps that some count as country standards - e.g., “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” and “Keep on the Sunny Side” (the name of a 1985 documentary on the Carters). I also found “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” and “Wabash Cannonball” pretty easy on the ears. The songs from the first recording sessions also landed on the sampler and I rounded it out with a couple of their twangier numbers, “Worried Man Blues” and “Wildflower Flower,” which tells a sweet and sad little story.
And that’s it for this chapter. Till the next one.
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