Crystal Gayle
"The one with the hair"...that proved a family connection with our Ramey relatives, a few of whom also had that incredible "Cherokee hair." It's unusual even for Cherokees. Most people can let their hair grow for years, but it won't grow that long. Her music was pure Nashville, no local influence, but it was certainly popular in the 1970s.
(Jean Ritchie was another Kentucky singer whom some wanted to claim as local and some may have wished had stayed in England, once she went there. I liked her last few books and records and wished I'd had a chance to get the older ones. She never seemed local to me...though some of her songs were in fact of local origin. Maybe that's because her family had brought some of their songs, certainly that atonal and arrhythmic style in which Ritchie sang some of them, straight from England and most local families' ancestors came from Ireland.)
Mac Wiseman
Dad listened to this fellow Virginian from a different town, as a teenager. So did I. So did my natural sister, who belongs to a different demographic generation. His work was a staple of the Old Ridgerunner Show. Malcolm "Mac" Wiseman never was a superstar but kept performing and recording for seventy years, up into his nineties. Our musical tradition never really acknowledged the idea of "retirement age." As a popular singer from Texas observed, "It was good enough then, so it's good enough now, 'cos a good wine gets better with age." If you're a hundred years old and are still singing songs you learned in school, all to the good...Mac Wiseman did, however, write and learn new songs over the years.
So...YouTube has one of his classic albums. I heard these songs, growing up. But I wanted to share with you the one of his songs that I learned and sang, a newer song released in the 1980s, and YouTube doesn't have that one. Typical. This video will play the whole LP if you don't stop it. Very commercial.
Jim & Jesse McReynolds
They were from a settlement outside the town of Coeburn, about fifty miles away, but were often featured on the Old Ridgerunner radio show. As a family band, originally with their father and other relatives and later as two brothers singing harmony, they stuck to a "bluegrass" musical style (that showed some influence from commercial broadcasting). After Jim died, however, Jesse was free to cross over into rock style. Apparently he'd always been a great fan of Jerry Garcia. Who knew? But then, why not? Jim & Jesse had always been willing to do protest songs that some other "bluegrass" singers wouldn't do...I liked their "Cotton Mill Man" song but, when observing the actual lives of factory laborers in Kingsport, I didn't find its allegations to be reality-based. At least, not any more; the song came from 1976 and I was observing in the early 1990s.
Doc Watson
He was blind, which might have been exploited for "inspirational" value, but I don't remember its ever being so exploited. He performed with lots of other people but had his own style, a wide voice range from "high lonesome" tenor to booming bass.
Ralph & Carter Stanley
Older people remembered them as a brother act when I was growing up. Ralph outlived Carter by about half his lifetime and, of course, was heard on "O Brother Where Art Thou." His band were the Clinch Mountain Boys, though McClure is a longish drive from Gate City. They are represented here by a digitized version of an early gospel album, though they did a mix of religious and secular songs. Their manically fast versions of Southern Gospel songs, highlighting Stanley's speeded-up style of banjo picking, influenced the way many religious songs are traditionally sung even today. The second song on the album, "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem," was one of two Christmas songs that were featured on the Old Ridgerunner Show every year. It's what comes to mind when I think of a hometown Christmas.
The Carter Fold--Janette & Joe
Sara and A.P. Carter had two children, Janette and Joe, who grew up in Maces Springs. They performed with their parents in the 1940s and later expanded A.P. Carter's Store into the Carter Fold, a theatre that has attracted over 50,000 visitors in a year. There aren't a lot of places for those visitors to stay, eat, or occupy themselves during the daytime in Hiltons, so they boost the economy of Gate City, Clinchport, Duffield, Kingsport, and even Bristol and Big Stone Gap, too.
Did local fans get to preserve the old songs with Janette and Joe Carter every week? Hah. During Janette's lifetime tickets were not easy to get. I was able to get in once, and my "Aunt Dotty" was able to get in once. Janette performed, herself, as well as bringing in her family's superstar friends in a nice balance with new talent and even novelty acts like a bluegrass band from Iceland.
They wrote some new songs of their own, and learned others, but fans always liked for them to do their parents' greatest hits.
The Lee Smith Quartet
Another staple of local radio. WGAT AM used to have a separate "Morning Hymn Time" before and after the daily reading of local obituaries, not hosted by Jimmy Smith. Lee Smith, not connected with the writer known as Lee Smith, nor yet the Northern jazz band also known as the Lee Smith Quartet, was still alive, during the week a partner in the local store that sponsored this program, and naturally featured on the program almost daily. The store is still in business on Route 23, though Mr. Smith is gone. Their sound was distinctive, technically dominated by a tenor leading the melody, but with show-stealing bass lines written in. I find nothing about this group online.
