JAM(min’) in Appalachia: Western Swing and Hot String Band Music
This April we are celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month in the W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection. Although Jazz is a genre not often associated with Appalachia, the region has hosted and birthed many contributors to this musical art form. This week’s blog post focuses on the fusion of traditional music and Jazz within the region in the early 20th Century as well as regional performers influential in the development and proliferation of Western Swing.
In the years following the First World War, the predominantly rural culture of America began to undergo rapid social and cultural changes brought by new technologies and a nationwide move towards urbanization. The people in the mountains and valleys of Appalachia experienced these changes alongside the rest of the nation, balancing traditions with innovations in their farming practices, foodways, and lifestyles. Towns centered on industries such as coal and textiles exposed mountaineers to new forms of music and popular culture which were rapidly embraced and made part of the soundscape of mountain music. String bands such as Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, a group formed by a partnership between Poole, a banjoist and textile worker from the Carolina Piedmont, and West Virginia fiddler and coal miner Posey Rorer, merged traditional sounds with pop flavors. Built around musicians moving between industries and mill towns centered in and around the Appalachian region, Poole and the Rambler’s polished sound incorporated smoother fiddle and banjo styles as well as the syncopated elements of ragtime. The group was also influenced by the classical music taught in mill towns and recordings of popular entertainers including Fred Van Eps. Poole’s son, James Clay Poole, later Jazzed-up the sound of his father’s music in the 1930s, first recording under the name “Charlie Poole Jr. and the North Carolina Ramblers” until finally settling on the moniker “The Swing Billies.”
Simultaneous to Poole’s mixing of pop and string band sounds, West Virginia opera houses were hosting the violin talents of Joseph Szigeti and Fritz Kreisler. When Szigeti performed in Charleston in the mid-1920s, noted Kanawha Valley fiddler Clark Kessinger was in attendance and managed to get backstage to both play for Szigeti and study the violinist’s playing style up close. Kessinger, a fiddling connoisseur of violin virtuosity, mixed the vibrato and other techniques of his classical heroes into his performances of old time breakdowns and waltzes. “I caught the touch they had…Some of their kind of bowing,” Kessinger later recalled, “I could kind of add it in with the hillbilly. Made it a lot better.” Recordings featuring Kessinger’s fiddling, made from the mid-1920s into the early years of the Depression, circulated widely from Canada to Texas. Lone Star State fiddlers Bartow Riley and Benny Thomason both cited Kessinger’s playing as an influence. The acknowledgements of these two Texas fiddlers, along with Kessinger’s early use of “smooth bowing” later employed by Bob Wills, lead bluegrass researcher Larry E. Sturgill to dub Kessinger, “The Father of Texas Swing,” a title that this writer is sure more than a few Texans will take issue with…
Contemporary to Kessinger’s “smooth bowing” were two Jazz aficionado fiddlers from the mountains of north Georgia, Lowe Stokes and Clayton McMichen. Although mostly remembered for their recordings with the popular 1920s hillbilly band, the Skillet Lickers, both Stokes and McMichen were mountaineers with an ear for urban Jazz sounds. These fiddlers made early attempts to create a new genre out of the music then marketed as “hillbilly,” pushing string band sounds towards the Jazz rhythms of New Orleans and the pop music they had both encountered around Atlanta. Between 1928 and 1930, Lowe Stokes and his North Georgians produced recordings of what could be termed “hot string band music” including such titles as “Take Me to the Land of Jazz” and “Wave That Frame.” Shortly after these recordings, Stokes lost his hand in an incident alternatively described as an attack by a lover’s jealous husband or a shootout with a bootlegger. As evidenced by the memories of fellow Skillet Licker, Bert Layne, Stokes seemed fairly unperturbed by the amputation and continued to fiddle well into his later years.
Down in the country where they use the plow and hoe,
They used to have the dancin’ calls, your hex, your calico,
But now they do the ‘Charleston’ and chew the sugar cane,
They don’t ‘Shake the Calico’ they ‘Wave that Frame.’
