Fiddle and Banjo Music of Southern Appalachia

by Esther Morgan-Ellis

This article was written by Esther Morgan-Ellis and published in Accessible Appalachia: An Open-Access Introduction to Appalachian Studies, edited by Lisa Day. The original chapters in Accessible Appalachia are openly licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and are freely available for reuse or adoption. Ballad of America, Inc. added images, audio examples, and playlists to the original work for publication on this page.

Contents

Introduction

The pairing of fiddle and banjo is at the heart of the Appalachian instrumental music tradition. Although the two instruments are often played together, their histories could not be more different: the fiddle is a European instrument, brought to the United States primarily by British immigrants, while the banjo was developed by enslaved Africans who adapted their indigenous lutes to the New World. It was also musicians of African descent who first paired the fiddle and banjo, and their approaches to playing each have defined the sound of Appalachian music. However, there are as many styles of fiddle and banjo playing as there are individual musicians, each of whom develops a unique approach to music-making that is shaped by their own particular contexts.

Fiddle and banjo player Samantha Bumgarner, for example, took advantage of the burgeoning “hillbilly” record industry to become the first woman to make a commercial recording of traditional Appalachian music; her style reflects her experience as a dance musician and caller in her North Carolina community. Gribble, Lusk, and York, a Black string band from Tennessee, maintained separate repertoires for Black and White audiences, changing their style as necessary to please listeners and dancers. Manco Sneed, a Cherokee fiddler who lived on tribal lands in North Carolina, developed an unusually intricate solo style as a result of his isolation from other musicians. Finally, Clyde Davenport, a Kentucky fiddler and banjo player who built instruments, set out to imitate the smooth playing of his favorite local fiddler, which he applied to a repertoire inherited from his father and grandfather. Davenport attracted the attention of folk revivalists in the final decades of the 20th century, passing his technique and tunes onto a younger generation of players from outside Appalachia. As a result of the recordings they left behind, however, each of these musicians has become influential, and their tunes and styles are widely circulated among players today.

The Instruments

Fiddle

In terms of construction, the fiddle and the violin are the same instrument. The body is constructed out of carved wood, and modern strings are usually steel although before the 19th century they were made out of dried animal intestines. The bow is strung with horsehair. The violin was developed in 16th century Europe although today it is used all over the world to make many different types of music. Fiddlers at first brought European instruments into Appalachia, but soon they were building their own fiddles, either according to the same body plan or with modifications to make the job easier. Fiddles were sometimes constructed out of gourds and even cornstalks.1

The real differences between the fiddle and the violin lie in the ways that the instrument is used. The strings on a violin are always tuned to the same four pitches; fiddlers, however, adjust the tuning of their strings according to the scale (set of pitches) in which they are playing. This adaptation allows the player to use open strings frequently, which can have many advantages. Open strings resonate well, meaning that they can greatly increase the volume of the instrument. They can be played at the same time as the melody notes. By playing more than one string or frequently striking adjacent strings, a fiddler can add rhythmic interest to their playing.2

The left-hand techniques used by fiddlers are generally simple. Unlike violinists, fiddlers will usually keep their hand in one position and play melodies using notes that their fingers can reach; a violinist will move their hand to other positions to extend their range. For most fiddlers, however, rhythm is more important than melody. Rhythm comes from the right hand, which controls the bow, and the bowing techniques of fiddlers can be very complex. The bow must frequently change direction as the fiddler plays, and the patterns of these direction changes—which can be infinitely varied—have a significant impact on the sound of the tune. Some fiddlers will change bow direction for every note, a technique known as “sawing.” “Long-bow” fiddlers will string many notes together without changing bow direction. Some fiddlers will change bow direction on strong beats in the tune, emphasizing the natural rhythm, while others will change bow direction between beats, which can produce a feeling of great rhythmic excitement. This syncopated style reflects the influence of Black fiddlers, and similar rhythms can be heard in ragtime and jazz. Finally, fiddlers also use different parts of the bow (the tip, the middle, or the whole length) and hold it in a wide variety of ways. Each of these elements contributes to the unique sound of a given fiddler.3

The influence of Black musicians and musical traditions on Appalachian fiddling cannot be overstated. The origins of Black fiddling can be traced all the way back to West Africa, where musicians play various indigenous fiddles.4 In the United States, enslaved Africans had adopted the violin by the 1690s, applying their inherited techniques and aesthetic preferences to the interpretation of European tunes. Enslaved musicians played an important role in antebellum American life, providing music for dances and social occasions.5

Rustic Dance After A Sleigh Ride
Rustic Dance After A Sleigh Ride (1830)

