by Kip Lornell
Throughout the late 1940s into the 1950s the nascent country music industry struggled to consolidate the diverse regional styles of rural white folk/commercial music into a more marketable and manageable genre. Even though the industry increasingly looked toward Nashville, which was slowly developing its “Music City” moniker during this same period, the record sales and popularity of “western” groups such as Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Ernest Tubb and his Texas Troubadours, and the Sons of the Pioneers continued to fuel the marketing of a more country and western image across the United States.
Western themes and images were not entirely absent in Washington, D.C.’s country music scene in the decade following the end of WW II. The musical interests of native Washingtonian Eddie Nesbit (b. 1919), a local radio announcer, songwriter, and country singer beginning in the late 1930s, typify the local interest in western music. In addition to being greatly impressed by the recordings of Jimmie Rodgers and Bradley Kincaid, Nesbitt greatly admired the smooth harmonies of the Sons of the Pioneers, lead in the mid-1930s by Roy Rogers.
In late May, 1948 promoter Connie B. Gay presented this mix of local and national hillbilly acts at a major downtown Washington, D.C. venue. Courtesy of Kip Lornell.
Connie B. Gay dominated the marketing of country music in D.C. during the period that bluegrass initially emerged and eventually became a separate genre. Gay also wrestled with these terms as he marketed the music with which he, like so many other Washington residents of similar age, grew up in a small town just east of Raleigh, North Carolina. He knew that the industry needed an encompassing term that it could use for marketing, one that would be universally recognized and understood in the same way that “swing” had captured America’s imagination a decade before.
Because Gay grew up in eastern North Carolina, listening to hillbilly music by artists (some local) such as Bill and Charlie Monroe, Three ’Baccer Tags, Ramblin’ Tommy Scott, and Wade Mainer, all of whom broadcast over Raleigh’s WPTF-AM, he understood the importance of this music to so many Washintgonians. He also knew and understood the importance of branding and marketing. In a 1989 interview with the Country Music Foundation, Gay was reminiscing about the late 1940s and observed that “we were beginning to change the word ‘hillbilly’ to ‘country’ and it was becoming known in the Washington area as country music.”
Furthermore, this issue of naming provides an interesting example of the “citybilly” phenomenon, which scholars from Charles Seeger to Neal Rosenberg have used since the late 1940s to describe the acculturation process, the transformation of rural cultural traits to urban settings. Some early “country” music recording artists, most notably Vernon Dahlhart or Carson Robison, traded on a rural image while maintaining an urbane approach to the music that included many composed selections. Their records from the late 1920s traded on a more sophisticated approach to performing and selling country music to a nationwide audience. As a result their recorded legacy is much greater in size and far more generic than any of the down-home, regional groups like Kentucky String Tickers, Freeny’s Barn Dance Band (Mississippi), the Shelor Family (Virginia), or Pope’s Arkansas Mountaineers.
* * *
MUSICAL EXAMPLE
One of the national capital’s premier bluegrass groups, the Country Gentlemen, formed in 1957 and continued until the death of Charlie Waller in 2004. They were inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 1996 and various members continue to perform bluegrass, some in and around Washington, D.C. The hopeful, then sad “Handsome Molly” may have it roots in the British Isle, though it gained more widespread popularity following a 1927 recording by G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter. Many bluegrass musicians learned it from the Stanley Brothers, who performed it in the 1950s.
Title “Handsome Molly”
Performers The Country Gentlemen
Instruments guitar, dobro, string bass, two voices
Length 2:29
Musical Characteristics
1. The vocals are sung in harmony, one as the lead and the other as the tenor.
2. Dobro (steel) guitar is featured on this selection, the fiddle is absent.
3. The selection opens with the three finger-picked banjo stating the melody twice.
4. You can hear the duple meter made more complex by the underlying rhythms played by the guitar.
Well, I wish I was in London or some other seaport town.
I’d set my foot on a steamship and sail the oceans ’round.
Sailing on the oceans, sailing on the sea.
I think of Handsome Molly, wherever she may be.
