National Reso-phonic Instruments in the Blue Ridge

The following article is an unabridged version of one published in shorter form in "Americana Rhythm Music Magazine."

The spectacle of the street corner, sidewalk and back alley jamming in the streets of Floyd, Virginia on Friday nights attracts thousands of musicians and music lovers every summer. While the Friday Night Jamboree stage at the Floyd Country Store schedules a gospel set followed by old time bands that cater to the flatfoot dancers, the street picking is more representative of the breadth of the music of this region. Here, in addition to old time ballads and fiddle tunes, you can hear bluegrass, country and blues and even more contemporary styles. When I'm able to join the jamming, I pack up my nickel plated steel guitar and search the streets for fellow reso-phonic enthusiast Carlton Harmon.

Carlton Harmon is a talented multi-instrumentalist with wide ranging musical interests. In addition to his reso-phonic instruments, banjo and square neck lap steel guitar, Carlton also plays guitar, mandolin and fiddle. Carlton's street corner jams host the best street pickers and singers and are open to playing just about any style other than rap. While picking with Carlton I'm often asked about my “shiny guitar.” While National Reso-phonic guitars like my Style O are rarely seen elsewhere on the streets of Floyd, these guitars have historically been a part of the music of the Blue Ridge.

Geographically, the Blue Ridge Mountain region runs from Northern Georgia to Southern Pennsylvania. These mountains touch or traverse the states in-between, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina and West Virginia. However, the cultural reach of this region spilled over to the neighboring states that are part of the greater Appalachian Mountain chain. The largest cultural export of this region was music, including blues, bluegrass old time and gospel which could be heard throughout the South and beyond thanks to the rise of radio and phonograph records.

Although they are acoustic instruments, the distinctive feature of a reso-phonic guitar is that the sound is produced by one or more metal cones instead of the wooden soundboard (guitar top), of conventional acoustic guitars. The first reso-phonic (also called resonator), guitars were designed in 1925 by Czechoslovakian immigrant John Dopyera who constructed the first tri-cone instrument at the request of a vaudevillian musician named George Beauchamp. Beauchamp wanted a guitar that would not be overwhelmed by horns and percussion instruments in dance orchestras. For a brief time before the advent of electric instruments, reso-phonic guitars manufactured by Dopyera and Beauchamp's National String Instrument Corporation (formed in 1927), became a staple in jazz and other dance bands. Even after they were displaced by electric guitars, they remained prized for their distinctive sound, and continued to be popular choices among bluegrass and blues players.

Reso-phonic guitars come in two basic varieties; square necked guitars designed to be played in a lap or steel guitar style and round necked guitars played in the conventional guitar style. Further, there are three main resonator designs: "tricones" with three metal cones/resonators like the design of the first National resonator guitars, single cone "biscuit" design of other National instruments and the single inverted-cone with spider bridge designed by the Dopyera brothers after leaving National and creating the Dobro imprint.

Of the blues musicians who employed the tri-cone, one of the most influential was Hudson Whittaker, better known as Tampa Red. His precise single string slide guitar playing was as silky and sophisticated as his songs were racy and raunchy while he recorded with Georgia Tom Dorsey (who later gained wider fame as "the father of gospel music"), as “the Hokum Boys.” Tampa Red later moved to Chicago and helped the blues graduate from its rough and tumble country origins to a more jazzy and polished urban style. He was an enormous influence on the early Chicago guitar players such as Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, and Elmore James.

Born in the Piedmont region, just below the Blue Ridge Mountain region, was Wadesboro, NC native, Fulton Allen, who became a recording star on race label releases as Blind Boy Fuller. Like Tampa Red, Fuller released many double entendre hokum numbers, but recorded on a single-cone National Duolian guitar in a finger-picked style known as Piedmont blues. Fuller was influenced by the recordings of Blind Blake and his contemporary Blind Gary Davis (later Reverend Gary Davis), and his playing was marked by ragtime rhythms and jazzy chord progressions. Playing on the streets of Durham and Winston-Salem, NC, Fuller influenced several generations of rural guitar players in this area including Brownie McGhee who made his recording debut with "The Death of Blind Boy Fuller" for the Okeh label.