William Sydney Mount’s Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride (1830) depicts a Black fiddler providing accompaniment for White dancers. In this era, most dance musicians were Black. Newspaper records from the 18th century reveal that enslaved fiddlers not only acquired a high degree of skill but also frequently read music, crafted instruments, and taught others.6

Although Appalachian fiddle tunes tend to reflect the musical heritage of Scots-Irish immigrants, the style in which they are played often owes a greater debt to Black traditions.7 This cultural blending is due to the unique conditions under which 19th century mountaineers lived their lives. The concentration of Black people in Appalachia between 1820 and 1860, when they constituted about 17.5% of the population, was much higher than after the Civil War. Black and White Appalachians worked side by side, socialized, and engaged in cultural exchange.8 There are also many individual accounts of White mountaineers acquiring instruments, techniques, and tunes from their Black neighbors.9

Banjo

The banjo traces its roots to West Africa, where a variety of related spike lutes are built and played by Indigenous musicians into the present day (a spike lute is a stringed instrument in which the neck penetrates or even runs straight through the body). The banjo has no single ancestor—indeed, banjo player and scholar Shlomo Pestcoe has recently documented eighty distinct West African spike lutes, and there are likely to be even more awaiting description.10 However, it is most frequently compared to the West African akonting, which bears an obvious relationship to the banjo.

Akonting Player
This akonting player was photographed in Bagaya, Senegal, very near the west coast of Africa.

The two instruments share both a general shape and the distinctive short drone string, which is played using the thumb. They also share a “downstroke” playing style—known as frailing or clawhammer among banjo players—for which the musician strikes strings with the nail of their index or middle finger in a knocking motion to play melodies.11 The major differences lie in the neck, which constitutes a round pole on the akonting but is flat on the banjo, and the headstock, which is absent altogether on the akonting. While the strings of the akonting are tuned using movable rings, those of the banjo are attached to pegs in a headstock, which can be turned to adjust the tension and, consequently, the pitch of each string.

Both of these characteristics—the flat fingerboard and headstock—were adapted from European lutes (such as the guitar) during the early years of the banjo’s evolution in the Caribbean islands, where newly enslaved Africans built instruments using local materials. They were influenced by spike lutes brought from Africa (enslavers quickly learned that permitting music onboard the ships reduced mortality rates), memories of instruments they had played at home, and the instruments that they saw around them. The result was the gourd banjo, the drum-like body of which was constructed out of a hollow gourd with dried animal skin stretched across the top.12

The earliest description of a banjo was recorded in the late 1680s by the Irish collector and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, who spent fifteen months in Jamaica. There, Sloane described and sketched an instrument played by enslaved Africans that he termed a “strum stump,” and the engraving published in his 1707 volume A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica constitutes the first known image of a banjo. Over the next century, written accounts would assign a wide variety of names to the banjo, including the “bangil” (Barbados and Jamaica), “banshaw” (St. Kitts), “banza” (French Antilles), “creole bania” (Suriname), and “merry-wang” (Jamaica).13 It appears that the banjo had arrived in the United States by the early 18th century, and the earliest reference to a “banger” was made in a New York City newspaper in 1736. During this period, most enslaved laborers were imported from the Caribbean rather than West Africa, and it is evident that they brought the banjo with them.14 Enslaved Africans played the banjo primarily for their own entertainment, most often pairing it not with the fiddle but with a drum or other percussion instruments.15

The Old Plantation
The Old Plantation

This watercolor, known as The Old Plantation, was painted by plantation owner John Rose, probably in the 1780s. It is the earliest extant depiction of a banjo in North America.

The banjo was strictly a Black instrument into the early 19th century. In the 1830s, however, it was introduced to theatrical audiences and musicians by Joel Walker “Joe” Sweeney (1810-1860), the first White person known to play the banjo. Sweeney was one of the originators of Blackface minstrelsy, a form of entertainment for which White performers assumed fictitious Black identities, complete with dark makeup and stereotypical costumes. Minstrelsy, which originated in the working-class theaters of New York City, gained traction in the 1840s and became the most popular and influential form of American entertainment for the next fifty years. Minstrel troupes ostensibly presented scenes of Black life and music to White audiences, and the banjo became an important marker of Black identity. In reality, most minstrels had no contact with Black people and drew their material from commercial popular music and folk traditions of the British Isles. However, these shows served to introduce the banjo into mainstream culture, making several significant changes to the instrument in the process. These included the addition of a fifth string to extend the melodic range, the substitution of a wood-rimmed body for the older gourd, and eventually the placement of frets on the neck.16 By the second half of the 19th century, banjos of this type were being mass-produced in factories and were cheaply available to amateur musicians throughout the country.17

