I’ve been married twenty-two years to my wife, Tammy. Tammy is the daughter of Reagan Riddle, one of the founding members of The Primitive Quartet. We have two children, Cessali, fourteen, and Carson, thirteen. Our family has adjusted to the lifestyle my profession brings. They go with me once in a while when we are close to home, but most often they stay at home. My kids are really involved in activities in school. I miss some things that happen on the weekends, but I think I get to spend more time with them overall than the average father does.
My life thus far has been wonderful. I’ve made mistakes and bad decisions like everyone else, but through it all God has been faithful, and I hope to think I’ve learned some things down through the years. I’m still learning because I have two teenagers now—pray for me! The Lord has changed my life forever. I was headed for a place that was not prepared for me, and He changed my direction and now guides my path. One day I’ll get to see Him and thank Him for what He has done for me. My advice for young people today would be to seek God in everything they do, stay faithful to church and the things He has given them to do. We all have a work to do, and He will direct our paths if we will listen to him.
Jeff Tolbert
My name is Jeff Tolbert. I’m from Mount Airy, North Carolina. I’ve been raised around music all my life. My mom and dad, Troy and Phyllis, had a lot of musical background on both sides of their family; music was a way of entertainment for us. I just started learning to play, I guess, from being around it all the time. Dad taught me a lot. He would put my fingers on the strings and show me the chords, and that was where my music began. Dad and I started singing together when I was very young. We would play at a lot of the churches and community gatherings all around my hometown.
When I was fifteen years old, I started traveling full-time and what you would say professionally, with The Easter Brothers. They taught me a lot and are still some of my heroes today. I went on to travel with Jeff and Sherri Easter, The Lewis Family, and also The Isaacs for about five years, and when I went off the road with The Isaacs in the fall of 1996, I had the opportunity to work with Ricky Skaggs. I enjoy recording, playing, and producing with many different artists in the recording studio.
Reagan Riddle called me right before the Hominy Valley singing in July and said, “Jeff, I wish you would come down here this week and sit in with us and pick and play some.” So I thought about it and decided to go to Hominy Valley and enjoy the weekend with them. It’s amazing how God puts things together. I had played with them some off and on when other groups I was with performed with them, but after this particular singing, God opened up a new door in my life, and I’ve been traveling with The Primitives going on fifteen years now.
It’s an honor to be with the quartet. It’s just amazing how God has blessed us and used the songs that we sing. Reagan is such a great songwriter, and what a privilege it is to sing a lot of his songs. It’s been a great experience traveling and singing with these guys.
During that whole process I was just telling you about, I got married. It’s ironic that we’re here at Hominy Valley because I met my wife here. Her name is Shaytonya, and she was standing in the coffee line at the concessions, and when I saw her I was in love. I thought, “Well, a good way to meet her is, I’ll go get her a cup of coffee and meet her in line.” You can say a cup of coffee introduced me to my wife. Somebody told me the other day, “If I would have known that you could get her with just a cup of coffee, I would’ve given her a doughnut.” I took her back to the same spot, and while looking at the mountains, I asked her to marry me. We got married in May 2004 at Maple Ridge Baptist Church. My wife and I live in Candler [North Carolina]. We built a new home about three years ago, and we are so thankful for what God has given us and blessed us with. We have a five-year-old son; his name is Briley. He is such a joy to our life; he is now picking and singing some also.
PLATE 78 “A lot of people say he’s a mini-me.” Jeff with his son, Briley, plucking on the ol’ banjo
Singing keeps us on the road quite a bit. Sometimes it is a sacrifice for us, but it is more of a sacrifice for our wives in a lot of ways. I definitely thank God for the wives of the quartet for standing by us and for their support and encouragement. We couldn’t do without them! They’ve sure been a blessing to us.