-Lowe Stokes and His North Georgians, “Wave That Frame,” October 27, 1928
Likewise, Clayton McMichen, with his ensembles McMichen’s Melody Men (which included Stokes in 1927) and the Georgia Wildcats (one incarnation of which included a young guitarist named Merle Travis), produced jazzy string band renditions of “House of David Blues” and “Yum Yum Blues.” McMichen’s fiddle can also be heard on the recordings of Country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers, whose sessions had previously featured Jazz legends Louis and Lil Hardin Armstrong. One of Rodgers’ hit songs,“Peach Pickin’ Time in Georgia,” was originally composed and performed by “Bob Nichols,” an alias used by McMichen to hide his more crooner-esque fare from his fans. Unfortunately for McMichen, time was not on the side of this new Georgia string band sound. The toppling record sales caused by the Depression — coupled with McMichen’s clout for being mainly an old time breakdown fiddler — largely kept audiences from indulging in his shift towards a more syncopated style of hillbilly music. Responding on radio to a listener’s letter asking why he only played “silly old tunes,” McMichen bitterly quipped, “I notice in my thirty-five years of show business that there’s 500 pairs of overalls sold to every one tuxedo suit. That’s why I stick to swamp opera.” Although McMichen took his sound to the radio in the 1940s, his countrified take on swing was largely eclipsed by westerners like Spade Cooley and Bob Wills who solidified the genre of Western Swing.
Although the Depression may have killed record sales and careers for many of those marketed as Hillbilly musicians, live programming on radio stations carried rural audiences through the 1930s. WSM’s Grand Ole Opry, megalithic in its 50,000 watt broadcast which covered nearly all of southern and central Appalachia, featured the bluesy singing of Elkmont, Alabama brother duet, Alton and Rabon Delmore. The duo also recorded with middle Tennessee fiddling kingpin, Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith, under the name of the Arthur Smith Trio. The trio’s recordings, including such numbers as “Chittlin’ Cookin’ Time in Cheatham County” and “Fiddler’s Blues,” were far from standard Opry string band material and more heavily geared towards crooning vocals and swing-laced fiddling. Smith’s jazzy and rag-tinged takes on Country material would trickle into the bowing and noting of a new generation of fiddlers who would become the early proponents of the modern genre of Bluegrass.
With the dance halls and radio programs of the southwest and west coast as an epicenter, the new craze of Western Swing flooded airwaves and streamed back through the American South and Midwest to the Appalachians in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Mountaineers became participants in this blend of traditional and modern music and dance styles. Honing his skills on local Tennessee stations such as Knoxville’s WNOX, steel guitarist Billy Bowman of Johnson City, went on to record with the “Father of Western Swing,” Bob Wills, in the 1950s. Yet, even before Bowman’s touch with Western Swing stardom, his fellow mountaineers were forming groups with their own takes on the “Cowboy-Meets-Jazz” sound. Groups such as the Hi Neighbor Boys from Anderson, South Carolina and Herald Goodman and His Tennessee Valley Boys (also featuring Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith) drew on talent from up and down the spine of the Appalachians. These string band musicians not only took musical cues from their western counterparts but also adopted their cowboy hats and matching suits. The widespread shift to western dress drew the ire of promoters of more traditional musical styles such as North Carolina’s Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who dissuaded performers at his Mountain Dance and Folk Festival from appearing before audiences in cowboy attire.
One hub of Appalachia’s Western Swing heyday was Roanoke, Virginia. The “Star City of the South” was a metropolitan center for the western half of Virginia and had swelled considerably in size since its 19th century roots as the railroad junction of Big Lick. With a population of nearly 70,000 by 1940, Roanoke was the seat of power for the Norfolk and Western Railway and had developed a number of industries which drew in laborers from the surrounding rural counties. In the early 1920s, a Roanoker named Frank E. Maddox, expanded on his hobby in the developing medium of radio to form the city’s first commercial station, WDBJ. Broadcasting from a shop on West Church Avenue, Maddox’s venture tapped regional string band traditions to provide its debut source of entertainment. In June 1924, fiddler (and future station manager) Raymond Jordan played tunes including “Turkey in the Straw” to test the the clarity of the station’s then feeble 20 watt broadcast. Throughout the 1930s, the station would host groups such as the N&W String Band, the Floyd County Ramblers, and Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers.