There remains controversy over the means by which White Appalachians came to play the banjo. In the 1960s Alan Lomax and Robert Winans believed White musicians were introduced to the instrument by touring minstrels.18 More recently, however, scholars have argued that this exposure was the exception, not the rule, and that most White Appalachian banjo players learned directly from Black people—both free and enslaved—who lived and worked in the mountains.19 Similarly, scholars argue over the reasons for which Black musicians abandoned the banjo in the early 20th century. Explanations include the widespread availability of cheap guitars, a preference among Black musicians for modern musical styles, and the distasteful association of the banjo with Blackface minstrelsy.20 Whatever the case, by the mid-20th century, the banjo was strictly associated with rural White Southerners—despite the fact that the instrument was developed by enslaved Africans and remained their exclusive property for the first two centuries of its existence.

For more on the banjo, see Banjo: A Brief History.

The Music

Tunes in Theory

The vast repertoire of melodies used by Appalachian instrumentalists to accompany dances, entertain family, and while away leisure hours is collectively known as “fiddle tunes.” These tunes are innumerable and can be traced to many sources. Some came over from the British Isles; others originated in the United States.21 Some derive from commercial popular songs, some from hymns, and some from traditional songs. Many have words that can be sung or omitted. All tunes, however, exist in countless versions. This variety exists because they were (and still are) learned by ear, each musician doing their best to imitate and remember the playing of another in a process known as oral tradition. Tunes can change for many reasons: A fiddler might make an honest mistake, but they also might change the tune on purpose, either to suit their playing style or to make it more pleasing to their ear. Although fiddle tunes have periodically been notated, both in musicians’ private notebooks and in printed collections, there is no authoritative or “correct” version of any given tune.22 Instead, there is a constellation of related versions—some almost unrecognizable—that reflect the practices of individual fiddlers.

Tunes vary greatly in form and style, but there is a common formula. Most tunes have two parts, or strains, each of which has its own melody. Often, one strain uses the high range of the instrument and the other uses the low range. For this reason, some fiddlers call them the “fine” strain (because the high-pitched strings on the instrument are thin) and the “coarse” strain (because the low-pitched strings are thick), although they are typically termed the A and B strains. In performance, each strain is repeated once individually, and the entire tune is repeated as many times as desired.23 In most tunes, each strain is the same length, containing an even number of rhythmic pulses, or beats. Such tunes are particularly well-suited to certain types of dancing. However, many tunes break with this formula. Some contain more than two parts or follow different repetition rules. In crooked tunes, one or more of the strains contains an odd number of beats. A few tunes don’t have a regular pulse at all.

Tunes in Practice

A tune can be played by a lone fiddler, a lone banjo player, the fiddle and banjo in combination, or either/both of those instruments supported by guitar, bass, mandolin, autoharp, or mountain dulcimer—in fact, any available assortment of instruments, each of which has a typical role within the string band. However, the combination of fiddle and banjo is the oldest known Appalachian string ensemble. The two instruments were first paired by enslaved Africans, who were using fiddle and banjo to accompany dancing by 1774.24 These instruments followed divergent routes into Appalachia, but they were both in widespread use by the early 19th century.

Fiddle and banjo music served two main purposes: to provide private entertainment for the musician and perhaps a few family members or friends and to accompany dancing. When playing for their own entertainment, friends might gather on a porch after work to exchange tunes, or family members might sing together to the accompaniment of fiddle or banjo. Dances usually took place in someone’s home on a Saturday night. Furniture was moved out of the way, and cornmeal or oats were often sprinkled on the floor to improve the surface.25 Music was often supplied by a single fiddler or banjo player, who would stand in the doorway between rooms and play as loudly as possible. Indeed, the need to produce a sound that was audible over the noise of the dancers shaped the Appalachian style of playing.26 It was not important for a dance musician to be highly skilled or to possess a large repertoire; indeed, if a fiddler was loud and steady, they could simply play the same tune over and over for a whole night of dancing. Musicians might be paid by means of small donations from the dancers, or they might simply be provided with food and drink. Other dances were associated with communal work events, such as corn shuckings or bean stringings.27

Although some fiddlers and banjo players made a good secondary income by playing for dances, few pursued music as a career. There was more money to be made in farming, mining, railroad work, and other modes of physical labor. For this reason, the class of professional musicians was essentially limited to those with a disability—most often blindness—that prevented them from taking on other work. Some were also discouraged from musical involvement by their religious convictions.28 Dancing was frequently condemned by church leaders, and fiddling in particular was considered sinful by its association with dancing. Many fiddlers gave up their pastime upon committing to the religious life, burning or concealing their instruments as an act of piety.29

