 But, if anybody wants to contribute while we go or add something, everyone's welcome. This is not like a scholarly talk or anything like that. I am Kyle Creason, and I'm the technology librarian here at the library in Boone, North Carolina. Do you mind knowing where that is? And in Durham, but that's not in the mountains. And then lived all over the... It's in the North Carolina mountains. Boone is a little over... What we'll be talking about is more in the southwestern North Carolina mountains, which are even higher. Tallest mountain in North Carolina is sixty-seven hundred feet. Oh, okay. It's Vermont to shame, huh? These aren't mountains. Well, I am a flat metal. But I don't get mad about... People I know get mad about it are from the Rockies. And Alps. Well, I just finished a book about the Everest, one of the Everest expeditions. Or there, yeah. So we won't talk about it. We won't talk about the height of mountains. They're calling mountains here. And so, yeah, so, from the North Carolina mountains, and one of the... Tonight we'll be talking about sort of approaching this subject from three people, three subjects, like subjects from that area, Doc Watson, Baskham Lunsford, and Samantha Bumgarner. A lot of people don't know about Samantha, and you'll be excited to learn about her. And I grew up, like down the road from Doc Watson, so I grew up... He's probably the most famous of these people, and one of the more famous kind of old-timey musicians, even though he didn't want to play old-timey music, but that's part of the story. Oh, no. He was into rockabilly. Oh, that's funny. But so I grew up going to, like, fish fries or gathering and stuff, and he'd be playing. So I thought everybody could play like that. Unfortunately, they can't. No one can, actually. So yes, so I got a... But it was a lot of fun, you know, and it was nice. I lived in California a long time, later on, and whenever he would be on tour, I'd always go out and see him because, you know, he remembered me. He was a very brilliant person, knew so many different things. I used to go when I was in college at Appalachian State for a while. His brother owned a... I guess he would call it a vacuum repair shop. I don't know, that's what he did, but they did other things in there, and Doc would be in there a lot. So I was able to spend time with him, and it was really special and nice. But anyway, so that's kind of what, you know, I was, I guess, still... I'm glad that this isn't cultural appropriation or whatever, right, for me to talk about the stuff. So yes, so you wanted to introduce... Sure, sure. So I'm Steve Lott-Speach, and I know many of you, and I'm the planning and sewing director for the town of Waterbury, been here for quite a long time. And I have some roots in the southern Appalachians. I'll see if I can be, like, a little bit like Kyle here, but I'm not. But so I'm originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, as my grandfather would say, but I had ancestors. My dad's dad was from eastern Tennessee, sort of on the other side of the Blue Ridge, and the Smokies from where Kyle is from. And then another branch of my family was from Vermont, from southern Vermont. My great-great-grandfather was from West Townsend, Vermont. That's where my parents are, but they're not anymore. So he migrated to Cincinnati to seek his fortune and did pretty well. And so that's where the two families, those two families, met up, but then I moved to upstate New York and went to summer camp in Vermont, and that's where I really started discovering music, and my brother and sister played folk music, and my parents would take us to see Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and all these great people. But at summer camp, we really had a draw to the music of the southern Appalachians. To date you, but when was that? That would have been 1963. That would be right in that time. Yes. So we would take songs from the southern Appalachians, and we would change the words. So my homes across the Blue Ridge Mountain became my homes across the Saltash Mountain because we looked out on Saltash Mountain, and we were at the Saltash Mountain camp. And that good old Mountain Dew became that Saltash Mountain Dew. We'd make root beer, had a little kick to it because we fermented it in big trash barrels and then bottled it up for our big fair. So we had a group, and then we had dances, and then my interest in music evolved. So that's kind of my root, and yeah. So here we are. And I've been enjoying this music, mostly stealth-taught, had a lot of great friends. I am also a huge fan of Doc Watson. I first saw him at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. That's where I went to high school and sat on the grass. He was like for me to Judy or Rachel and up on a little podium or a little platform and I was just like, wow. So I want to play like that. Well, you know how that is, but at any rate. And many other great musicians that I've had the privilege of meeting some of them and learning their music. And I also learned a lot from records, and we're going to talk about some of these old characters and records and things like that. So a little bit of musicology, but a lot of stories. So with that, take it away. I also neglected to