By the early 1940s, Western Swing seeped into Roanoke’s string band programming. Among those adopting elements of the sound were Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers. Hall, originally from Haywood County, North Carolina, sourced band members from across the Appalachian region, including a Jazz-influenced fiddler from Mineral Bluff, Georgia named Tommy Magness. The Entertainers shared the bill on WDBJ alongside other Roanoke-based, cowboy-styled groups including the Texas Troubadours, the Dixie Playboys, and Wanderers of the Wasteland. Roanoke’s Western Swing and string band scene featured a revolving cast of performers who often moved in and out of bands due to finding work with larger touring acts (most notably Tommy Magness who also worked with Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, and Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith), finding work in other industries, or being called into service during World War II. In 1947, Magness formed his own radio band, Tommy Magness and His Orange Blossom Boys, consisting of two former Blue Ridge Entertainers, Jay Hugh Hall and Saford Hall (no relation, though Jay Hugh was the brother of their former boss, Roy Hall), and steel guitarist Wayne Fleming. Magness’ performances and recordings with this group localized the sound of Western Swing into the landscape of the Blue Ridge. The Magness composition “Powhatan Arrow” paid tribute to speed of a popular Roanoke-based passenger train running through the Appalachians on a route from Cincinnati, Ohio to the coast at Norfolk, Virginia.
You’ve heard songs of different railroads — C & O and Santa Fe,
Songs about those fast streamliners that run both night and day,
Just think of the N & W and a train that really shines,
It’s the Powhatan Arrow on the N & W Line.
—Tommy Magness and His Orange Blossom Boys, “Powhatan Arrow,” circa 1947.
It would be a stretch to say that in listening to Magness’ performance on “Powhatan Arrow” one could hear the Appalachian-izing of Western Swing, however, the recording does form a sort of culmination of the Roanoke area’s brush with the genre. Magness’ shout out to the industrial prowess of the Star City remains one of the most lyrically regional examples of this form of countrified Jazz in Appalachia. At the time of the release of “Powhatan Arrow,” the success of a new string band sound driven by Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys laid the framework of a genre that would overtake the swing-tinged sounds of the late 30s and mid-40s. By the 1950s, Roanoke radio featured performers of what would eventually be known as Bluegrass music. One of the station’s premier bands, Reno and Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups (who met while backing Magness in a band called the “Tennessee Buddies”) took up where The Blue Ridge Entertainers left off, touting longtime sponsor Dr. Pepper as “the all weather drink” over the airwaves daily. Reno and Smiley made the transition from radio to regional television in the 1950s, performing on a show sponsored by the grocery chain Kroger on WDBJ’s new Channel 7. Losing its mountaineer converts to the increasingly popular sounds of Bluegrass, Honky Tonk, and Rockabilly, Western Swing faded into a relic of the 1940s radio era. Despite its wane in popularity in the Appalachians, the trappings of the genre — jazzy fiddling, steel guitars, matching suits, and cowboy hats — still make perennial appearances in the current incarnations of Bluegrass and Country music.
Notes:
There are more than a few names missing to the discerning eye in the above rough outline of Appalachia’s role in the development of “hot string bands” and Western Swing. Any additional names of performers/listening suggestions are appreciated and can be added to the story by in the comments section.
For those wanting to read more about Roanoke’s role as a music powerhouse in the 1930s and 40s, take a look at Ralph Berrier’s If Trouble Don’t Kill Me: A Family’s Story of Brotherhood, War, and Bluegrass. Berrier’s award-winning book chronicles the lives of his grandfather and grand uncle, Clayton and Saford Hall, twin brothers whose music was integral to the Roanoke radio scene before, during, and after World War II. For more listening on Roanoke radio and its performers, check out the holdings of the Blue Ridge Institute featured in the Digital Library of Appalachia. The history of WDBJ radio is outlined on this site hosted by its descendant, WFIR.
Sources consulted:
Kalra, Ajay. “Jazz” in The Encyclopedia of Appalachia. University of Tennessee Press, 2006.
Huber, Patrick. Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South. University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Jamison, Phil. Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance. University of Illinois Press, 2015.
Sturgill, Larry E. “West Virginia’s Clark Kessinger: The Father of Texas Swing.” Bluegrass Unlimited, August 1992.
Wolfe, Charles. The Devil’s Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling. Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt Press, 1997.
*All the sources listed above are available in the stacks of the W. L. Eury Appalachian collection. Searching for the names of the performers listed in this post (well, with the exception of Szigeti and Kreisler…) will also yield results among the Collection’s LP album and compact disc recordings.