The Musicians

Samantha Bumgarner

Although not a professional musician, Samantha Bumgarner (c. 1880-1960) was one of the first White Southern banjo players to make a commercial recording. She was born in Jackson County, North Carolina, and the story of how she became involved with music is common to many Appalachian folk of her era. Her father, Has Biddix, was a fiddler, but he forbade his daughter to touch his instrument—perhaps because he did not consider fiddling to be a suitable pastime for a young lady, or perhaps simply because he didn’t want her to damage a prized possession. While Has was out of the house, however, his daughter would sneak the fiddle down and practice. She figured out how to play tunes that she had heard and memorized, and soon was able to demonstrate competence on the instrument. Her father, apparently impressed by her talent and determination, permitted her to keep playing and even provided her with a homemade banjo constructed from a gourd, catskin, and waxed cotton-thread strings. When Bumgarner was fifteen years old, her father provided her with a store-bought banjo, and the two of them frequently performed together in public settings.30

Bumgarner often played with local banjo player and singer Eva Smathers Davis, and in 1924, the two of them were invited to New York City to record a handful of traditional numbers for Columbia Records—probably the result of Bumgarner’s winning a banjo contest at the fiddler’s convention in Canton, North Carolina. The first recording of a Southern “hillbilly” musician had been made the year before, and record companies were eager to take advantage of the new genre’s commercial potential. Bumgarner and Davis were among hundreds of musicians who journeyed north and took their turn in front of the studio microphone. Although the sessions of April 22 and 23 did not launch lucrative music careers for the pair, Bumgarner and Davis are remembered as the first female country musicians to make commercial recordings.31

The duo’s recording of “Big-Eyed Rabbit,”32 made on April 22, 1924, captures Bumgarner’s rhythmic, fast-paced fiddling and straightforward singing. Bumgarner and Davis were the first to record this well-known tune, which—as is often the case—has circulated in many different versions.


Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis "Big-Eyed Rabbit"

A related but distinct version of “Big-Eyed Rabbit” is played in the region that encompasses Surry County, North Carolina, and Galax, Virginia. Although the tunes are quite different, the essential characteristics of the melody and text are recognizable. Like so many Appalachian fiddle tunes, “Big-Eyed Rabbit” contains words that can be sung or omitted as the players prefer.


Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham "Big-Eyed Rabbit"

Since Bumgarner and Davis were making a commercial recording, they naturally included the text, but it is easy to imagine the tune being played on instruments alone, perhaps for the purpose of accompanying dancing. Bumgarner and Davis’s version is in A A B form, with A representing the lower-pitched strain and B representing the higher-pitched strain. Each strain is the same length, and they repeat the entire tune well over a dozen times. The fact that the singing starts on B and carries over to the subsequent A adds an element of circularity: B always wants to resolve to A, while A always wants to carry on to B.

At the April 23 session, Bumgarner made several solo recordings in which she played banjo and either sang or called out square-dance figures. Her “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss”33 is an example of the latter and would have been used to facilitate dancing when live musicians were not available. “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss” is another well-known North Carolina tune, and again Bumgarner holds the honor as the first to record it.


Samantha Bumgarner "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss"

Like “Big-Eyed Rabbit,” “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss” contains many sung verses that can be included in a performance, as heard in a 1973 recording made by banjo player Olla Belle Reed of Ashe County, North Carolina.34 Because Bumgarner was recording dance music, however, she abandoned the text and concentrated on providing a driving, rock-steady banjo rhythm, calling out the figures over her own playing.


Ola Belle Reed "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss"

Bumgarner and Davis’s records sold respectably, but seemingly not well enough to merit a second invitation to the studios. However, Bumgarner went on to become a fixture at the first Appalachian music festival, organized by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1928. She participated in every Mountain Dance and Folk Festival until 1959, often appearing with Fiddlin’ Bill Hensley and taking prizes in the clogging competition. During the 1930s, she had her own program on John Brinkley’s famous “border” radio station, which broadcast at a high wattage from Del Rio, Texas, and in 1939, she joined a group of musicians and dancers who performed at the White House for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, King George VI, and Queen Elizabeth.35 As a result of her diverse activities, Bumgarner did a great deal to popularize Appalachian music-making. Perhaps most significantly, she introduced Pete Seeger to the five-string banjo when he visited Lunsford’s festival in 1936. Seeger was so entranced by the instrument that he set about learning to play it himself, later publishing a how-to manual and turning a whole generation of urban Americans on to the banjo.36