I’m very privileged to do what I do; I love to sing and play. This style of music is my heritage, and I hope to pass it down to my children, and to have God to bless it would just be amazing. We’ve been nominated for several awards in Louisville, Kentucky. Mike’s won instrumentalist, and I’ve won it a few times, also. We have won group and song of the year many times, and I’ve won male vocalist. It’s kinda like a little boost, or a pat on the back, when you do get those little kind of things [awards] from time to time. It’s a humbling experience knowing that God is using us in what we do.
I presently have a solo project called Mercy and Grace, and I’m working on another one with my dad. We (the Primitives) are hoping to do an instrumental project soon.
It’s rewarding when we have people come up to us and say, “I bought your DVD or CD not too long ago, and it has been an encouragement to me,” or have them tell us that someone was saved while listening to the words of our songs. A gentleman came up to me yesterday and said, “Jeff, I want you to know that my brother-in-law was dying” (he was very ill and on the verge of death), and I got to talking to him and asked him if he knew the Lord; “No,” was his reply. Reagan wrote a song that I did on my new solo project, Mercy and Grace, and the name of the song is “Don’t Die Without Jesus.” The man said, “I just left the CD with him, and I told him that this was a young man who sings gospel music, and I’d love for him to listen to it.” He went back the next day, and his brother-in-law was playing “Don’t Die Without Jesus” over and over and over. He asked the Lord to come into his life, and he got saved. Just a few weeks after that, he passed on. It’s just rewarding for someone to come up to you and tell you things like that. It helps you to keep going.
I’ve heard Norman say many times, “Without the Lord’s touch on what we do, it would be nothing.” What we’re singing about comes from the heart. You can sing songs and sing a lot of words, but when you can actually sing songs and know what you’re singing about, and know there is hope, that’s what makes it real.
It is an honor to sing and play gospel music. Each and every one of us has a different talent that God has given us. Let’s use those to lift Him up. Psalm 150:6.
Norman Wilson
My name is Norman Wilson. I was born July 2, 1944, in Macon County, North Carolina, on what they call the John Dean place down on the Little Tennessee River, but that’s only history, and it is only as accurate as those who record it [laughs]! We moved and left over there where I was born in Franklin and went to Buncombe County, North Carolina, in the middle fifties and made a life there. Things changed some with the different locations. When you leave one place and go to another, there are different ideas and different standards, but overall, life’s been good to this Wilson family.
In my family there are three boys, and we have two sisters each, so five. Us boys are quite a bit older than our sisters, and we were kinda grown when they came along, so we helped raise them, too. My brother’s names are Furman and Truman. My sisters are Judy and Peggy Jean. Now, she don’t like the Peggy; she likes the Jean part.
Life was not as stressful when I was growing up, as it is on kids today. We didn’t expect a lot, and when you don’t expect a lot, you’re not disappointed. We were self-sufficient. We had what we needed; we grew what we needed and made the rest of it. Life was simpler, but our values were absolutely great. Our raising has been a good road map for the rest of my life, and Heaven will be my retirement due to my raising. Life was tough, but like I say, it was simple; didn’t have a lot of stress. We just had what we had and gave thanks for it.
Daddy was a’ old-time mountain preacher who preached fifty-seven years before graduation [going to Heaven]. Dad was an o
dd little man. He just wanted things right; he wouldn’t accept nothing but right. There was no gray area for him. If you ever get to a point in life where you don’t see the color gray, you won’t be liked too much. Our society has got to where they want to gray everything. My daddy might have been strict, but he was the best example. We were simple people, but we were proud people. Growing up, we farmed, logged, cut timber, et cetera. Dad always had a truck, and he would do hauling for other people, and that is where the money came from to support our household. We were fortunate. A lot of folks during the late forties and early fifties didn’t have any kind of transportation, so if they had any hauling to do, Dad done it.
