Generation Y and North Carolina String Music

Our group decided to do our project on Generation Y and NC string
music.  Since the topic was so broad, we used Merlefest as a case study
of the mixing of older generations of traditional music with
contemporary genres like Americana.  We interviewed Justin Robinson,
former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Gary Thomas, long
time attendee of the festival, to compare how the music has changed.
Along with research about past and newer artists, we were able to
conclude that Merlefest serves as a venue for both old and young to
learn from one another.

Nancy Thomas, Kaitlyn Barnes and Paige Heskamp

Diddley Bow–Richard Allred and Richard Long

For this project, Richard Allred and Richard Long researched the history of the diddley bow and made two of the instruments.  The diddley bow, also referred to as the “jitterbug” or the “one-string,” is a simple string instrument that was the predecessor to many instruments that are seen in old-time and bluegrass music, such as the banjo and the guitar.  This project was one that was interesting to see the ease of making the instrument once one had the right equipment and to see its history.

To understand the diddley bow, one must understand its history.  The diddley bow is believed to have come to America from African slaves, probably from Ghana, and was thought to come from another one string instrument called the “mouth bow,” similar to an archer’s bow, except used to play music.  In America, due to its simplicity, the diddley bow was typically played by young boys, and used as a starter instrument by many slave children, who would often abandon it once a guitar was found.  The diddley bow is mainly found in the American South, and has had influences in blues and bluegrass.  The first photograph of a diddley bow was taken in the 1930’s, however, it took 20 more years to get the first recording of a diddley bow.  The diddley bow was played by many blues musicians, but one of the most famous players of the diddley bow who never abandoned it was Lonnie Pitchford, who also taught other young players to play as well.  “Father” of the blues WC Handy said regarding instruments such as the diddley bow, “Southern Negroes sang about everything, they accompanied themselves on anything which they could extract a musical sound or rhythmic effect.”  Today the diddley bow is not played very often, though there are several modern performers who have used them, such as “One-String Willie,” Seasick Steve and Jack White.

The diddley bow is an influential instrument because of its origins, but another reason is the simplicity of the instrument, which, once we found the correct pieces, was cheap as well.  To construct a diddley bow, one needs two nails, a wire or string, a bottle, a board and another block of wood used to tighten the string.  Hammer a nail into the middle of the board about one inch from each end, place a bottle near one nail, wrap the string around each of the nails then place the block of wood on the side where the bottle is not and force the wood as close as it will go to the nail, tightening the string until taut.  To play, simply pluck or hit the string, while sliding a broken bottleneck across the string to get the desired tune.  Our recreation of these instruments took around 20 minutes to make, and cost less than 20 dollars to get everything to make three full diddley bows.

The dive into these instruments was a fun one, though not without several injuries to our master carpenter, including a cut from a broken bottle and a damaged fingernail from missing while hammering.  While we cannot play this instrument, and it would take some considerable talent to be proficient with a single-string instrument that has to be tuned pretty much every song, if not in the middle of every song, we can understand and respect the dedication of those musicians that are not only skilled on the diddley bow, but also on the construction of their instruments, an art that is rarely practiced today.

Festival Culture Over the Years

Hannah Harrill

In class, we have revisited the idea of bluegrass as a family and social experience. Playing style, lyrics, tunes, and talent are passed down through generations. My research started as a look into the past of festivals in North Carolina, but it turned into a lesson in learning from family and from elders.

On multiple occasions, we heard that festival culture has changed. Festivals that started out as small gatherings to hear and share talent turned into rambunctious parties with various amounts of drugs, alcohol and violence. Many of those wild festivals have toned down. Many have tightened restrictions and made efforts to keep crowds smaller and more controlled.

I wanted to get the stories of these wild and crazy festivals. However, I quickly learned that festivals don’t advertise their old ways, especially the ones that have toned down. Instead I decided to focus on interviews with those who were there. I interviewed family and friends, along with Tommy Edwards who once held the World Champion title at Fiddler’s Grove. The beauty of this kind of research, I learned, is the chance to hear stories of individuals and the chance to connect across generational lines.