Female banjo players might seem out of the ordinary, but a close look at the historical record reveals that they were far from scarce. A large number of male musicians who would go on to pursue performance careers reported learning how to play the banjo from mothers, aunts, older sisters, and female community members. However, folklorists—when they sought to document female instrumentalists at all—often found that women were unwilling to play for them, instead deferring to the male musicians in the household. As a result, female banjo players have largely disappeared from the record, and many of their stories still wait to be told.37

Gribble, Lusk, and York

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Black string band of Gribble, Lusk, and York was widely regarded to be the best dance band in south central Tennessee. The trio maintained two separate repertoires: what they called “that old stuff,” which consisted of traditional fiddle tunes suitable for White square dances, and “sukey jumps,” which were blues-infused tunes for social occasions in the Black community.38 Whether playing at a public dance or on a street corner, fiddler John Lusk (1886-1969), banjo player Murphy Gribble (c. 1888-1950), and guitarist Albert York (c. 1887-1953) confined themselves strictly to “that old stuff,” which is also the repertoire that was recorded by folk revivalists in the last years of the band’s career. However, they left a few clues as to what their sukey jumps would have sounded like.

Gribble, Lusk, and York were the grandsons of Jeff Lusk, an enslaved fiddler born around 1820. Jeff Lusk was the property of Scots-Irish landowner William Lusk and, as was often the custom, took his surname for himself and his children. In the 1840s, Jeff Lusk was sent to New Orleans to receive training on his instrument—a common practice and worthwhile investment on the part of the enslaver, given the important role that enslaved fiddlers played as dance musicians.39 John Lusk and Albert York were the children of Jeff Lusk’s son Joe (Albert took his name from the neighboring White slave owner Uriah York). Murphy Gribble was the son of John’s daughter Mary Mollie but also the grandson of White slave owner John Gribble, from whom he took his name.40 All members of the Lusk family, including the girls, played instruments—usually more than one. The members of Gribble, Lusk, and York were all multi-instrumentalists: John Lusk played fiddle, banjo, and guitar; Murphy Gribble played fiddle and banjo; and Albert York played guitar and banjo.41

Although they pursued music professionally, Gribble, Lusk, and York derived the bulk of their income from farming. According to census records, both John Lusk and Albert York were sharecroppers, living in small tenant cabins on White-owned land, while Murphy Gribble was a landowner.42 However, oppressive economic structures made it difficult for small-scale farmers to survive, and it is not surprising that the trio would have taken every opportunity to earn extra money. Despite their local popularity, the band never recorded professionally. As Black participants in the Appalachian string band tradition, they would have been overlooked by commercial field agents in the 1920s and generally excluded from radio broadcast opportunities in the 1930s. However, they were finally recorded by Margot Mayo and Stuart Jamieson for the Library of Congress in 1946, just four years before Gribble’s death, and in 1964, folklorist Ralph Rinzler recorded John Lusk playing with his son Duncan. For this reason, a valuable recording exists of the 20th century Black string band tradition—a tradition that, while centuries old, had gone into decline as Black musicians turned to other genres of music-making.

One of the tunes captured by Mayo and Jamieson in 1946 was “Altamont,” a typical square-dance number that seems to derive from the Black string band tradition. When Jamieson recorded the band for a second time in 1949, he captured the fiddle and banjo parts independently, offering an interesting glimpse into the various components of the string band texture. Although today this tune is played by musicians throughout Appalachia, Gribble, Lusk, and York were the first to record it. The tune is named after the town of Altamont, which rests on the Cumberland Plateau near the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Like so many tunes used for dancing, “Altamont” has two sections of equal length, each of which is repeated in performance. The A strain is in a high range, played on the upper strings of the fiddle, while the B strain is in a low range. In the Mayo and Jamieson recording, the band carries on repeating these two strains for over four minutes—probably a habit, given that they would have played the tune even longer when accompanying dancers. The fact that “Altamont” is indistinguishable from square-dance tunes collected from White performers suggests that the distinction between musicians of different races is largely artificial. The heritage of square dancing has deep roots in the Black community, and “Altamont” might have first been played for Black dancers.43


Gribble, Lusk, and York "Altamont"

By the 1940s, however, Black dancers were mostly interested in more modern-sounding music. During his 1949 session, Jamieson captured a performance of “Easy Rider,” a tune representative of the sukey jump type that Gribble, Lusk, and York would have played at Black celebrations. Rinzler’s 1964 recording of Lusk and his son is of much higher quality than Jamieson’s, showing how “Easy Rider” can be distinguished from “Altamont” on several fronts. The Rinzler recording uses a circle-of-fifths harmonic progression that is typical of ragtime but unheard of in traditional square-dance music. It also features uneven, swinging rhythms in the fiddle—another Black musical characteristic. Finally, it has only one strain, which Lusk repeats many times with minor variations. It is easy to imagine that this type of music accompanies quite a different type of dancing than does “Altamont.”