Another blind guitarist, the national tri-cone toting Riley Pucket of Alpharetta, Georgia, was a white guitarist of enormous influence. Puckett performed and recorded as a solo act and with the influential old-time fiddler Gid Tanner. The 200-plus sides Puckett recorded as a solo artist and with Gid Tanner and His Skillet lickers are among the most influential in American music. His repertoire included novelty songs, religious songs, traditional folk songs, cowboy songs, blues and ballads. Echoes of Puckett's dynamic single-string guitar playing and dramatic bass runs can be heard in the playing of early bluegrass and country guitar players and his vocal approach included the earliest example of the Blue Yodel popularized by “the Singing Brakeman,” Jimmie Rodgers who is often called “the Blue Yodeler” and “the Father of Country Music.”

A final National tri-cone enthusiast whose repertoire was similar in style to Puckett's but whose playing was closer to the finger-picked style of the Piedmont bluesmen was Sam McGee. Born in Franklin County Tenessee, Sam and his brother Kirk were proficient on several stringed instruments and performed as a duo, with Uncle Dave Macon's “Fruit Jar Drinkers” on record and with “Fiddlin'” Arthur Smith as the “Dixieliners” on record and on the Grand Old Opry. McGee's classics “Buck Dancer's Choice, “Railroad Blues” and “Franklin Blues” are a staple of many finger-style and flat-pick players today.

Square neck reso-phonic guitars dominate the bluegrass sound. Josh Graves from Monroe County, Tennessee is credited with introducing the dobro to bluegrass music shortly after joining Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1955. Graves originally joined the Foggy Mountain Boys as a bass player ,but quickly shifted to the dobro and developed a new style of picking that drew on Earl's defining three-finger syncopated banjo style. Graves' playing ignited the Foggy Mountain Boys sound when playing energetic, fast and loud, but he would also alter the mood and provide sympathetic backing to bluesy ballads and slower gospel numbers. In country music Beecher Ray Kirby, better known as Bashful Brother Oswald, enlarged the popularity of the dobro while playing with Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys and as a staple on the Grand Old Opry.

The reso-phonic guitar has a look and sound that is distinctively American, although their construction relied heavily on the craftsmanship and ingenuity of their immigrant inventor. The music made on these instruments, blues, old-time, bluegrass and country, shares these characteristics of sounding new yet familiar at the same time. Bold, brash, evocative and idiosyncratic; reso-phonic guitars and the musicians who used them were central to the rise of America roots music in the Blue Ridge.

"Beautiful Dreamer"

Stephen Foster was America’s first great songwriter, yet when he died all he had in his pockets was 38 cents in a leather poke and a scrap of paper on which he had written a bit of song lyric, “dear friends and gentle hearts”

"Beautiful Dreamer" was written just days before Foster's death in 1854 and published posthumously. It has been recorded by many artists, but my personal favorite is by Roy Orbison. I'm quite sure that this version was the inspiration for the one sung by Raul Malo (formerly of the Mavericks), and recorded as the title cut for the compilation of Foster's work that won a Grammy in 2005.

My version is based on an arrangement by Lyle Ritz. Lyle was a bass player with the legendary group of jazz studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, but for us uke enthusiasts he is known as the Father of jazz ukulele. In 1957 he recorded, "How About Uke?," the first jazz ukulele album which also has the distinction of being the first album recorded in Stereo by Capital Records. Several instructional books and DVDs available on playing his style are available.

I usually include lesser known or sung verses in my performance of classic songs, but chose to sing only the first verse of "Dreamer." It is pure poetry and Foster's second verse is rather clunky and archaic with references to "mermaids chanting the wild lorelie" and "streamlet vapors." If anyone out there knows what "wild lorelie" is I'd really like to know!

Here's the entire tune as it was published:

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day,
Lull'd by the moonlight have all pass'd away!
Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life's busy throng,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea
Mermaids are chanting the wild lorelie;
Over the streamlet vapors are borne,
Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.
Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,
E'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;
Then will all clouds of sorrow depart,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Winter Haiku Blues

Here's the video!

Inspiration

I've been through an extended creative "dry spell" for the last several months. You artists and writers out there know the feeling. The loss of inspiration or motivation to create is at best tortuous; when you lose both it is devastating.

Inspiration usually motivates us to create, yet motivation can only prepare us for inspiration. We can create solely through motivation, but without inspiration the results are, well, uninspired! Knowing that Inspiration comes and goes, an artist of any sort keeps up a daily creative practice to be "ready" when she visits. My problem was that I had given up on my daily regimen.

As a musician, specifically a blues musician, I often associate the creative process with a certain degree of magic and mysticism. A daily artistic practice allows me to tap into this power. Without it, I had lost my mojo. It doesn't matter how or what happened to bring this about, it happens to all "creative types" sooner or later, one way or another.