The Bentons
I've found nothing online about this band. They were active from the 1970s to the 2010s but have disbanded. Their records were played on WGAT AM. Their sound differed from the Lee Smith Quartet's and Clinch Mountain Boys' sound primarily in having a strong soprano lead. They wrote some of their own songs, like "The Master of Galilee." The house where their bus was usually parked was about a quarter-mile from ours; some of them rode the bus to school with my brother and me.
In the 1970s and 1980s, all the cool kids wanted to be involved with music in some way. Adults didn't just say "Oh, little kids can't sing on key." They patiently coached even tiny tots to sing a few songs on key. I think my experience was typical: I remember becoming able to hear what was on key for myself around age nine, but having been coached to sing recognizable versions of "Rocky Top" and "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain" and "Silent Night" starting at age three. I'd made a recording at age three. I'd been in a radio broadcast at seven. I heard different pitches and could be trained to sing on key better than most tiny tots do, but not in the way adults do. The difference between "higher" and "louder" sounded clear to me only at nine or ten. Anyway everyone wanted to be taking piano or some kind of lessons, be in a band even if we had to play some unpopular brass instrument the school loaned out, and ideally get paid for doing something musical by the time we were teenagers. Some people did have to accept that they had no talent; it didn't do them any more harm than not being on a sports team did. Most of us were going to use all our musical education to sing along with a hymn in church or, at most, sit around with friends and family singing old songs after dinner. That didn't matter. We took music as seriously as the young seem to take the games they play, now. For a few of us it really paid.
The Kendricks
They have no online presence, either, but they did have albums displayed in stores for a few years. An ancestor of mine was one of a two-man team that did the land survey for the town of "Winfield," which was actually called Estilville when built and then renamed Gate City in the 1890s. An ancestor of The Kendricks was the other. His choice of a home place was a few miles away from ours; the noisier two-thirds of The Kendricks went to a different elementary school, but were in some of my classes in high school. They had a somewhat smoother sound--I wouldn't say High Church, but less aggressively Low Church--than other gospel groups here represented.
John McCutcheon
At PriscillaKing.blogspot.com I recently responded to the prompt "Write a Sapphic Ode" with an "Ode to John McCutcheon on the Occasion of his 45th Album."
In the 1980s, asked why he still did free concerts for children's groups in libraries and primary schools, John McCutcheon wisecracked, "One day all those little kids are going to grow up, and I'm going to be a Star." This did not happen but McCutcheon has enjoyed slow steady success as a musician, anyway. He had to wait a long time to own the domain FolkMusic.com, which he now does.
He was a Northerner, originally. June Appal hired him to record the last few performances of several old traditional musicians, including Beachard Smith. McCutcheon bought a house outside Gate City, a mile or two from the Cat Sanctuary. He sang with a few people he met at the Carter Fold, recording albums under short-lived band names like "Wry Straw" and "The Morbid Pumpernickel Choir," but attracted serious attention when Malcolm Dalglish showed him how to build and play the dulcimer.
This rather awkward instrument has existed for a long time and may well have been in King Nebuchadnezzar's band ("the harp, the dulcimer/psaltery...and all kinds of music"), but it's too hard to build and play to have become enshrined in any musical tradition the way things like flutes and guitars do. Like what we have in the way of Bigfoot lore, our local tradition of dulcimer music is not as old as I am. No older person recognized the instrument producing Dalglish's "pretty, funny music" when Jimmy Smith gave one of Dalglish's records a spin. A year or two later, when Smith broadcast the first cut on McCutcheon's historic "Wind That Shakes the Barley" album, I didn't know what kind of instrument was being featured, either, but I became a fan. The whole family did; I just happened to be thinking more seriously about music as a way to earn money than my parents and siblings were.
Overnight the dulcimer became "one of our traditional instruments" like the autoharp, which the Carters made traditional, rather than a bit of exotica like the zither, one of which has actually been discovered in a local attic, probably not played since 1902. It has its own peculiar logic. I've played dulcimer, though never so ambitiously as to own one. It was a novelty in the 1970s but it's traditional by now.
I bought all of McCutcheon's records, every year as they came out, for several years. The family always wanted to listen to them too. When McCutcheon left Gate City Dad thought it might be because he'd been snubbed, because Jimmy Smith hadn't played all of his songs on the radio. There was that, but also references on his record covers to "his wife Jean" had switched to "his wife Parthy," and then there was another move and another wife. There were moves among labels, too, from June Appal to Rounder and so on.
1978 to 2025. Almost an album every year.