While talking to my parents and friends, I was able to have candid discussions and learn about more about my parent’s generation than I would have otherwise. I learned that festivals, specifically Union Grove, had motorcycle gangs and a some violence – “mostly broken bottles and nothing too bad” – along with drug overdose cases.

My mother and her friends who are avid Merlefest attendees described the changes they have seen. They specifically mentioned an increase in local food vendors, saying that the festival has definitely developed a culinary aspect. They also told me that the crowd has become decidedly more affluent in many cases. However, they stressed that the inclusion of different bands beyond just traditional bluegrass has kept the crowd young.

The inclusion of more progressive bands was what Tommy Edwards said was key to keeping young people coming. He said that many promoters will have the less traditional bands come on later in the evening, so that those who prefer to hear traditional bluegrass can go on home as the crowd gets younger and often more lively. A vast array of bands and styles gets young people to come in, but he said an added social aspect to the festival is necessary to keep them coming back.

Towards the end of my conversation with my parents, they began to discuss why crowds have gotten older. This developed into a casual analysis of how technology and popular culture have groomed Generation Y to expect ostentatious elaborate performances. At one point someone said “I love Lady Gaga, but when I was young all I needed was my friends, some booze, and some guys and gals jamming.” However, everyone I talked to saw this as a trend and didn’t think that the good old bluegrass would ever totally fade away.  “It’s just pure raw talent, and I don’t think that will ever totally go out of style.”

Ella May Wiggins: “Songstress of Working-Class Revolt”

Tracey Barrett

Ella May Wiggins was born on September 17, 1900 in Sevierville, Tennesee. Her father was a logger in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so her family was poor and moved frequently. Not much is known about her childhood, but when she married John Wiggins at age 20, both of her parents has passed away. John persuaded Ella May to move with him to South Carolina where they hoped to find steady work and better pay in a textile mill. Ella May gave birth to nine children as they moved from mill to mill seeking improved working conditions to support their growing family.

The Wiggins family moved to Gaston County, NC, where Ella May got a job working in American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City. One day John Wiggins left the house and never returned, abandoning Ella May with nine children, four of whom were sick and all under the age of eleven. She worked twelve hours a day, on the night shift, for six days a week to earn a $9 weekly salary, but it was not enough to support her family. When the health of her children declined, she asked her supervisor to be put on the day shift so as to care for her children during the night. He refused, and so Ella May was forced to quit. Without income to pay for medicine, four of the children died.

This personal tragedy was a driving force of Ella May’s commitment to labor organizing. The National Textile Worker’s Union (NTWU) had organizers in Gastonia seeking to drum up support for the union, and Ella May’s activism became integral to these efforts. She began speaking publicly as a representative of the union, even testifying before Congress on the deplorable working conditions in Southern textile mills. She fervently advocated for the inclusion of African-American workers’ concerns under the banner of the union, which was an often-unpopular position for a Southern labor organizer to hold, but her local NTWU chapter eventually voted to admit African-American workers to the union.

Ella May’s most powerful contribution to the labor movement, however, was in her clear voice and poetic protest ballads, which she set to traditional old-time melodies as well as current hillbilly records. She wrote from her experience as a working mother; her lyrics reflect the misery and despair of mill workers struggling to make ends meet within an impersonal, industrial economy. Her most famous ballad, A Mill Mother’s Lament, advocates union membership as a vehicle to protest the tragic injustice that led to the death of her children.

In 1929, Ella May and other NTWU organizers traveled to Gastonia to support striking workers at Loray Mill. Their truck was met by armed thugs hired by the mill, who opened fire and shot Ella May in the chest, killing her. A fellow striker sang A Mill Mother’s Lament at her funeral, held on what would have been her 29th birthday. Ella May’s death was both a stunning blow and a galvanizing force for the labor movement, which memorialized her as a martyr for the cause. A Gastonia jury eventually acquitted her assassins, who never served any jail time for her murder.