Visit Gribble, Lusk, and York: Rural String Band Music from Warren County, Tennessee (external website) for more.

Manco Sneed

Every Appalachian fiddler has a unique style, but some are especially distinctive. Such is the case with Manco Sneed (1885-1974), a fiddler and banjo player from Jackson County, North Carolina. While most Appalachian musicians practiced their art within a community, Sneed found himself isolated at an early age, with few opportunities to collaborate with other musicians or even to play for dances. The result was that he developed an unusual, highly intricate style that has no immediate comparison.

Sneed’s father, John, was the son of an English trader and a Cherokee woman. John was also an expert fiddler, and he cultivated a love of music in all of his children. When Sneed was twelve, his family moved west to Graham County, North Carolina, where he encountered the fiddler J. D. (Dedrick) Harris, who originally came from Flag Pond, Tennessee, and had a noteworthy career as a contest winner and recording artist. The two played together constantly, with Sneed backing Harris on the banjo. Sneed later reported that he had acquired nearly a quarter of his vast repertoire from Harris. As a teenager, Sneed also had the opportunity to play with several other fiddlers of considerable renown, and it seems likely that he would have found opportunities as a dance musician and “hillbilly” artist in his own right.

However, when Sneed was eighteen years old, his father moved the entire family to the Qualla Boundary of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ lands of the Great Smoky Mountains. Sneed found no musicians with similar interests in his new community and was seldom called upon to play for dances. Instead, he took to fiddling for his own entertainment, elaborating on the tunes he had learned as a youth to create complex solo meditations. It was reported that, at the height of his talent, Sneed could play for hours without repeating a tune. Unfortunately, his playing was not recorded until he was in his seventies and was discovered by the revivalist community, at which point his skill and memory had both diminished. In 1959, folklorist Peter Hoover recorded twelve of Sneed’s tunes, and others captured a few more. These recordings, however, provide a mere echo of what must have been some of the most extraordinary fiddling ever to sound in Appalachia.44

Sneed’s playing captivated a generation of revivalist fiddlers, as Tennessee fiddler Joseph Decosimo aptly describes: “His playing is filled with nuance. Bowed triplets, an ornament heard on field recordings of an older generation of Appalachian fiddlers, adorn his playing. His fingers elaborate captivating melodies with intricately tangled cascades of notes. The location and pitch of his notes shift in confounding, powerful ways. There are bad notes and offness in his playing that make it supremely appealing to a handful of contemporary players.”45 All of these characteristics are on display in “Snowbird,”46 a tune attributed to Cherokee fiddler Junaluska and named for a Cherokee community in western North Carolina.47 This crooked tune is decidedly inappropriate for dancing: The A and B strains have different numbers of beats, and neither contains the typical phrasing of a square-dance tune.


Manco Sneed "Snowbird"

Clyde Davenport

Clyde Davenport (1921-2020) was born in Wayne County, south-central Kentucky. Like so many other Appalachian musicians, he attended to his own musical education. At the age of nine, he built a fiddle out of boards taken from a barn, stringing his bow with hair from the family mule. Within hours, he was able to imitate tunes that he had heard his father play. He later built his own banjo out of a wagon wheel and groundhog hide and learned to play that instrument as well. Davenport would build instruments throughout his life, making a career out of fiddle construction and repair, although his primary income came from manual labor in an automotive factory and farming.48

Davenport was revered as a repository of very old tunes—some 200 of them—which he had learned from his father, grandfather, and members of the community. Much of his father’s repertoire in turn came from a fiddler named Will Phipps, who was born in 1829 (and, according to local legend, was buried with his fiddle).49 Although Davenport’s repertoire was passed down to him through generations, he derived his style from Kentucky fiddler Leonard Rutherford, whose smooth playing he revered: “It was just like [his bow] was greased. There wasn’t a scratch or a noise of no kind. Just clear as a bell.”50 As a White teenager, Davenport played for dances every Saturday night, usually with one of his brothers backing him on the banjo. Later he booked a daily appearance on a radio program in Muncie, Indiana, but he never pursued a career as a professional musician, and he also never competed in fiddling contests.51 In fact, he gave up music altogether at the age of thirty-five and did not play again for nearly twenty years.