say, so I'm not a total corporate bagger. My wife grew up here. I just wanted to point out, who does that look like, that fellow there? Fifteen years ago, maybe. Exactly, doesn't it? So yes. So there's Mountain. So that's Doc Watson. Like I said, we're going to look at this stuff sort of for three people. That's Baskham Lunsford. Has anybody heard of him before? I like his shoes, Kyle. He's fancy. And we don't know why he is fancy. That was very, very, very important to him to always look... Dapper. Dapper, for a specific reason. He, well, we'll get into it about him. And then Samantha Bum Garner. She's a super amazing person and woman that we'll learn a little bit about. Not as well known, of course, but known in certain circles very well. And we'll find out some of the things that she did. There aren't many pictures of her, not a lot of information online. That's why she was said to be an extremely joyous and always laughing woman. Maybe not when people had a camera in her face. I was just really looking for the smiles. There might be some. So the area we're talking about a little bit about. This is what I guess is considered Southern Appalachian Mountains. This is a picture, you can see the counties of the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame. And then sort of we're Baskham and these people. This area, I mean the mountains of North Carolina for the east coast are very high. There were very, very thick in growth and all kinds of stuff. So it was like that was the poorest, most isolated part of America for a long, long time. Also, there are I think over like more than 23 Native American tribes in North Carolina. Cherokee were sort of near this area. Still a lot of them there. You know the sad story of why a lot of them are not removed, which is not a happy time. But this place was so kind of like isolated for a long, long time. There was a lot of intermingling between the Europeans who settled there were mostly Anglo-Irish, Scots-Irish. Like they have a Highland games right outside Asheville and things like that. So that sort of tradition of ballads was very strong there. And the tradition of Irish ballads is mostly known for without accompaniment in women singing them. And so all these people, we talk about their families, their doc's mom, these different people, knew all the old ballads. A lot of them had been slightly altered. If you've listened to any, there is a running theme of the ladies being done wrong and then a ghost getting the guy or somebody getting the guy. And I don't think, you know, that was not by mistake. A lot of the originals were that way. But many more of the ones that had sort of evolved in this area came to be known. You know, Omi Wise is a super famous. A lot of things where these young innocent ladies were, you know, what lied to and done wrong. And then they got their comeuppance. And so this kind of like, you know, storytelling, it's not fantasy world, but like, you know, expression of, these things have an expression of kind of what you would like to be able to do or just to, you know, sing the song saying this could happen to you. Because, you know, it's a very important thing, I think, to people. And so, we're going to do O Groundhog. Okay, let's do it. So this is a song we're talking about. Yeah, I could talk a little bit about it. So this is one of my favorite songs that I learned from the playing of Doc Watson. And so in the Southern Appalachians, the Woodchuck is Groundhog. And it's also called a whistle pig. Because you may have heard Woodchuck's whistle when they're, you know, alarming or something. That's what I knew it as. Whistle pig. Whistle pigs. Yeah. So, and we're going to talk about the whistle pig banjo here in a little while. So that's got it. They're everywhere down there. Yeah. So, but this is not a whistle pig banjo. It does have a skin head on it. It's a little temperamental, but it's in tune, so that's a good thing. We won't go into any of the jokes right now about banjos. But so this is one of the tunings that's popular in that part of the world. And it's a modal tuning. And so it gives you kind of that high lonesome sound. And we'll talk a little bit more about that, which really got popularized with Bluegrass, but really had its origin in old time country music. So this is O Groundhog. All right. And I'm going to finger pick this one. And then the other songs are going to be claw hammer or frailing style. So you get a few different styles, a couple different styles here. Oh, shoulder up a gun and whistle off a dog. Shoulder up a gun and whistle off a dog. We're off to the backwoods to catch a groundhog. Oh, ground bear a sal with a 10 foot pole. Gonna twist the whistle pig out of his hole. Oh, ground with a sneaker and a grin. Here comes Sal with a sneaker and an axe and a skillet and the butters and a churn. And you say the hide, eat the meat and you say the hide. Best shoestrings I ever tied. Oh, ground, you have to sing it yourself. So I'll just talk a little bit about Doc Watson just because that's kind of my entry into this. And then I think probably most of the people up here and just in general these days know a lot of this music through him and back. But it's hard to imagine a time when Doc's sort of guitar and