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    West Virginia's Traditional Country Music
    West Virginia's Traditional Country Music
    West Virginia's Traditional Country Music
    Ebook238 pages51 minutes

    West Virginia's Traditional Country Music

    By Ivan M. Tribe, Jacob L. Bapst and Buddy Griffin

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    West Virginia has been known for a century as a rich repository of traditional country music and musicians. Beginning in the mid-1920s, phonograph recordings and radios brought this music to a wider audience. With the passing of time and the influence of commercialization, this music developed into what became first known as "hillbilly" and then into the more refined "country" because of its long appeal to those of rural background. Although modernization has caused the traditional element to recede considerably, much still remains. Many folk still cling to the older sounds exemplified by the "raw" traditionalists and the neo-traditional bluegrass style that emerged in the 1940s. From the earliest recording artists, such as the Tweedy Brothers and David Miller, who was blind, to contemporary stars like Kathy Mattea and Brad Paisley, West Virginians and others have held their musicians in high esteem.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateMar 16, 2015
    ISBN9781439650400
    West Virginia's Traditional Country Music
    Author

    Ivan M. Tribe

    The Jamboree in Wheeling is the product of Ivan M. Tribe and Jacob L. Bapst, two retired academics from the University of Rio Grande & Rio Grande Community College who coauthored the prior Arcadia book West Virginia's Traditional Country Music (2015). The images come from photograph collections of Ivan Tribe, the Doc and Chickie Williams family, Terrence McGill, David Heath, Richard Weize/Bear Archives, John Morris, and others. Foreword writer Barbara "Peeper Williams" Smik is the oldest daughter of the legendary Doc and Chickie Williams.

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      Book preview

      West Virginia's Traditional Country Music - Ivan M. Tribe

      Relations.)

      INTRODUCTION

      What people call country music in 2014 simply did not exist a century ago. Before there were radios, phonographs, motion-picture theaters, and television, ordinary folk sang or played for their own amusement. Many of the songs and tunes they played were quite old. A few may have had old-world origins. Others had been professionally written for performers on the vaudeville or minstrel stage in Victorian times and published in sheet music, songbooks, or church hymnals that made their way into rural areas and continued to be sung after their appeal had faded in the cities. Fiddle tunes were common at country dances. Distinctly small-town and rural in character, West Virginia had only three cities with populations in excess of 20,000 in 1910 and added only two more by 1920. Nonetheless, a coal boom spurred growth in the southern counties, and industrial growth occurred in the northern towns.

      The entertainment world also witnessed changes in this era. In 1920, radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh became the nation’s first commercial station, and by the end of that decade, West Virginia claimed five stations, located in Huntington, Wheeling, Charleston, Fairmont, and Bluefield. Advertising and entertainment dominated the airwaves, and soon, down-home music became part of their fare. Somewhat shaken by the impact of radio, the corporate leaders of the phonograph industry—heretofore catering to the tastes of upper-class and urban middle-class audiences—began to look for new markets. Rural music for rural people became one of them. Hence, what we now consider country music was born. Fiddle and string band tunes, ballads, and songs, some old and some newly composed, could now be heard on the radio or purchased in record stores or from mail-order firms. The musicians furnishing these sounds and songs predominantly hailed from the upland and rural South. They became increasingly well known in their own right. While nothing like the latter-day star system yet thrived, several figures attracted attention, including fiddler Clark Kessinger, blues-influenced Frank Hutchison, guitarist Roy Harvey, and singing composers typified by Dixie Songbird Bill Cox and Blind Alfred Reed.

      The Great Depression crippled but did not destroy the record business. Radio musicians often survived on the per inquiry (PI) system, based on the amount of mail they generated and also through increased sales of a sponsor’s product. Some became known for sales prowess as well as talent. Musicians supplemented their income through on-air sale of photographs, songbooks, and personal appearances in the station’s listening area, usually splitting the ticket receipts with the community group that sponsored them. During World War II, those musicians not serving in the military or employed in defense work did their best to build and maintain morale. An indirect result of the war was the increasing significance of female performers. The decade following the war witnessed unprecedented growth and prosperity. As Cowboy Copas, recently arrived at the Grand Ole Opry, told Bob Shortridge, formerly of the Salt and Peanuts band, Now we don’t have to starve anymore.

      In those days, The World’s Original Jamboree from WWVA Wheeling was at its peak in popularity, with such couples as Doc and Chickie Williams, Lee and Juanita Moore, and Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, as well as solo figures like Hawkshaw Hawkins. The Coopers and Hawkins departed for Nashville in the 1950s, but the Williamses and Lee Moore remained in Wheeling. West Virginia figures such as the Bailes Brothers, Jimmy Dickens, and Red Sovine made the grade in Nashville with some earlier radio experience in their home state. Mountain State radio veterans such as Lynn Davis and Molly O’Day hit their peak popularity on radio at Knoxville, but their Columbia records made them more famous. Other West Virginians made a name for themselves in California, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, and even Boston.

      Except for the Jamboree, live radio gave way to television. A few remained with the older medium, such as Hank the Cowhand, Cherokee Sue, and John Graham. These performers stuck with radio, some going into deejay work. Television stations in Huntington, Clarksburg, Oak Hill, and Parkersburg all had weekly programs that used local talent. Bluefield had daily programs, and the team of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs worked a traveling circuit that included stops at three West Virginia stations. Flatt once told Buddy Griffin that WSAZ Huntington was their most successful locale by far. But the dominant country-music television program was the weekday morning offering at WCHS Charleston, running from 1960 until 1973. The shows were led initially by Buddy Starcher and then by Sleepy Jeffers and the Davis Twins, all former radio favorites.

      The folk music fad of the later 1950s led to a revival of interest in more authentic roots music. West Virginia as an Appalachian heartland region proved to be as much a musical treasure in the 1960s and 1970s as it had for folklorist John Harrington Cox as described in his Folk-Songs of the South (mostly West Virginia) before 1920. Old but still-living artists from the 1920s, typified by Clark Kessinger, found their music in demand again and hitherto unknowns, exemplified by Aunt Jennie Wilson and Melvin Wine, found themselves widely celebrated figures. Bluegrass music, a neotraditional development of the mid-1940s, had many practitioners in the state, initially pioneered by the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers along with the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover. The genre was continued by the Goins Brothers, Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, Laurel Mountain Boys, Currence Brothers, and Jim and Valerie Gabehart, among others. Bluegrass pickers in West Virginia have done themselves proud.

      West Virginians have continued to make names for themselves in Nashville. The late Mel Street and Penny DeHaven, as well as the younger Lionel Cartwright, are some of the figures who have achieved some degree of popular acclaim. Sidemen Charlie McCoy and Buddy Griffin have graced the stage with Grand Ole Opry stars. Those who have reached the pinnacle of success in the ever-changing world of country commercialism include Connie Smith, Kathy Mattea, and current reigning superstar Brad Paisley. From modest beginnings in 1924 through 2014, West Virginia country musicians have more than done their part to carve out a major niche in the wide world of American vernacular

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