In 1954 is when we got electricity. I remember the first time we had electricity. A fellow came and put us in two little lightbulbs, one in the living room and one in the kitchen, hanging down on a wire. They had a string hanging down from it to turn on the light. It had a forty-watt lightbulb, and we sit up about all night long looking at those lights. We thought the sun was shining in. We just had one window in the living room, and it was a small window, and we hadn’t seen the corners of the house. It was a single-box house. A single box means it didn’t have no two-by-fours, it was just a single box. The cracks were stripped. They took paper or cardboard, or newspaper, and put it on the inside. They would take flour paste and put paper up on the wall. It was purty. Some of it had designs on it, and that was cool. We had linoleum on the floor, and you just had one floor, the subflooring, and the cracks of the boards would start coming through the rug, but it sure was purty when it was new.
I know about the running water, too; we run and got it, not out of the well but out of the spring. We kept our milk cold by setting it in the spring box in the branch. As time goes on we can look back and laugh and remember and give thanks. God’s blessed our nation. Our nation has come from struggling to the land of plenty. That’s the reason our immigrants has come. I’ve been south of the border, and I don’t wonder why they want to come to our country. God has blessed America—not that He hadn’t blessed all—but, I’ll be honest with you, God will honor his own. When America stops honoring God Almighty, then we’re gonna be in trouble.
My interest in music started when I was young. Dad played guitar and the French harp—harmonica, but it’s French harp for us mountaineers. He had a little ol’ guitar I’d look at. Kids weren’t allowed to play with the instruments, but I was intrigued with it. Dad showed me a couple of chords. My fingers weren’t long enough to make anything but the G chord. I could barely make a D, and I couldn’t make a C. My granddaddy was also a great old-time backhand banjo player. When I was about four or five years old, he lived with us. My grandpa would get up at four o’clock every morning. He didn’t sleep much at all, and he’d come to where I slept, and he’d say, “Norman, how about getting up and let’s pick a little bit.” That’s where my music started. I know kids don’t play well when they first start, but he would say, “Boy, you’re doing good. You’re really doing good.” That would encourage me. Music has made me a good life, and that’s where it started. My granddad really instilled in me the drive, and the want-to, to play. Most kids want to play ball, but I wanted to learn how to play music, and that’s why I do what I do today.
We started singing as a family in the fifties. My daddy and my older brother and my grandmother started singing together. My grandmother was a singer’s singer. Dad sang bass, my brother sang the lead part, my grandmother sang the alto part, and I sang the high tenor. We sung together until my grandmother died in 1957. Then me, my dad, and my brother and a Crane boy started singing as a quartet. We called ourselves The Wilson Family. That was a seventeen-year tenure. We never made any recordings. Dad wasn’t gung ho on recordings. He didn’t think that was the right thing to make money off your recordings. I’d give anything now if we’d made some recordings back in the sixties.
Over in the Fontana, North Carolina, area is where I got acquainted with my wife, Kaye. Her name is Wanda Kaye. She was a Whitehead. I met her daddy about two years before I ever met her. I loved that man. He was the best preacher I’d ever heard; we just bonded. He invited us to come down to his home church in Tennessee. He pastored Meadow Branch Church. He said, “Come early, and my wife will have supper for you.” Well, we went down there, and we went early, and there was the purtiest little girl standing by the driveway that I had ever seen in my life, and I said to myself, “That right there is gonna be my wife.” She was probably about seventeen or eighteen. I talked to her, and she had a boyfriend. I seen her again after that and asked her out, and she said, “No, I got a boyfriend.” I don’t like noes. Noes don’t cut it. We got married on Valentine’s Day in 1970. I’ll tell you right now, these long-distance romances, they’re not pleasant.
I started with The Primitives the first of April in 1973. My wife loves for me to be on the road singing; it gives her a rest, and she loves it. Actually, she has been very supportive. Without our support at home, our quartet would not be what it is today. Every man is only as good as the support he has at home. If you don’t have support at home, you won’t last long. Our wives have a lot to do with the things we do, and we certainly don’t take that for granted.