Appalachian roots weren't part of the American musical fabric. So many people were inspired by him and turned on to him back, especially during the folk revival, which you know when you were saying you saw him, 63, which there was an initial kind of discovery of this music in the 30s. This one has happened again with the college students and things in the early 60s. And we'll kind of look at Doc through the lens of that. When him and his father-in-law, Gaither Carlton came off the mountain to New York City. They're invited to New York City to give some concerts. There's Doc Super Young. He was blind his whole life. Wasn't born blind. He had, I can't remember, he got a bad flu or something and it made him blind when he was two, remember? So it was hard to figure out, he farmed and did all these things, but it's hard possibly to excel at that. He was sent off to school to blind for a little while and didn't really like it. He was home sick so he came back home and that wasn't up near where he was from. But his father-in-law, Gaither Carlton, was a great fiddle player. Now, not great in the sense of famous or known anywhere else outside of those areas, but he was really good. And so Doc grew up in that tradition. His mom, so that was an album that was recorded. I think it was Ralph Rensler who was going through that area looking for musicians and things. And so they recorded at his house and it's a really awesome album. It didn't get released till later so this wasn't part of that influential time of what happened with the folk revival and things. But his mom seems like super beautiful, really high, kind of on some ballads about, you know, often men. And then his brothers in here and Doc and Gaither and all this kind of thing. But one of the interesting things about this music and why, you know, this kind of magical thing happened in terms of this music sprouting from Syria was that Scott's Irish balladry. European instrumentation, but of course the banjos from West Africa. And so a lot, so just reading things from my own interest and, you know, reading things for this and things. So many of the musicians who ended up being very influential in changing things from that area especially were kind of troublemakers, I guess you'd say. And always sneaking away and wanting to go see what was going on in the, you know, Shackway over there where it seemed like they were having a hell of a lot more fun than over there at his house. And this is, you know, most of them sneak away and the first time they saw a banjo, not Doc because he's older but back in say the 20s and 30s were African American black musicians who some of them were lost to history and some were not. But like people like Doc Boggs and these people said, you know, I learned the instrument from my dad and he was doing a thing that was alright. I didn't want to play like him and I saw this guy and, you know, changed music and was sort of, and so all these things coming together. Same thing with the Cherokee and Native American people. Like a lot of these people, when you're so poor like that, there's so much kind of overlap that there were things within that that were very influential. But what became part of old time music banjo was using these instruments and the percussiveness of it and, you know, sort of these African rhythms and stuff. And it, you know, created this, you know, but ultimately through all these evolutionary steps created this kind of music which couldn't have happened without all these different type of people in this isolated place. This is Doc and Gayther Carlton. I don't know if that's their place or who knows. This was when they were initially going around in Ralph Rinsler, I think it was, going around and just capturing. He didn't know what he was going to release and just capturing things. This was not released, I don't think until somewhat recently. It was lost and then it was found. But Doc says about this specific thing. They came to record these more old timer type guys, Clarence Ashley, Gayther Carlton. And Doc was just there. He tried out to see if like maybe he was good enough to like maybe have a record or who knows what. But he only wanted to play rockabilly and rock and roll and stuff. Like he didn't think, he didn't understand why anyone would listen to the old stuff. So that's what he initially played and tried to play on his electric guitar and stuff like that. Like he thought, you know, he wanted to be like, you know, the rockabilly guys. Eventually, well Gayther said that Doc knows this stuff. He's a better player than me in all this, but Doc, you know, once again was like, you know, just didn't, you know, which happens all the time, didn't think that people outside of there would be interested. And when he played, he got very excited and then ultimately invited Doc and Gayther Carlton to come up to New York to perform at the NYU School of Education and at a club called Blind Lemons, which closed the week after Doc and them were there. But that was the first time, my understanding that they came down and like the new generation of people kind of heard this music again. Because, you know, the young people, I don't think we're as interested in the real old guys. I don't know, but I wasn't around then. But my