Ella May Wiggins’ musical legacy is in the model her stirring protest ballads served for American folk singers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Lee Hays. Her story is an inspiration for activists and a compelling example of the power of old-time music in protest movements, in North Carolina and beyond.

North Carolina Bluegrass Fiddle: Mountains v. Piedmont

Carolina Lindell

Finding the line between the good ol’ Bluegrass found in the mountains of North Carolina verses that in the Piedmont was what I did my project on, focusing mainly on the fiddle. With the help of two North Carolinian’s and multiple articles, a blurry line was finally drawn.  To start the project off, I interviewed my grandfather, Troy Carriker, back home in Morganton, North Carolina. He grew up listening to his grandfather play bluegrass fiddle in the fields outside of Albemarle, NC, in the piedmont. The interview turned into stories about life on a farm, the work horses, slaughtering pigs and dealing with pesky snakes. Understanding the world of a farmer in North Carolina, brought to the surface what relief music must have been.  A story of dueling fiddles for first trades on livestock was even mentioned. The fiddle, especially, was pasted on through generations. Jamming on the porch was the treat at the end of a hard-working day. Dancing was key, the fiddle techniques found in the Piedmont reflect this mentality. The upbeat, swaying draw of the piedmont fiddle would “pull men to their feet, so they’d then grab the ladies” as said by Mr. Carriker.  To get the Appalachian side of the technique I interviewed Tim Robins, a fiddle player in Western North Carolina. Instead of words, Mr. Robins liked playing the fiddle.  As he flew through songs on his fiddle, we would break for a couple of comments then continue on with playing. Mr. Robins was very talented and his technique flawless even though he confessed “most folks from around here learn this fiddle from their parents at a young age, I on the other hand was introduced to this beautiful sound later in life”. By Mr. Robins stress on the importance of Celtic music in the Appalachians I was able to draw a thin line between the roots of “traditional” mountain bluegrass and the “old time” music found in the piedmont around the same time period.  The “old time” music had more African roots due to the proximity and relationships between races in the plantations and mills. Learning throughout the semester about how bluegrass originated in the piedmont and then crept into the mountains was proven in this project. Celtic music, which many local mountain residents refer to as bluegrass, didn’t turn into bluegrass until the old time techniques were blended with the Celtic sound.

Putting the Piedmont Blues in Bluegrass

For my final project, I studied the blues genre of music as it related to bluegrass. This was primarily done through analyzing blues house parties. For my research, I watched and analyzed information from the 1988 documentary, Blues Houseparty. This documentary followed a group of blues musicians, such as Archie Edwards and Flora Morton, as they met, jammed, ate, and reminisced together in Fairfax, Virginia. To supplement this viewing, I did further textual research on blues, its ties to the African American community, and the lives of some of the featured musicians. The main goal of my research was to trace the similarities and differences between blues and bluegrass through analysis of Blues Houseparty.
Through listening to the players in the documentary and conducting outside research, I was able to understand the frequent racial divide between blues and bluegrass players. The musicians said that segregation led them to have blues parties with their African-American neighbors while white residents had access to public entertainment. This led to the genre being a large part of many African American communities. Other research also supported this racial aspect of the genres. One historian wrote that the blues genre was a result of Black politics, sharecropping, and a growing awareness of individuality post-slavery in the African-American community.
The two genres also had marked differences in terms of instrumentation. While bluegrass was more likely to feature the banjo, fiddle, or guitar, the blues featured the guitar, harmonica, or even piano. The tempo of blues music also seemed much slower than that of bluegrass. The musicians featured in the documentary played a style of guitar picking known as the Piedmont Blues. This enabled them to play both the beat and the lead of a piece with one hand. Such a picking style is reminiscent of banjo picking styles from bluegrass, but the slower tempo and varied instrumentation makes for a distinctly different sound between blues and bluegrass music.

Happy Wednesday!