The Primitive Quartet always done their own thing. That was what we had going for us back in the seventies. We were doing old primitive original-type music, and we never stopped, and I hope we never do. When we first started, we called ourselves the Riddle-Wilson Quartet. We got to thinking, “We need another name.” I thought, “ ‘Primitive’ means original,” so that’s where I came up with the name Primitive. So we started calling ourselves The Primitive Quartet. In the beginning, we traveled in cars or trucks or whatever we had. In 1973 we cut a record. It wasn’t tapes, and it wasn’t CDs; it was a record. We also made a few eight-tracks. Then in 1974, we bought us a little van, and we traveled in that for a while. As progress went along and the funds started coming in, we bought us a new van in ’77 and bought us a little trailer and painted it up, and we were big-time, full-timers. In about ’77, The Inspirations came over, and we sang on the program with them, and the rest is history.
We got our first bus the last of 1979 or the first of ’80. None of us had had a bus, and we didn’t know what to do. We are now on our fifth bus. We bought a new Prevost in 1999, and we bought a new, custom-built MCI last year. It’s made traveling a lot more comfortable. We don’t do but about a hundred sixty dates a year. We try to be at home at least four nights a week. That’s helped our longevity. We’re home every week and try to be home every Sunday for church. Some Sundays we sing away from home, but not every Sunday.
What makes singing good is that little sweet touch of God in it. It’s kinda like cornbread or biscuits. Now, you can have biscuits, and you can have flour; you can have milk, and you can have eggs; but without grease, it ain’t much, and it don’t rise too much. That touch of God puts the grease in the bread. Some of the best singing you’ll ever hear is back in these mountains. It’s a different sound, pure harmony. We try to do everything [music and voice] when we record, and then we can duplicate that when we sing live. We do most of our recording at Horizon Studios in Arden, North Carolina. A lot of your well-known groups are recording there where we record.
My advice to young people today is to find some vocation in life that they enjoy doing. Life’s a short trip. If you really enjoy your work, it will never become a job to you. Then do it with all your heart, with all your might. I believe that’s the road to success: Find something that you enjoy doing, and do it to the best of your ability. Always do your own thing; don’t do what everybody else is doing. I encourage young people to learn how to play an instrument, learn how to make music. It’s good mind therapy. You can be having a bad day, and you can pick up an instrument and play some kind of little tune, and it’s better than the alternative—taking some kind of medication. I have built sixteen mandolins. It is just a hobby. I take a piece of wood, and everything that don’t look like a mandolin, I cut it away! If you d
on’t do something in life, you won’t be remembered too long. If you build a good instrument, it will last a long time. I always put my dad’s name on the mandolins I build, just to honor and remember him.
The best part about my life is I made a lot of friends and got to meet a lot of precious, precious people. I think the people we meet enhance our life because we learn from each other. That’s about the story of it, and I’m about twenty-one or twenty-two now, but I hope to keep learning till the day I leave here. Life is what it is. Yesterdays are what’s made us what we are today. Happy trails.
Rev. Radford Wilson
Had it not been for Rev. Radford Wilson, there might not have been a Primitive Quartet. He was the father of two of the original members, Norman and Furman, and he also taught Larry and Reagan Riddle to sing shape-note music.
—Joyce Green
Rev. Radford Wilson was born to Bart and Lela Bell Mize Wilson on November 21, 1912, and grew up in the Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, community. He lived in Macon County until he moved to Buncombe County in 1955. Radford was a man of integrity and honor. He announced his calling to preach the Gospel at the age of twenty-five. He was ordained at the Flats, in Scaly Mountain, and was Baptist minister for fifty-seven years. Reverend Wilson served as pastor of churches in several North Carolina counties. He also pastored in Rabun County, Georgia, and was instrumental in winning many souls to Christ. Radford not only preached, but he also knew his music quite well and taught his children how to sing the shape notes, which is the traditional mountain-style music that The Primitive Quartet still sings today.
PLATE 79 Rev. Radford Wilson and his soul mate, Virta Berlene Anders Wilson
PLATE 80 A copy of the church records from 1941, when Reverend Wilson was elected pastor of Taylor’s Chapel Baptist Church in Mountain City, Georgia. Note where a member of the church was taken out of fellowship for drunkenness and cursing in these minutes of one of the church conferences.
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 32