understanding is that Doc and Gayther came and it was almost like a historical, ethno-anthropological kind of act maybe, you know, to play at the NYU School of Education and sort of that kind of thing. I don't know if they knew. Doc certainly didn't know. He was in shock. But that there was this kind of world of city kids who were looking for kind of the roots, you know, the roots of things. So that's what he gave them. But, you know, the stories that I had read about and heard was that he was kind of amazed that these like people from New York City who have all this stuff wants to listen to this stuff, you know, it worked out for him over time. And so at that, those two concerts was a guy named Peter Siegel who was 18 years old. This guy, Peter Siegel, ended up founding the Non-Such Explorer series, became head of A&R at Polydor and like produced all these famous records. But he was 18 at the time and he actually recorded these two shows. I don't think they were planning on recording them otherwise, but he, you know, had that vision, I guess, of capturing this stuff. And he said in an interview today, there are all these great flat picking guitarists that we know about. Clarence White, Tony Rice and all kinds of people. Billy Strings now, super famous. But at that time, nobody outside of the Southern Appalachians had ever heard a folk guitar play like that. Like it was a supposedly new thing. In folk music, the guitar was always an accompanying instrument, which was usually strummed in a certain type of way. So when Doc Watson showed up and played it in his way, do you have a way of, what did you describe, that was maybe a little different? He was playing fiddle tunes on the guitar. And he's so fast and just bringing it to life. And like if you listen to them, it's so clear and it sounds like it's more than one instrument. And I said like, yeah, it's like a fiddle, but it's a guitar playing and these kind of things. So it wasn't just sort of strumming, like filling it out and keeping time and things. And so these are some pictures, some more pictures that they got during that time at their house. That's Clarence Ashley. Yeah, and do one of his songs. But he taught them and played with them a lot there. This is then with Doc's brother Arnold. This is a record that came out probably, I think it's not 63, 64 maybe? Which was I think it, that was really influential probably at that time, right? These two records I learned a lot of them. That's closer up with them. And then you have another song that you want to go into. So this is whistle pig banjo. That's what they look like sort of they're a little bit different because the skins I guess are not as big, right? So he got a whistle pig banjo right there. It's my first banjo. I studied at a place called the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. I still study blacksmithing so I used to work as a blacksmith but not a farrier. It was a revival of that. John C. Campbell Folk School kind of brought back this artisan artist blacksmithing type thing. So I went there, printed to a number of people and would make like these little pieces that would go on the gates like at Colonial Wimsburg. And then all these rich people started getting like these gates where I would help these older guys who were making it like they'd make like raccoons and all kinds of cool stuff out of like iron, forge weld and stuff like that. But anyway, so John C. Campbell Folk School is a place where that was keeping this kind of culture alive and everything like that. And they had classes, that's the first, well I'd seen them before but I didn't know what they were. But I made a whistle pig banjo there and there's a couple guys I made friends with who were sort of doing that and it's kind of cool but they're kind of keeping that old sort of culture alive. And he has one. So here it is. So this is my whistle pig banjo and the reason it's called a whistle pig banjo is because this is a groundhog or whistle pig hide. And it's stretched over a piece of a coffee can. So if I were to take the back off the banjo, you'd see the coffee can in there with the hide on it. And this banjo I got in about 1968. And the song you're doing is the cuckoo bird. This is a cuckoo bird. So this is Clarence Tom Ashley's song or when he popularized. And so this goes more on the gambling side of things. So just a little more. And I'll say this is from Harry Smith's anthology of American Folk music which was a very influential series of records that came out in the early mid 50s I think. I had it but not from then. Super cool but this was kind of the Bible of a lot of the people who then got really into this music that was released back there. But anyway this is sort of how the little cards or the print looked for the different songs. So this is the one for cuckoo bird that he's performing here. So this is a fretless banjo. So you'll see it's more like a fiddle, violin or other fretless type instrument. And so comment that the banjo came from West Africa with the slave, the people who were enslaved in this country. And originally it was probably a gourd with a neck and maybe two or three or four strings. So the Scotch Irish added the fifth string here, so hence the five string banjo, as a drone. So they