Beginning in the 1970s, however, a string of folk revivalists visited Davenport in order to learn and record his tunes, and in 1992, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship. One of Davenport’s best-loved tunes is “Five Miles From Town,”52 which he learned from his father. “Five Miles From Town” is a crooked tune with two strains of unusual and unequal length. Davenport plays with a fluidity that is seldom heard from Appalachian fiddlers, connecting one note to the next with little interruption.


Clyde Davenport "Five Miles From Town"

Conclusion

Instrumental banjo and fiddle music in Appalachia takes a lifetime to explore. Indeed, one cannot fully understand fiddle and banjo music without becoming involved as a practitioner. Learning to play the fiddle enables an understanding of syncopated bowing patterns on a physical and gestural level to feel them instead of just to hear them. Acquiring some clawhammer technique reveals the strengths and limitations of the instrument, which determines its unique role in the banjo-fiddle partnership. After all, none of this music is intended for just listening. Dancing changes the way that the musician feels the rhythms of this music. It survived from generation to generation as a participatory practice that shaped and punctuated daily life.

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Bibliography

Adams, Greg C., and Chuck Levy. “The Down-Stroke Connection: Comparing Techniques Between the Jola Ekonting and the Five-String Banjo.” In Banjo Roots and Branches. Edited by Robert B. Winans, 83-110. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.

Beyer-Sherwood, Teresa. “From Farm to Factory: Transitions in Work, Gender, and Leisure at Banning Mill, 1910-1930s.” Oral History Review 33 (2006): 65-94.

“Big-Eyed Rabbit,” from Flowers in the Wildwood: Women in Early Country Music. Smith & Co, 2017. https://youtu.be/U_Cx7gkvneU

Conway, Cecelia. African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995.

Conway, Cecelia. “Mountain Echoes of the African Banjo.” Appalachian Journal 20 (1993): 146-60.

Decosimo, Joseph Edward. “Catching the ‘Wild Note’: Listening, Learning, and Connoisseurship in Old-Time Music.” PhD diss. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2018.

DjeDje, Jacqueline Cogdell. “The (Mis)Representation of African American Music: The Role of the Fiddle.” Journal of the Society for American Music 10 (2016): 1-32.

Eacker, Susan A., and Geoff Eacker. “A Banjo on Her Knee—Part I: Appalachian Women and America’s First Instrument.” Old-Time Herald 8 (2001).

“Five Miles from Town,” from Legends of Old-Time Music: Fifty Years of County Records. County Records, 2015. https://youtu.be/SwXXWMoUJTE

“Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss,” performed by Ashe County musician Ola Belle Reed. https://youtu.be/Xdy6qd89Wz4

“Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss,” performed by Samantha Bumgarner. https://youtu.be/DRzk5yEsA6s

Gibson, George R. “Black Banjo, Fiddle, and Dance in Kentucky and the Amalgamation of African American and Anglo-American Folk Music.” In Banjo Roots and Branches. Edited by Robert B. Winans, 223-55. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.

Goertzen, Chris. George P. Knauff’s Virginia Reels and the History of American Fiddling. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017.

Goertzen, Chris. Southern Fiddlers and Fiddle Contests. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008.

Henry, Linda L. “‘Some Real American Music’: John Lusk and His Rural Black String Band.” Gribble, Lusk, and York: Rural Black String Band Music from Warren County, Tennessee, March 18, 2021. https://www.gribbleluskandyork.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Some-Real-American-Music.pdf

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Jamison, Phil. Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

Marshall, Erynn. Music in the Air Somewhere: The Shifting Borders of West Virginia’s Fiddle and Song Traditions. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2006.

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Morgan-Ellis, Esther M., ed. Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Context. Dahlonega: University of North Georgia Press, 2020. https://ung.edu/university-press/books/resonances-engaging-music.php

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Pestcoe, Shlomo, and Greg C. Adams. “Banjo Roots Research.” In Banjo Roots and Branches. Edited by Robert B. Winans, 3-18. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.

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Pestcoe, Shlomo, and Greg C. Adams. “Zenger’s ‘Banger’: Contextualizing the Banjo in Early New York City, 1736.” In Banjo Roots and Branches. Edited by Robert B. Winans, 153-71. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.

Ruchala, James. “The Old Folks Danced the Do Si Do: Dancing in the Old-time Music Community of North Carolina.” Journal of American Culture 38 (2015): 39-50.