Addie Bardolph and Zach Gutterman

Last year, a friend invited Zach and me to attend a private bluegrass music jam. The event took place in Winston Salem, NC in the back garage of a fellow named Rik Lea, who apparently had been hosting the event every Wednesday for about two decades. (Prior to meeting him, we were instructed to greet him with “Happy Wednesday!” and a hug.) At the time, we were struck by the intensity of the tight-knit community of twenty or so musicians and guests– and though a great time was had by all, we hadn’t gone back. So when the opportunity to organize this project arose, we returned to delve a little deeper into the traditions and stories of the Happy Wednesday gang as a case study of southern piedmont music.

This week we had the pleasure of talking with several of the regular musicians: Bobby (guitar), Willy (banjo), Jeff (lead guitar), and Bob (Mandolin). Bobby, a younger musician in his early 30s, had been coming to Happy Wednesday for just a few years, while Jeff, Bob, and Willy had been on the scene for over ten years. None could say exactly when the group got started, but Rik (when we could get a word in with him) guessed that it had begun in the late 80s. After talking with these folks, it was clear as to why each player came back for more every week: the picking circle was a place for learning, acceptance, and raucous fun. Bobby assured us that both beginners and very experienced musicians joined in on the music each week, though among the six guitarists, two mandolin players, a fiddle player, a harmonica player, a flute player, a banjo player, a bassist, and a vocalist, none seemed new to their instrument.

Between each set, musicians socialized, and several offered up stories of their first experiences with Happy Wednesday, each with an added “..and I’ve been coming ever since!” Bobby and Willy encouraged me to join in on vocals and quickly offered Zach their instruments (a 193os Gibson mandolin? Sure!). They explained that the choice of tune rotates in the circle, just like soloing would during the music. While we were there, we heard a wide range of songs, including rock classics like “Higher Love” and “Seven Bridges Road,” country songs like “Angel From Montgomery,” and bluegrass/gospel standards like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”… with a couple of regular old barn-burners thrown in there too.

Throughout this class, we have seen that southern bluegrass has a strong emphasis on heritage, storytelling, and history. Happy Wednesday echos this theme: a strong sense of tradition that accommodates a variety of styles and people, each with their own contribution to the circle, as friends and as musicians.

Unfortunately, the group asked us to please not share our video footage on a public forum. However, we are looking forward to showing our short documentary in class on Monday!

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Ian Collins & Hannah Friedman

In our course this semester, we were especially interested in the popularity, history, and evolution of ballads in old-time and bluegrass music in North Carolina. We loved learning about the story of Little Omie Wise, an iconic ballad that has been covered by countless musicians across genres. That this dramatic true story took place nearby and had been told and re-told so many times points made it additionally fascinating. In discussing a possible project, we thought it would be interesting to learn about similar local ballads. Ian did some research and discovered the legendary story of Frankie Silver, known as the first woman to be hanged in North Carolina.

Frances “Frankie” Silver’s story takes place in Morganton, North Carolina in the 1830s. An eighteen year-old wife and mother of a young infant, Frankie lived with her husband Charlie in a cabin on a rural farmstead. According to the legend, Charlie was an alcoholic and unfaithful to Frankie, frequently leaving her and their baby alone on weeks-long “hunting” trips. In late December of 1831, Frankie told neighbors that Charlie had not returned from a hunting trip, but some were suspicious. After thoroughly searching the woods and river surrounding their house, Charlie’s body was eventually found – chopped up with an axe and spread below the floorboards and around the cabin.

Some question Frankie’s guilt, wondering how she –  a small woman – could have overpowered her husband, and believe a family member or other accomplice must have been involved. Yet Frankie was immediately arrested and was convicted of murder on March 30, 1832. A month before her scheduled execution, her family helped her escape from jail, but she was eventually caught and hanged on July 12, 1833.