like the drone sound and the pipes, bagpipes. And remember the fifth string because when we talk about Lovely Aunt Samantha that'll come back. So this is the cuckoo. And there's different versions of this but this is the Clarence Tom Ashley version, so. He's an 18 year old at what he said about them. He said those two concerts and the recordings that were made happened at a particular time in Doc's career in sort of America's change. When Doc, and we were just finding out that people actually liked to hear the whole time music. You know, he and some of the guys he played with they just didn't believe it. The transformation in American culture was happening and a growing number of city kids were looking to find the roots of American music. Doc had been living it and went on to become an almost impossible bridge that we couldn't believe between the old and the new. And sort of that's what he represented there. So that was in 62. Now we're going to go back 40 years and learn. I'll talk a little bit about Baskham Lunsford because he was someone who his dad was a teacher. He grew up in that area and he knew lots and lots of people. He also had this very special gift or vision for maybe understanding what was happening. There was a lot of changes in the 20s, even teens 20s in America. And so he's an interesting person regarding this stuff because his first music collecting trips when he started really being interested in capturing it. Because he could see that it was going to be overrun and sort of basically go away eventually. Now he didn't have any resources or any ways to do anything so he used to go around on horse pack and write them down. Like he didn't have recording or anything like that but he would go out and collect stories, ballads and these kind of things. Within his life, right, so he used to go around to the hills and stuff and record that way. His life was such and you'll learn why he kind of got well known over time. But that was in the early 20s and by 1939 he was performing at the White House for President Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt really liked him a lot and the King and Queen of England. And in 49 he was the American representative at the International Folk Festival in Venice. So he like sort of could probably never imagine getting to Italy and all these things. But then 25 years later or something, there he was, the center of a lot of this stuff, which is kind of interesting. His father being a teacher was an important part of that because his father was interested in the old stories, old ballads and things like that and his dad gave him a fiddle. One of the things about Baskham-Lunsford, you can't find a picture of him when he's not like what they call clean. Even in Turkey Creek, I don't know where he got the suit, probably wouldn't be in Turkey Creek, but he was because he had a certain reason for always presenting this way. And whenever he put on folk festivals and all this stuff, he found it very important for the people in them who were from that region to present themselves that way. Does anybody have a guess as to why? He was, did not like all the stereotypes about his people and popular culture, the hillbillies and the way all that was because he knew it was ridiculous and hurtful. And so he found, like I said, he started giving lectures and performances on North Carolina folklore, poetry and songs. And this is way before even the people came down from Columbia University and stuff to find him. The late teens, he was born in 1882, so it was even probably in the like 1908s and stuff. He always appeared in a finely pressed suit, white tie, tails and a banjo in hand because he found it important to demonstrate the worth and dignity he saw in the place and the people. And this was the harbinger of his lifelong battle against insulting stereotypes of mountain society and culture and the demeaning portrayal of hillbillies and popular culture. So that's why he was going around like this. He didn't grow up with a lot of money. He ended up going to getting in Trinity College, which became Duke and getting a law degree. But he didn't become a lawyer. He like was a honey farmer or something. But I think these were excuses to do this stuff. And you know, so he was really a people person. And so he would go out and just walk for my understanding months and staying people's houses just all over the hills recording this stuff. And there's a number of like novels based on sort of based on that idea and some of this kind of stuff. But like the wondering, not preacher, then that's what was before, but the wondering sort of story collector, ballad collector, song collector. In 1924, a guy from Atlanta, Polk Brotman came and was looking to make a record with somebody. And he recorded Bascom singing a song, Jesse James, and I wish I was a mole in the ground, which we'll do a little later. And then as it was discovered that he was out collecting these things and people started getting a little bit to know about it a little more. Robert Winslow Gord and a writer and collector who later went on to found the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress came down and I guess met him. And that really gave Bascom Winsford a lot more belief in what he was doing and