This song appeared on an album from the 1980s, when I was in Washington and my natural sister was one of the children in the audience for which McCutcheon was practicing these songs.
Anthony Johnson
Went to Gate City High School. When his younger brother and I were there, he was trying to organize a Christian rock band at a time when the words were considered oxymoronic. Later he played piano and keyboards for better known Nashville musicians. Google shows several musicians called Anthony Johnson, none of whom appears to be our homeboy. He was on at least one video album with Alan Jackson.
Menagerie
Google lists a lot of shows and bands called Menagerie, all more recently active than this local group, which flourished around 1980. They were local enough and Christian enough to be the first rock band I was allowed to listen to.
Dirk Johnson
It is hard to think of a given name that will identify an individual with a name like Johnson. The parents of Anthony and Dirk Johnson tried. They failed. "Dirk Johnson" is also the name of a retired New York Times writer and the name of an athlete, and so on and so forth. It was also the name of my official school enemy in grade nine. He seemed, at the time, like a pretty good illustration of Undeserved Privilege. the spoilt brat who could come into school, obviously ill, and breathe germs on everybody for fifteen minutes in home room, and call home and have someone sent to bring him home; the rich kid who was given a white Corvette in grade ten and didn't even wash it. I worked and studied and learned a lot and had a good time trying to outdo his achievements.
Such a good time that people even wondered where this was one of those cases where kids' chosen enemies are actually the people they find attractive and want to have for friends. Not exactly. I hadn't started liking boys yet and, when I did, although this was high school and the idea of being attracted to anyone there seemed like a valid reason to die of embarrassment, several of the other adolescent trogs were closer to being attractive men than Johnson. (Most of the other troggettes were closer to being attractive women than I was, too; that was not the question.)
Apart from the pleasure of righteous indignation about my official enemy's unearned privileges in life and the sheer joy of occasionally beating or tying his scores, however, he wasn't a bad kid. Just another undeserving child of privilege, like me and like most of the kids in our mutual classes, only more so.
So...life went on. Johnson took a couple of summer courses and finished high school in three years. I went to Florida for winter break, took the GED test, was accepted as a college freshman before going back to finish grade eleven, and was chuffed about finishing high school in two and a half years. I've regretted it ever since. I had a reasonable amount of success in life, anyway. I heard that Johnson had gone to Nashville and become one of those union men who play as a backup band for lots of different people, that he was considered good at that job, that someone had rated him the best piano player in Nashville...I think he may literally have been one of those "Nashville Cats [who've] been playing since they were two." I'd been typing since I was eight and for quite a long time I made a living at that.
So, had Nashville's best backup pianist ever recorded anything on his own? I thought I'd look that up, while I was here.
No commercial records, but he's had a business...and then apparently he's been very ill, and according to big brother Anthony he's needed a lot of expensive medical help. Maybe somebody Out There is feeling munificent.
Yes, of course I'd send him money if I were rich. How not? It'd be the ultimate score off the rich kid who always seemed born to be scored off.
Papa Joe Smiddy
His job was teaching not performing, but he organized music festivals at which he usually sang a few songs, some original, like this one.
The Holston River Boys
A band by this name has been performing and recording since the 1990s, if not the 1980s. As seen on the video, they are grandfathers; when one has retired or died, the group have recruited another man with a similar vocal range. Apparently enough people want to sing with the group that membership is competitive, and anyone who drops out due to illness or bereavement has been quickly replaced. The late lamented relative I've called Oogesti sang treble with this group in the 1990s. Their albums were sold in stores as long as cassette tapes were considered viable. My guess would be that they don't have more digital music available because none of them knows enough about computers to record it.
I don't know whether non-local people hear it, but they sing in a more "modern," smoother, closer-to-the-book style than some older groups like the Lee Smith Quartet. (Yes, these songs are printed in books.) The image they bring to my mind is still of a little country church, but one to which parishioners drive in nice new cars.
The Scott Three
All three were related to me; one more closely than the others. They had a real talent and seemed to be starting a successful career in the early 1970s. Then their van with all their gear in it was stolen. Then while they were working to replace the van, Morgan Gibson was killed and Harold Tipton was disabled in an accident. They had, however, been regular features on Lester Flatt's section of the Grand Ole Opry for a season or two, and sold an album, in their day. Occasionally their songs were replayed on the Old Ridgerunner Show, but I think Tipton and his parents preferred to put the boys' musical phase behind them.
The Scott Three did not have a rigid hierarchy as some bands have. Dwain Reed sang the leading part in several of their songs--in all of the ones that had leading parts, in the selection his and my mother re-recorded on the cassette tape from which I learned the songs. Harold Tipton and Morgan Gibson led in other songs, and even sang solos or duets without Reed. They covered a few pop hits but most of their songs were their own original compositions.