So, how to "get my mojo working?" Turned out that the juju that reinvigorate my musical output came from an entirely different creative practice, one that most of us learn in elementary school - haiku writing. My wife, Lisa Kae, had been writing haikus for some time and I was very impressed by her ability to create profound statements within the strict form (three lines, 5 -7- 5 syllables). So I began composing my own. The first attempts were awkward and painful, but I persisted. Day by day my little compositions became more elegant and refined. Words and syllables began to flow easily. The subject of my verses expanded and I began to expand the form with tankas (haikus plus 2, 7-syllable lines). It didn't motivate me to reinvigorate my musical practice, but it felt good to create again!

Then one day someone unintentionally laid down a challenge that made me pick up my guitar and create. I had posted a haiku on Facebook and several of my creative friends commented on it. One suggested that my haikus might make good songs, another pointed out that they would be pretty short songs. So I decided to compose and arrange a blues made up of a series of haikus; but what to write about!

We were in the middle of an extended winter cold snap. Our drafty old farmhouse was freezing and we were bundled up in multiple layers. All we had on our mind was how cold and miserable we were. So I took the old advice of "write what you know" and composed the "Winter Haiku Blues." It took all of ten minutes to write and arrange and Lisa Kae captured it on video on the second take. Within a half-hour I had written, arranged, performed and recorded a new song. It wasn't great or even good, but it was inspired!

Since then I have spent time in my studio creating. Inspiration comes to visit occasionally and I have almost finished writing and arranging two new songs and have ideas or started several more. I've sketched out the themes and some tunes for my next album (does anyone younger than 40 know what that means anymore?). Motivation and inspiration have returned to my life and life is good!

William "Bill" Moore

My introduction to the music of William Moore came through friend and fellow “Music of the Depression Era” enthusiast Lightnin’ Wells. When Lightnin’s cover of Moore’s “Ragtime Millionaire” caught my ear, it didn’t let go until I learned to pick this catchy ragtime tune. I recorded it, along with Moore’s “One Way Gal” on my CD, “Hero Worship.”

Many blues fans, even those whose listening doesn’t extend beyond B.B. King and Buddy Guy, are familiar with the music of the enigmatic Robert Johnson and some of the other practitioners of the “Delta Blues” style. Indeed, the shuffle rhythms, 12 bar structure and I-IV-V chord progressions that dominate that style also dominate the sound most often heard at blues clubs and festivals. However, William Moore performed in a different style most frequently referred to as the “Piedmont Blues.”

Piedmont Blues (also called “East Coast Blues”), is characterized by a more delicate, syncopated and sophisticated approach to the guitar than the Delta style. Its roots are in the parlor guitar music playedby Victorian Era white folks, early banjo picking and ragtime piano. During the 1920s, blues was the popular form amongst black audiences who bought records released under the “race” category by Paramount, Okeh, Brunswick and other labels. Sales by Piedmont artists such as Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller rivaled those of Delta and Texas blues pickers Charlie Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Generally, Piedmont guitarists were not as widely recorded as those elsewhere in the south, and releases by Virginia blues guitarists are especially rare. Luke Jordan is another Old Dominion guitarist who recorded (for the Victor label), however William Moore’s 16 recorded sides represents the largest number by guitarists from Virginia who recorded in the 1920s and '30s.

Unfortunately for fans of Virginia blues in general, and William Moore in particular, Paramount only released eight of the songs recorded in Chicago in 1928. These 78 records were released over time and the fact that the first three were released under the name “Bill” Moore and the final record under the name William Moore has caused some confusion about whether all eight releases are by the same player. However, even a cursory listen to the existing tracks reveals that the guitarist on all 8 is the same. The fact that copyright applications for all 16 songs recorded at that session were submitted together supports that they were recorded by the same person.

The real confusion about William “Bill” Moore's released tracks is because on three of four instrumental releases there are spoken “asides” in a voice markedly different from the voice that sings on four other tunes; “Tillie Lee,” “One Way Gal,” “Ragtime Millionaire” and “Midnight Blues.”  However, the guitar part for one of the instrumentals, “Old Country Rock,” is identical to that of “One Way Gal.” Another instrumental, “Ragtime Crazy” has vocal asides that sound like they could be spoken by the singer of the four vocal numbers. So what's going on?!