Her hair was black as a raven’s, her eyes were bright as coal.
Her teeth shone like lillies out in the morning cold.
Oh, don’t you remember Molly, when you gave me your right hand.
You said if you ever married that I would be your man.
I saw her in church last Sunday, she passed me on by.
I knew her mind was changing by the roving of her eye.
This selection is from Smithsonian Folkways 40022.
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This survey of country music and bluegrass in our nation’s capital stops around 1960 because of the folk revival. Country music became even more commercially viable throughout the 1960s as the Nashville studios began to predominate while regional sounds (while not entirely absent) became less important. Elements of rock and pop music continued to reach into the music as a means of broadening its appeal. The folk revival embraced all sorts of grassroots music and helped to bring bluegrass to a wider, more geographically diverse audience. This was less of an issue in and around Washington, D.C., of course, but for tens of thousands the Newport Folk Festivals began serving up bluegrass as part of its menu. For many the Newport Folk Festivals of the early 1960s served as their introduction to the music of the Lilly Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, Hylo Brown, and the Stanley Brothers. What was once labeled as hillbilly or bluegrass music was suddenly “folk.”
The inclusion of this selection by Country Gentlemen nicely illustrates this point. It comes from a 1961 album, Folk Songs and Bluegrass (Smithsonian Folkways SPW 40022), that seems to have been aimed at a bifurcated audience. Perhaps (then Folkways owner) Moses Asch was trying to hit both the hard-core bluegrass audience and the larger and more diverse “folk music” crowd. The albums’s title, however, underscores the close associations among folk, hillbilly, and bluegrass made by many music enthusiasts in the early 1960s. In the twenty-first century bluegrass thrives in Washington, D.C., with its own distinctive network of clubs, jam sessions, and bands.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Once you dig below the surface you discover folk, grassroots, and ethnic music throughout the United States, from the grittiest bar on the Southside of Chicago to the grittiest coal mine in West Virginia. In Washington, D.C., West Virginia senator Robert Byrd served in the Senate for nine consecutive terms, which ended when he passed away on June 28, 2010. Along with holding the distinction of being the longest-serving senator ever, Byrd was well known for delivering federal dollars back to his home state and for his fiddle playing. In 1977 Byrd recorded an album, “Mountain Fiddle,” for County Records that gently mixed old-time and bluegrass standards such as “Cumberland Gap,” “Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die,” and “There’s More Pretty Girls Than One.” Accompanied by Doyle Lawson on guitar, James Bailey on banjo, and Spider Gilliam on bass, all of whom were then members of Washington, D.C.’s The Country Gentlemen, Byrd proved to be a proficient fiddler. Like most of the hundreds of “hillbilly” musicians in Washington, D.C. (and elsewhere), however, his music was less about virtuosity than the appreciation and understanding of the music and what it meant to the musicians and their audience.
KEY FIGURES AND TERMS
blues
bluegrass
Blue Grass Champs
Senator Robert Byrd
citybilly
conjunto
Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey
folk revival
; Connie B. Gay
gospel
Hill Billies
Ernest V. Stoneman
Muddy Waters
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Robert Byrd. Mountain Fiddling. County 769. A nice blend of bluegrass and old-time fiddling by the West Virginia senator with accompaniment by three of D.C.’s best musicians of the time.
Roy Clark. Timeless: The Classic Concert Performances. Varese Fontana B001EC6JZ8. A good sampling of Clark’s pre-1975 material currently available.
Bill Clifton. The Early Years 1957–58. Rounder CD 011661102125. Maryland born, Clifton was both influential and a fixture on the D.C.-bluegrass scene in the late 1950s into the 1960s.
Country Gentlemen. Country Songs, Old and New. Smithsonian/Folkways SFW 40004. Their first album (1959) and one of the first and best from this D.C.-based bluegrass band.
Jimmy Dean. Big Bad John and Other Fabulous Songs and Tales. Sony Special Products B000002Y5G. This 1995 compilation, unfortunately, focuses on his post-1960 recordings, but remains the best sampling of his work.
Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard. Pioneering Women of Bluegrass. Smithsonian Folkways SFW 40065. Lovely recordings from the mid-1960s from two women who were then living and performing around D.C.
Don Santiago Jimenez. Viva Seguin. Arhoolie CD 7023. These twenty-seven selections (recorded between 1947 and 1951) illustrate the sound of conjunto and norteno music in San Antonio during the immediate post-WW II era.
Estevan “Steve” Jordan. Return of El Parche. Rounder 6019. A representative sampling of this eclectic musician’s work from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s.
Andrew Acosta and the New Old-Time Pickers with Speedy Tolliver. New Old Time Pickers. Arlington Cultural Affairs 001. A mix of new recordings with some home discs featuring the fiddling of Tolliver, who moved to the Washington, D.C., in 1939.
Red Allen and Frank Wakefield. The Smithsonian Years, 1964–1983. Smithsonian Folkways SFW40127. Based in D.C. in the mid-1960s, this creative band features two of the genre’s most influential instrumentalists.
Muddy Waters. Definitive Collection. Geffen Records CD6273. Perhaps not quite definitive, but very close to it and a well-rounded collection that focuses on the late 1940s and 1950s.
Various. Friends of Old Time Music. Smithsonian Folkways SFW40160. New York City was the epicenter for the urban folk revival and between 1961 and 1965 the “Friends of Old Time Music” sponsored concerts by such important “rural” artists as Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, Maybelle Carter, and the Stanley Brothers.
SUGGESTED READING
Thomas Goldsmith. The Bluegrass Reader. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. This well-rounded compendium often touches musicians living in the Mid-Atlantic and the D.C. area.
Robert Gordon. Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2003. The definitive biography of this seminal blues musician.
Michael Harris. The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. A well-written, thorough biographical and cultural study of perhaps the most influential figure in twentieth-century gospel music.
SUGGESTED VIEWING
Various. The Best Of Bluegrass: The Legends. Man-do-lin Productions. This DVD includes a few performances by D.C.-related bluegrass artists Charlie Waller and Bill Harrell.
SELECTED SONG INDEX
“A Ko’olau Au’ Ika Ka Ua,” 222
“After the Ball,” 97
“Alberta,” 175
“Allons a Lafayette,” 227
“Amazing Grace,” 19, 123
“Are You Washed in the Blood?,” 132
“Away Over in the Promised Land,” 126
“Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio,” 256, 358
“Bandit Cole Younger,” 91
“Barrel House Blues,” 47
“Beer Barrel Polka,” 270
“Before You Get to Heaven (I’ll Fly Away),” 154
“Big Ten Inch,” 340
“Blowin’ in the Wind,” 301
“Blue Moon of Kentucky,” 103, 335
“Born to Lose,” 107
“Brighten the Corner Where You Are,” 131
“Brownsville Blues,” 332
“Bury Me Not in the Lone Prairie,” 94
“Butcher’s Boy, The,” 89
“Carve That Possum,” 62–63
“Casey Jones,” 183
“Chopping in the New Ground,” 174
“Cold Sweat,” 327
“Crazy Blues,” 51
“Cripple Creek,” 364
“Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground,” 161
“Death’s Black Train Is Coming,” 162
“Dices Pescao,” 358
“Dig a Hole,” 105
“Dixie,” 45
“Do-Re-Me,” 286
“Downfall of Nebuchednezzar, The,” 162
“Drinking Wine Spodee-O-Dee,” 337
