Hill Billy Blues

What of the blues’ impact on old time music? The Okeh record label recorded the first blues record, Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues," in 1920 under its "Race Record" series marketed to black record buyers. When Georgia's Fiddlin' John Carson waxed "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" and "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow" for the label it appeared in the company’s "Popular Music" catalog alongside operatic singers and Tin Pan Alley jazz and pop. The company soon placed Carson and others like him in a separate "Old Time Music"' category and we've used the label ever since.

But blues and old time share more than an original record label. Old time music is most often driven by the fiddle (a European instrument), and banjo (an African instrument). Although other instruments including guitar and Appalachian dulcimer are quite commonly heard, this very instrumentation illustrates the marriage of European and African influence on the music. The approach to these instruments was also heavily influenced by the phrasing and syncopation introduced by African American players.

Many of the vaulted personalities in the old time pantheon cited black blues musicians as major influences. West Virginia’s Dick Justice and Frank Hutchinson both credited their playing style to black musicians. Hutchinson credited a black bluesman named Henry Vaughn around 1904 for inspiring his own playing. Indeed, Sherman Lawson, a fiddler who recorded with Hutchinson in 1928 claimed to have learned from a crippled black fiddler named Bill Hunt some time before 1910. The song “Worried Blues” that Hutchinson recorded with Lawson was reportedly learned from Hunt. The irascible Howard Armstrong praised Hutchinson’s ability to play blues guitar although he was not quite as generous about Hutchinson’s harp blowing. “Really bad,” was Armstrong’s blunt assessment.

The sound created by the hallowed Carter Family was driven, largely, by Mother Maybelle’s “Chicken Scratch” guitar picking. Although she is often credited with birthing this style, it was not dissimilar to the picking of many black guitarists throughout the Appalachian and Piedmont region. A.P. Carter’s insatiable thirst for old time tunes led him to collect many tunes from around the region, many of which he often co-opted and claimed as his own. In this venture it was a black guitarist, Lesley Riddle, who served as a guide and gatekeeper introducing A.P. to bluesman Brownie McGhee and the music of the obscure Tarter and Gray. A.P.’s practice of collecting and publishing songs from the oral tradition was paralleled by W.C. Handy did in the blues field. Some even claim that Riddle is the source for Maybelle's picking style.

In the area that surrounds my hometown of Floyd, VA the string band music of black players such as Turner Foddrell and his family reveal the similarities between blues and old time in this region. Turner's blues served the same function as that of the old time players, to make folks dance. Turner frequently performed with his brother, Marvin, and son, Lynn around Patrick County, VA. Perhaps the most definitive evidence that, categories like "blues," "old time" and "bluegrass" are meaningless and unnecessarily confining is that Turner often was called upon to fill in for guitar players in area bluegrass bands! Rabbit Muse, from nearby Franklin County, Virginia performed vaudevillian-styled songs on ukulele, often with kazoo accompaniment. His performances bring to mind many of the vaudevillian and minstrel inspired ditties of Charlie Poole, banjoist and leader of the North Carolina Ramblers. Poole is claimed by old time and bluegrass enthusiast alike and often ventured into Floyd and Franklin County to play and sample the area's most notorious export, moonshine. Poole's hit "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Blues" was also often performed by black blues players such as John Jackson and Etta Baker.

While much of the old time repertoire borrowed from European ballad tradition (tales of false knights and the Four Marys), "new" songs about bad men (Railroad Bill and John Hardy), rail disasters (Wreck of the Old 97), unrequited love (Careless Love), abound. Many of these songs or variants of them were also recorded by blues players. Which tradition created these songs first? The answer is lost on the swirl of pre-recorded history and is far less important than the music itself, which demonstrates plenty of cross-fertilization between black and white musicians in the rural south.