“Snowbird,” from Byard Ray, Manco Sneed, and Mike Rogers: Recordings from the Collection of Peter Hoover. Field Recorders Collective, 2015. https://fieldrecorder.bandcamp.com/track/snow-bird

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Thomas, Tony. “Why African Americans Put the Banjo Down.” In Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music. Edited by Diane Pecknold, 143-70. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

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Winans, Robert B. “Black Musicians in Eighteenth-Century America: Evidence from Runaway Slave Advertisements.” In Banjo Roots and Branches. Edited by Robert B. Winans, 194-213. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.

Wolfe, Charles K. “Samantha Bumgarner: The Original Banjo Pickin’ Girl.” Native Ground Books and Music, March 16, 2021. https://nativeground.com/samantha-bumgarner-original-banjo-pickin-girl/

Wolfe, Charles K. The Devil’s Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling. Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press, 1997.

End Notes

  1. Jamison, Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics, 45.
  2. Marshall, Music in the Air Somewhere, 23.
  3. Jabbour, “Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier,” 7.
  4. DjeDje, “The (Mis)Representation of African American Music,” 4.
  5. Wells, “Fiddling as an Avenue,” 138.
  6. Winans, “Black Musicians in Eighteenth-Century America,” 198-201.
  7. Wells, “Fiddling as an Avenue of Black-White Musical Interchange,” 142.
  8. Thompson, “Searching for Silenced Voices,” 70.
  9. Otto and Burns, “Black and White Cultural Interaction in the Early Twentieth Century South,” 411.
  10. Pestcoe and Adams, “List of West African Plucked Spike Lutes,” 46-49.
  11. Adams and Levy, “The Down-Stroke Connection,” 84.
  12. Pestcoe and Adams, “Banjo Roots Research,” 4-5.
  13. Ibid, 7-8.
  14. Pestcoe and Adams, “Zenger's ‘Banger,’” 157.
  15. Pestcoe, “The Banjar Pictured,” 173.
  16. Conway, African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia, 183; Gibson, “Black Banjo, Fiddle, and Dance in Kentucky,” 243-45.
  17. Pestcoe and Adams, “Banjo Roots Research,” 12.
  18. Winans, “The Folk, the Stage, and the Five-String Banjo,” 407-37.
  19. See Conway, “Mountain Echoes of the African Banjo”; Gibson, “Black Banjo, Fiddle, and Dance in Kentucky.”
  20. Thomas, “Why African Americans Put the Banjo Down,” 143-44.
  21. Goertzen, Southern Fiddlers and Fiddle Contests, 5.
  22. Goertzen, George P Knauff's Virginia Reels, 17.
  23. Decosimo, “Catching the ‘Wild Note,’” 14.
  24. Wells, “Fiddling as an Avenue of Black-White Musical Interchange,” 140.
  25. Beyer-Sherwood, “From Farm to Factory,” 78.
  26. For an in-depth exploration of Appalachian dance music, see Morgan-Ellis, Resonances, 450-57.
  27. Ruchala, “The Old Folks Danced the Do Si Do,” 41.
  28. Marshall, Music in the Air Somewhere, 11.
  29. Wolfe, The Devil’s Box, xv.
  30. Wolfe, “Samantha Bumgarner.”
  31. Eacker and Eacker, “A Banjo on Her Knee,” 22.
  32. “Big-Eyed Rabbit,” https://youtu.be/U_Cx7gkvneU
  33. Bumgarner, “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss,” https://youtu.be/DRzk5yEsA6s
  34. Reed, “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss,” https://youtu.be/Xdy6qd89Wz4
  35. Wolfe, “Samantha Bumgarner.”
  36. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, 239.
  37. Eacker and Eacker, “A Banjo on Her Knee,” 20.
  38. Henry, “Some Real American Music,” 7.
  39. Ibid, 10.
  40. Ibid, 9-10.
  41. Ibid, 16-17.
  42. Ibid, 20.
  43. Jamison, Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics, 40.
  44. Owen, “Manco Sneed and the Indians.”
  45. Decosimo, “Catching the ‘Wild Note,’” 189.
  46. Ray, et al., “Snowbird.” https://fieldrecorder.bandcamp.com/track/snow-bird
  47. Stecoah Valley Center for the Cultural Arts, “Celebrating the Cherokees of Graham County.”
  48. National Endowment for the Arts, “Clyde Davenport.”
  49. Decosimo, “Catching the ‘Wild Note,’” 2.
  50. National Endowment for the Arts, “Clyde Davenport.”
  51. Titon, “Clyde Davenport.”
  52. “Five Miles From Town.” https://youtu.be/SwXXWMoUJTE