Legend says that as she stood at the gallows, Frankie sang a ballad confessing to the crime, but “Frankie Silver’s Confession” was actually written by a school teacher who lived in Morganton at the time. Regardless, both the ballad and story are extremely well-known in Burke County.

This became very clear in our trip to Morganton to explore the story first-hand. We visited the Burke County Historic Museum, which has an exhibit chronicling Frankie Silver’s crime, the town Courthouse and Jailhouse where she was sentenced and held, and her grave. Silver’s gravesite is unique and somewhat accidental. On their way from the gallows to her intended burial site, the men transferring her body found that she was decomposing too quickly, so had to stop and bury her along the way. Getting to her grave was quite a journey: down curvy mountain roads, a private gravel driveway, and a five-minute hike on an unmarked trail through the woods.

Visiting Morganton, we saw how special this story was to the town’s history. Everyone who grows up in Morganton knows about Frankie Silver. Just like the ballads from the British Isles, Morganton’s local lore lives on through a lasting musical form. Ballads are an important tool for preserving local history and culture, and as such are an invaluable component of the folk music tradition in North Carolina.

To see the ballad being performed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAFT4OwNhSg

Ballad Lyrics:

This dreadful, dark and dismal day
Has swept my glories all away,
My sun goes down, my days are past,
And I must leave this world at last.

Oh! Lord, what will become of me?
I am condemned you all now see,
To heaven or hell my soul must fly
All in a moment when I die.

Judge Daniel has my sentence pass’d,
Those prison walls I leave at last,
Nothing to cheer my drooping head
Until I’m numbered with the dead.

But oh! that Dreadful Judge I fear;
Shall I that awful sentence hear:
“Depart ye cursed down to hell
And forever there to dwell”?

I know that frightful ghosts I’ll see
Gnawing their flesh in misery,
And then and there attended be
For murder in the first degree.

There shall I meet that mournful face
Whose blood I spilled upon this place;
With flaming eyes to me he’ll say,
“Why did you take my life away?”

His feeble hands fell gently down,
His chattering tongue soon lost its sound,
To see his soul and body part
It strikes with terror to my heart.

I took his blooming days away,
Left him no time to God to pray,
And if his sins fall on his head
Must I not bear them in his stead?

The jealous thought that first gave strife
To make me take my husband’s life,
For months and days I spent my time
Thinking how to commit the crime.

And on a dark and doleful night
I put his body out of sight,
With flames I tried him to consume,
But time would not admit it done.

You all see me and on me gaze,
Be careful how you spend your days,
And never commit this awful crime,
But try to serve your God in time.

My mind on solemn subjects roll;
My little child, God bless its soul!
All you that are of Adam’s race,
Let not my faults this child disgrace.

Farewell good people you all now see
What my bad conduct’s brought on me—
To die of shame and disgrace
Before this world of human race.

Awful indeed to think on my death,
In perfect health to lose my breath.
Farewell, my friend, I bid adieu.
Vengeance on me must now pursue.

Great God, how shall I be forgiven?
Not fit for earth, not fit for heaven;
But little time to pray to God,
For now I try that awful road.

The Essential NC Collection

For our midterm assignment, each of us compiled a collection of songs that we considered to be”The Essential North Carolina Collection” of old-time and bluegrass music. We then wrote liner notes explaining why each song was chosen and what each artist contributed to the development of the old-time/bluegrass tradition in NC. The liner notes aren’t on the Internet, but here are a couple of our playlists, posted electronically on Grooveshark:

• http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/The+Essential+Nc+Playlist/50306881?src=5
• http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/North+Carolina+Old+time+And+Bluegrass/50397750?src=5
• http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Midterm+Assignment+richard+Allred/50390194?src=5
• http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/My+Grass+Is+Blue/50396096?src=5

I chose to post those because they show a diverse variety of artists, but every one was great!

First post!

Hello world!

We are 15 students enrolled in the course “History of Bluegrass and Old-Time Music in North Carolina” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This blog is a place for us to share our course work and research with the world, as well as any and all interesting things related to the world of traditional music in NC.