that there was something that he could do with it. And so in 1927, he founded what was considered the first folk festival in Asheville. Here he is playing when he was younger with some people. He's always fancy. So this is a, from the brochure, this is deep research. Then one of the first brochures, I don't think they had them for the first festivals, but this is like early 30s. It was called the Mountain Dance and Folk Festivals in Asheville, North Carolina. You'll enjoy the visit to the land of the sky. So obviously there's some marketing behind it. That's probably why he was allowed to do it and they gave him this place. This is really cool. So I found this late in one internet research thing. This was the way he would send out to people to invite him. This is like a trifold brochure thing. So about sundown the first week of August, you know, it would be. And this is just bigger. That's like the sort of stamp, the annual Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. So as you guys know, like folk festivals exploded later on and it's just amazing. They might have had them in Europe. I don't know. I mean, so I always say it's the first folk festival in America, North America. This was on the inside of the front cover, the mountain ballad country, wherein lives the tradition of the dancing and music, which the people bring each year to the famous Asheville Folk Festival. So you can see the map of where all this stuff happened. Asheville. This is like, it's, you know, I guess it's marketing copy for the time, but it's much more poetic than you would probably get now. Now it'd be like, you know, five words or something. But that's sort of some of it. I'm trying to get to the music and go through this. So, but anyway, this was a really beautiful, you know, kind of thing. I thought it was amazing. So now what do you want to do? Just the instrumental? Yeah. Yes. So Steve's going to play some instrumental music. And I'm just going to slowly go through a few of these pictures I found. So a lot of these pictures I found in the Library of Congress digital collection. A lot of them were taken by Alan Lomax in the early 30s, which is an extra kind of interesting thing. He was someone who came down and got turned on to it and was super, you know, excited about all this stuff and, you know, came down and documented a lot of these, the festivals. Yeah. So I thought it'd be fun just to play a few fiddle tunes on the banjo. And one of my favorite things to do with the banjo and you'll probably recognize these tunes. So some of them came over from Scotland and Ireland. And some of them were written here and became a real blend. And so for those of you who have, how many of you have square-danced or contra-danced? Probably a bunch of you. Great. So, you know, the fiddle tunes are geared around dances and, you know, the 16 bars that corresponded to the pattern of the dance. So the A part and the B part and so on. So the first one I'll do is not exactly from this area, but it's Arkansas Traveler, which is a familiar one. And then Soldier's Joy, which is one that came over from Europe. And then the last one is Whiskey Before Breakfast. And then when I play this for kids, I sing it as Juice Before Breakfast because I don't want to advocate that. That's not great even. Yeah. But who knows. So there's a whole story with Arkansas Traveler about the lost traveler and, you know, how do you get from here to Stowe and, you know, you can't. Yeah, they are from here. This is a Longwood system. Okay. Good. So the Arkansas Traveler is that the Arkansas Traveler was touring around and there was an old guy on the porch playing this fiddle tune and he only knew that one part. He just played over and over and over again. It was really boring. So the Arkansas Traveler said, hey, you know, there's a B part to that song. And the old guy said, oh, I didn't know that. So he said, here, give me your fiddle and I'll play you the B part. That's what Pete Seeger was never able to learn from his brother, Mike. But anyway. I was going to say, one of the things I found in the multiple sources, they said Baskin Robbins can give Pete Seeger's first fiddle. Yeah. Yeah. So let's keep it for breakfast. A song that became kind of the standard or the most known back in the day where old timey song was Good Old Mountain Dew. Baskin Munster wrote that. Pepsi made a lot of money. He doesn't mountain do the name. But yeah, he wrote that song. That's a cool thing. Do you want to go into mole on the ground? Sure. Sure. If your fingers are. Yeah. This is the original. OK. Yeah. So this is Baskin Lunsford. Lunsford or Lunsford? Lunsford. Lunsford. OK. More was his middle name. Lunsford, his banjo. He probably had a better. Good ear. Better ear than me. That's good. All right. So this is mole on the ground. And this is the traditional version. Here's the record, the original. I think so. OK. So I enjoy doing this with kids. With kids I do it as a zipper song where I zip in one animal and zip in another. And then I ask them what their favorite animal is. They tell me and I'll make up a verse on the fly. But this is more of the traditional one. There are a lot of songs about people men typically who are arrested. And this is one, and we'll do worried man