“Everybody Ought to Treat Their Mother Right,” 159
“Eyesight to the Blind,” 307
“Farmer’s Curst Wife,” 83, 186
“Flying Saucer Rock & Roll,” 337
“Fox Chase,” 22, 62, 328
“Gambler’s Doom, The,” 162–63
“Georgia Buck Is Dead,” 178
“Get Along Home Cindy,” 108
“Get on Board, Children,” 149
“Give the World a Smile,” 131
“God Holds the Future in His Hands,” 133
“Going Down the Valley,” 132
“Good Night, Irene,” 202, 289
“Gospel Boogie,” 136
“Gospel Train,” 330
“Gregorio Cortez,” 259
“Handsome Molly,” 374–75
“Hard Times Killing Floor,” 302, 317
“He Will Set Your Fields on Fire,” 100
“Hello Central, Give Me Heaven,” 98
“His Eye in on the Sparrow,” 131
“Hootchie Cootchie Man,” 355
“Hound Dog,” 338
“House Carpenter, The,” 85
“I’ll Fly Away,” 130, 137
“I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow,” 318
“I’m Walking (to New Orleans),” 338
“If the Light Has Gone Out in Your Soul,” 135
“If You See My Savior,” 156
“In Honor of Kennedy,” 259
“In that Great Getting-Up Morning,” 146–47
“It’s Tight Like That,” 156
“Jambalaya,” 227
“Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bed,” 148
“Job,” 163
“John Henry,” 178, 181–83
“Jole Blond,” 228–29
“Jump Jim Crow,” 44
“Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” 289
“La Bonnefemme Robert” (“Old Lady Robert”), 233
“Le Reel de Sherbrooke,” 234
“Les Haricots Sont Pas Sales” (“The Snapbeans are Not Salted”), 230
“Let’s Do the Cajun Twist,” 230
“Like a Rolling Stone,” 340
“Listen to the Mockingbird,” 330
“Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” 62, 98
“Little Rosewood Casket, The,” 98
“Locomotive Blues,” 328
“Love Hides All Faults,” 50
“Madre Mia Chote,” 269
“Maid Freed from the Gallows, The,” 83, 186
“Masters of War,” 301
“Midnight Special,” 181–82
“Minnesota Polka,” 237
“Mother’s Only Sleeping,” 103
“Mr. Johnson,” 181
“Night Cap Blues,” 192
“No Depression in Heaven,” 345
“Noah,” 163
“Nobody Knows the Troubles I’ve Seen,” 148
“Oh, Death,” 317
“Old Ship of Zion,” 149
“One Nation Under a Groove,” 342
“Orange Blos
som Special,” 102
“Ot azoy,” 209
“Our Goodman,” 4, 83, 186
“Our Meeting Is Over,” 331
“Patty on the Turnpike,” 82
“Peace in the Valley,” 157
“Pearl Bryant,” 90–91
“Peyote Song,” 214
“Pistol Packin’ Mama,” 107
“Poor Boy,” 191
“Puff the Magic Dragon,” 283
“Rock Around the Clock,” 337–38
“Rock Island Line,” 184–85
“Rock Lobster,” 330
“Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” 100
“Rolling and Tumblin’,” 13
“Sally Anne,” 22
“Sally Goodin’,” 23, 51
“Shanty Boys, The,” 300
“Sign of Judgment,” 172
“Simple Gifts,” 128
“Sitting on Top of the World,” 108
“So Long, Its Been Good to Know You,” 289
“Song from an Outdoor Pow-Wow,” 219
“Stack-O-Lee,” 183
“Stagger Lee,” 338
“Stavin’ Chain,” 185
“Surely, God Is Able,” 165
“Sweet Hour of Prayer,” 129
“Sweet Leilani,” 223
“Sweeter as the Years Go By,” 155
“Swing Down, Chariot,” 165
“Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” 157
“Take Your Burden to the Lord,” 155
“Talkin’ about a Good Time,” 152
“Tell It to Me,” 312
“That’s Alright, Mama,” 335
“This Land Is Our Land,” 294, 350
“Titanic, The,” 89, 98
“Tom Dooley,” 292
“Try a Little Tenderness,” 341
“Try Jesus, He Satisfies,” 356
“Turn Your Radio On,” 136–37
“Tutlut’s Waltz,” 241
“Unfortunate Rake, The,” 82, 89, 186
“Western Pioneer,” 94–95
“What Would You Give in Exchange?,” 133
“When the Work’s All Done This Fall,” 13, 92, 96, 99