Two linguistic details from "the tape" come to mind: in one song Dwain Reed recorded the way older people pronounced the word "zebra" with two long vowels, "ze-bray," and also included what may be the first documented use of "I said to myself, 'Self...'"
Nothing about this group has been preserved online.
Dwain Reed, Afterward
After the Scott Three broke up he really did go home and sell insurance, as disappointed musicians stereotypically threaten to do. But he still liked music and organized a garage band called the Monotones in the 1980s. Then in the 1990s he bought a row of three old "factory shacks," knocked them down, and built what he intended to be a wholesome nightclub like the Carter Fold on the site. It was called the Silver Spur. Local folk remember it as a place that demonstrated the truth that, even if you officially ban alcoholic drinks from a nightclub, some people of Irish and Cherokee descent will bring them in and carry on like the sort of "drunken Indians" nobody loves. "It's not the den of iniquity people make it sound like," relatives would say defensively. Inside, the place was wholesome, with at least one gospel song closing every evening's performance. Out in the parking lot the police were called to break up drunken brawls every few months.
People with similar names can be found on Google. Gate City's Dwain Reed can't.
Lazy Time Pickin' Parlor
This is still an active store, tourist attraction, and venue for amateur musicians to test their songs on the nursing home, hospital, community group circuit. It's off Route 23 just above the state line, so technically it's in Weber City, not Gate City. The informant I've called "The Grouch" on my blog is one of the seventy-somethings who still do free concerts with groups of people who hang out at the Pickin' Parlor. They play a mix of Nashville "country," "bluegrass," Southern Gospel, and classic rock. None of these groups has yet released a record, but the Pickin' Parlor has been featured in books about our local history and attractions.
The Pickin' Parlor does not have its own web site. It's on the official county tourism web site:
https://www.explorescottcountyva.org/music/lazy-time-pickin-parlor/
The Carter Fold--Dale Jett
Janette Carter's husband's and children's name was Jett but her son Dale has, like June Carter's and Carl Smith's daughter Carlene, been known to use their mothers' family name onstage. He inherited the Fold and has struggled heroically to keep it open through the COVID panic. Tickets are much easier to get than they were in Janette Carter's lifetime, and the Carters' connections still visit and put on good shows.
Dale Jett (Carter), Carlene Smith (Carter), Rosanne Cash, and some other third and fourth generation descendants of the Original Carter Family have performed as "the third generation." As in all families, by the fourth generation the connections stretch far and wide. Rosanne Cash didn't grow up or live in any part of the Appalachian Mountains and doesn't try to sound as if she did. Why should she? That she and the other cousins, step-cousins, honorary cousins, etc., can jam and have fun and produce something worth listening to is laudable. It's not a family band any more, but it's nice that they still make the effort to connect now and then.
Appalachian Dream Spinners
At least one of them was a relative. The group was active about the turn of the century and released three albums, but their online presence now consists of a concert stored at concertarchives.org. They sang a lot of Original Carter Family songs, in new arrangements to suit their own voices but with a similar sound.
Too derivative? Does "country" music need to be "reinvented," to "evolve in a new direction"? I don't think so. Real "country" music, from whatever rural folk tradition it came, was not a commercial product, disposable, meant to be disposed of in a few months, used mainly to get people to hear commercial advertisements and secondarily to push "social change." It was a tradition that connected generations, that conserved more than it innovated--even though all good traditional musicians always have contributed their own new songs to their traditions. There are those, in the music industry, who don't like authentic traditional music for that reason. Those who prefer that everyone consume the "music" of ghetto types who yell about taking as many drugs, sexually exploiting as many other people, and stealing as much money as possible, rather than learning and singing the songs of our own ancestors who made very different lifestyle choices even when their incomes were as low as the ghetto types'.
I'd like to see more people, more young people, doing something truly subversive and rebellious--re-connecting with our own musical tradition, rather than becoming passive consumers of what may be an entertaining novelty but is not our music, as marketed to us by rich exploiters from far away.
I think more of us should learn from John McCutcheon's example. He's a maverick. Too much a Northerner to seem like a native in any of the places where he's lived, too much influenced by Southern musical traditions to go back and be marketed as some sort of Wisconsin tradition. Too independent a musician to fit into any of the big brands and marketing schemes. He's seemed like a garage band type who just happened to have recorded an album, for fifty years and forty-five albums. But those albums have been slow steady sellers and McCutcheon has made a decent amount of money for a man whose son once described him with "He doesn't go to work. He just sings."
Concluding section.
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