It was not unusual for vocalists to react verbally to their guitar pyrotechnics. Charlie Patton, Blind Blake and Kokomo Arnold frequently interjected their instrumental numbers with exclamationsand self-encouraging remarks. Also heard on recordings from this period were vocal interjections from non-playing “guests” at sessions. Uncle Dave Macon can be heard cajoling, carousing and exultingthroughout the instrumental numbers of the young white mountain guitar picker Sam McGhee. Check out McGhee's recording of “Buckdancer's Choice” to hear how Macon's exhortations push McGhee to a furious pace!

I'm inclined to side with Max Haymes, who believes that xylophonist Jimmy Bertrand is the “speaker” on the two Moore instrumentals “Raggin' Dem Blues” and “Barbershop Rock.” Bertrand is cited as providing “speech” on the Blind Blake release “Doggin' Me Mama Blues.” Bertrand's voice and delivery on Blake's records are certainly similar to those on Moore's. Whether the speaker on these numbers is Bertrand or not, the commentary on Moore's tracks is often second person, such as “whip that box, Bill, whip it.” Finally, the commentary on these two tunes often comes during the passages that are most difficult to play. I can testify from personal experience that this is nigh impossible to pull off!

Conspiracy theories aside, we know some facts about William “Bill” Moore. Born in Dover, Georgia, in 1893, Bill Moore moved to Tappahannock, Virginia at a young age. He opened a barbershop there and supplemented his income with a little farming. In Warsaw, Virginia Moore met and married his first wife Gwendolyn Gordon. They had seven children. Gwendolyn died in 1930 during childbirth (although the child survived). Moore later remarried.

Moore was a popular entertainer in the Tidewater towns and countryside near his home, playing fish fries, dances, schools, and house parties. His "Barbershop Rag" testifies to his fluid style and his profession. Although most of Moore's numbers are firmly within the ragtime style, audiences would have also appreciated his “harder” numbers like "Midnight Blues." He also played minstrel number, like "Tillie Lee"and novelty songs like "Ragtime Millionaire" (derived from two songs by black composer and entertainer Irving Jones). Like many musicians of his era, Moore was a multi-instrumentalist and friends and family recalled his ability on guitar less than his skill on fiddle and piano.

Soon after World War II, Moore moved to Warrenton, Virginia, to live with his son, Winston, due to declining health. He died of a heart attack in 1951 and is buried in Sherwood Cemetery.  Moore's legacy, however, lives on. John Jackson, a great guitarist and singer of the generation that followed Moore's, saw and heard Moore perform at his father's farm in Northern Virginia. Although Jackson now has also passed, many contemporary pickers like Lightnin' Wells and myself learned from him and continue to carry on Moore's Piedmont pickin' tradition.

The Rumor Mill

So by now most of you have heard or read the news, the Pickin' Porch is closing its day-to-day retail operation and I am dedicating myself to being a full-time guitar (and infrequent mandolin and ukulele), teacher.

If you follow my wife's blog, you've probably already got a chuckle out of what the dowtown Floyd rumor mill has been churning out about me and my "dog and pony show" endeavors.  The fact that the store closing is "official" and fully explained will probably not put an end to speculation, but here's the "straight scoop" on the most pernicious and outrageous canards!

Rumor #1:  The Pickin' Porch is bankrupt!

Truth:  I opened the store five years ago with a small business loan and my personal savings five years ago. The loans were paid off within 2 years. Although never as profitable as I would have liked, the store has operated in the black for several years.  I currently own every string, capo, instrument and book. Hopefully there will be far less of those items in my possession come May 2nd!

Rumor #2:  I am terminally ill!

Truth:  I've got bad news, we're all going to die!  Being born human is a terminal illness and there's no cure. To the best of my knowledge I'm no worse off than most of the rest of you!

Rumor #3:  I'm moving from Floyd County!

Truth:  You may wish! I'm sorry to report that I have no plans of leaving any time soon; but, hey, every man has his price -- make me an offer!

Rumor #4:  My wife is leaving me!

Truth:  In a few weeks Lisa Kae and I celebrate 20 years of marriage and while neither of us would ever try to pretend every moment has been pure bliss, we have never been more together!  I mean really, have you checked out the pool of available men in this county?  I'm no great catch, but let's face it, the prospects for "trading up" are slim-to-none!  As far as I am aware, Lisa plans on sticking with "the devil she knows!"

Rumor #5:  I am losing all of my students!

Truth:  Two years ago I taught about 25 half-hour lessons per week.  I currently teach almost 50. I love being a guitar teacher and am humbled by the number of folks who have entrusted me with their musical education.  You can hear all my students perform at our spring/summer recital on June 7th and 14th at the Jesse Peterman Library and count for yourself!

