Appalachian Blues

Blues from the mountains

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But even the catalogs made mistakes based on aural evidence. For example, Howard Armstrong's 1920 Vocalion sides "Knox County Stomp," and "Vine Street Drag" by the Tennessee Chocolate Drops was marketed as a "hillbilly record." According to McGhee, if you bought race records they would send you a race catalog; and if you bought a country record then you would get a country catalog:

It was all black blues and then they'd send you a country and western thing if you ordered some of that, like Jimmie Rodgers. Now Jimmie Rodgers got famous down in there because all of that was black stuff he would sing. And Carter Family records— we had lots of them down there, way down in Tennessee, because they used to buy them because they did a lot of spirituals. And they [were] big sellers for them with the black people. "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," all of that. (McGhee 1972)

McGhee, Jackson, and Edwards grew up listening to blues and old-time country and learning from both. This, in part, accounts for the racially mixed repertoire and style of Appalachian blues performers. But, as Edwards, Jackson, and McGhee also noted, black listeners found the so-called country music very familiar. It was, as McGhee said, "black stuff in the first place." However, whites' listening to and learning from blacks, and vice versa, predated the arrival of phonograph records through much of Appalachia. A white blues tradition is by no means unique to the Appalachian region, but Appalachian blues has an interracial, or perhaps non-racial, quality. Whether one sees this as blacks playing in a white style or as whites adapting African-American style, the fact remains that there is an overlap, just as there was in the earlier string band tradition.

Overall, Appalachian blues tradition is far more integrated than Delta or Texas blues. To be sure, bands like the Mississippi Sheiks had a repertoire suitable to either black or white audiences, and some Mississippi artists like John Hurt played with white musicians— in Hurt's case with fiddler Willie Narmour. But the blend of black and white tradition appears more prevalent in the mountains, probably due to the closer social interaction between blacks and whites in the region. Artists ranging from Howard Armstrong to Turner Foddrell make the point that despite the existence of Jim Crow, they grew up playing with white children of various ethnicities whose parents came to work the mines or railroad camps. This created opportunities for music to cross racial boundaries. In such camps blacks and whites often lived and worked in close proximity despite segregation. The list of Appalachian musicians who played for coal camps is quite extensive. Carl Martin from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, north of Gate City, also worked the coal camps, as did his partner Howard Armstrong. Armstrong later recalled that integrated bands, whether impromptu or professional, were not uncommon in the region:

Music was one medium where blacks and whites seemed to meet on very nice ground, common ground. Even in the small towns in Tennessee and different places like that, they did integrate when it came to playing music. Because I know, right up there in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, there was five people in this band. I think there were two blacks and three whites, and they were together. Played well together and everything else, and nobody looked askance at them. The guy was head of it, we called him Smitty. He was a piano player, Smith Carson, and he had another guy that played with him, a black guy. And they played for everything. And I've known several black musicians, you know, just like a fiddle player and banjo player would play with these whites. Maybe [there would] be two of them or three of them, or what not, but nobody paid it any mind at all. [Armstrong 1990]

Archie Edwards also noted that white neighbors would come to his father's dances:

White guys, not only one, but three or four, would come in there from time to time and ask my dad if they could stand inside the building there along the wall and watch them dance the square dance and listen to them pick the banjo. In other words, picking up on black culture. And so my dad said, "OK, if you want to." So they sat around and learned it, so later on in life they were square dancing and buck dancing and flat footing, too. (Edwards 1986)

John Jackson's father also played for both black and white dances:

He used to play for parties and stuff all around the county. He was the onliest black man I know that went up in the white areas and played for some of the parties up there, around the mountain there. Everybody knew him, and he did play for some white parties there, I do know he did. He used to play for square dances. That's what he was doing for these white fellows, playing dances and all like that. (Jackson 1999)

Blacks and whites learned from the same phonograph records. They participated in integrated musical events. They drew from a shared string-band tradition. And black professionals performed before mixed or white audiences. All of these conditions laid the groundwork for a more homogeneous, integrated black and white tradition. This is not to say that Appalachian blues is corrupted by white folksong values or that it is less "African" than other blues styles. It simply means that among the diverse forms of Appalachian blues we find a variety of blends—the result of merging African and European musical values in ways that made sense to local musicians.

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