Rumor #6:  I'm closing the store because another music store is opening downtown.  

Truth:  While it is true that some self-proclaimed "players" in the downtown scene conspired, successfully I might add, to keep interested buyers from moving the Pickin' Porch downtown; I am not afraid of competing in the marketplace.  Simply put, I'm ending retail operations to simplify my life and focus on my family, our farm and my true vocation, teaching. Who knows, maybe I will finally learn to play the guitar myself with all my new-found "free time!"

I think that answers most of the fabrications that people have mentioned to me or have asked about. If you've heard one I've missed, feel free to share it with me.  I'm always ready for a goood laugh!

Keeping the Blues Alive?

Here is the latest offering from your 'ol pal (and increasingly curmudgeonly), Oh Papa.  This story currently appears in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine.

There are many organizations that must believe that blues music is in need of life support. “Keeping the Blues Alive” is common theme in the mission statement of several blues organizations such as the Cincy Blues Society. The Blues Music Foundation presents an award for “Keeping the Blues Alive” annually. Other organizations, such as the Mississippi Valley Blues Society, seek to “preserve” the music. Several groups seek to do both! I wonder if the blues knows it's in such rough shape!

Musical expression, especially older roots music styles, only survive because they are living traditions. They continue to thrive because people continue to play and listen to them. Artists and audience continue to listen to older styles because they remain relevant musically and lyrically. Artists study the recognized masters of the past as they develop their own style and sound. Music has always been shared and open to interpretation and “fair use.” Sometimes these interpretations lead to “new” styles. I like to refer to these new styles as “fruits” which of course, cannot survive without the roots.

Blues is a tradition that arose as a popular style in the black community around the turn of the 20th century. It fell off the popular radar as that community's interest moved on to Jazz, R&B and Soul; but it was incorporated into other popular white styles such as Bluegrass and Rock & Roll. The visibility of blues music has waxed and waned over the years, but it has never completely disappeared and has indeed, resurfaced from time to time such as during the “Revival” of the late fifties and early sixties.

“Keeping the Blues” alive implies that it is too weak, vulnerable or unhealthy to survive on its own. I don't believe this is the case. This argument was used to secure funding for the House of Blues club chain. Surprisingly, they rarely sponsor blues concerts. Organizations such as the Blues Music Association try to fulfill this mission by promoting the Blues Music “industry” much the same way the Country Music Association represents Country artists, producers, record labels, and other professionals. The CMA has certainly made what they call country music popular, but I wonder if the originators and early stars like Hank Williams and Jimmie Rogers would recognize it. Popular music these days is generally a watered-down form that owes its popularity more to corporate money and access to media than talent and artistic integrity, never mind audience demand. Popular music may sometimes incorporate elements of roots music, but the result is usually forgettable and “sweet.” I'll take my blues straight up, rough and dirty, thank you just the same!

When something is “preserved” it is actually killed (stay with me here)! For instance, when fruit is preserved it is picked or boiled and canned in sugar water. Vegetables are picked and pickled or boiled and canned. Meat is desiccated (covered in salt) and or smoked and hung. Flora specimens are picked and pressed between glass; fauna specimens are placed in killing jars and pinned under glass. Even non-lethal preserves like nature preserves are usually fabricated environments made to look like, but never can be, the real thing. I don't know about you, but give me the real thing over canned goods or a museum piece any time!

The blues is tough music created and perpetuated by tough people. A rugged and beautiful response to the dehumanizing treatment of black people as they struggled through slavery, failed reconstruction and the Jim Crow south. The seed that grew into the musical blues tree comes from an African flower. It traveled to the United States in the belly of a slave ship. It was sown in the fields of the southern plantation system and watered with the blood and sweat of slavery. It poked through the ground during the Civil War and was nurtured by the dim light of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow system. It was fertilized by European harmonic ideas and folk songs, but retained its African lineage through the banjo and African rhythmic ideas. It bloomed at the turn of the 19th Century just as the first recordings of American music were being made, giving all of us a historical record of its early beauty. It is not just African or black, but perhaps more than anything, truly American. A blossom whose beauty openly mocks the pain and suffering that created it.

You want to “keep the blues alive?” Go to a live show. Join an organization like the Music Maker Relief Foundation or the Rhythm and Blues Foundation that give direct financial aid to those that helped create and sustain the music. Buy CDs by independent roots musicians. Support and celebrate a living, changing and thriving tradition. Being popular and being vital are not the same thing!