blues a little later, which is another one about someone who ends up on the chain gang. OK. So this song is also about a couple and mannerments of ending up in the pen. So issues around that. Wish I was a lizard in the spring. I could hear but true love sing. Wish I was a lizard in the spring. Wish I was a little turtle down. Wish I was a little. So I'm going to try to go quickly into Samantha Bungarner here because she's probably a little less well known, but I think we'll be potentially the most appreciated in the room. One thing that I don't know if a lot of people know that women were quite often the most prevalent banjo players back in old days. For example, Ralph Stanley learned to play banjo from his mom, Lucy Smith Stanley. Clarence Ashley learned from his aunts, Earl Scruggs, never played a banjo until his sisters, Yula May and Ruby, he knows they're really good at it and made him want to learn. So it's a kind of thing. So Samantha Bungarner is from that area from Dillsboro, North Carolina, which is near Silva, which is small too. It's near Western Carolina University, sort of. She was the first person ever recorded playing a five-string banjo, and they considered possibly what they would call the first country music recordings. That's what a lot of people say. Asking Lunsford was a huge supporter of her and would always want her to play. She taught a lot of the people who ended up becoming famous banjo players, and she played fiddle with all of it. But a lot of the people who came up and became well-known from getting discovered discovered. She had a fair bit of that. She was known as the fiddling ballad woman of the mountains. Her maiden name was Samantha Bitticks, and her dad was a fiddle player named Ham Bitticks. I'm going to read a little couple of things she said. It's hard to find a lot of things, but I did find a really interesting interview with her. So I thought we'd do that. Let me show a couple more pictures. So this is Samantha Bungarner and Eva Davis. They are the ones who made these recordings. They got invited and went to New York City and recorded ten songs. One of the interesting things about that day, though, is that in the morning, Samantha Bungarner and Eva Davis were there cutting what became sort of known as the first banjo or string music records ever. And then in the afternoon, Bessie and Clara Smith came by and recorded some of the most famous blues records ever made. So there was a lot of power for women. What year was that? The day was April 23rd, 1924. At Columbia recording studio in New York. So that must have been something. So about her, when she started playing music, she said, I taught myself to play the banjo on an instrument that was a gourd with a cat's hide stretched over it and strings of cotton thread coated with beeswax. So they used to make those out of the African tradition probably, or they had gourds around, but that's probably where people had seen them. So that was like they'd call them the Tencent banjo. So a lot of people started with that. She didn't say who made it, but it was that kind of thing. She said the first contest I ever entered was in Canton, which is right outside Asheville. If you've ever been there, it stinks because there's a paper mill. So that's what Canton's famous for. Probably might not have been there. Where they were having a Fiddler's convention. Somebody entered me, and she was a child, I think, like 11 or 12. So somebody entered me in the contest. It was the first banjo contest I was ever in and I was nervous. I knew I couldn't hit a string. Besides, I had that old Tencent gourd banjo. And here I looked up and saw all these fine banjos coming out from Asheville, which was the big city. I wanted to leave, but they wouldn't let me go. I was trying to get out of there. I tell you, I was so nervous. I didn't know I was hitting the strings, but I won that contest and I've been winning them ever since. So I thought that was, you know, and she was, you know. So it's that kind of thing. They say that she used to rather play fiddle than eat and the other thing she had passion for was like the old timey stories and sort of mountain kind of stories. So she was a really sort of brilliant, well-known songwriter where she would weave the two, you know, get those stories in. And so a lot of the sort of, those sort of what became classical songs in the tradition were written by her. She was at Baskin-Lunsford's first festival, Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in 27. Here's another Pete Singer. I know you like Pete Singer news. Supposedly, I found this in two places, so I don't know. Folk Singer icon Pete Singer credited Samantha Bumgarner as his inspiration for playing the five-string banjo, saying that he learned the instrument after first hearing one played at the festival by what he called a mountain girl named Samantha Bumgarner. He said, upon arriving at that festival, I strolled up to the stage and saw a woman in a rocking chair plucking a banjo with a big smile on her face. She played the five-string banjo with such skill that I couldn't believe it. And so I guess he, I guess maybe got a lesson from Baskin-Lunsford or something like that. Sure, but I thought that was interesting. Anyway, so appearing at the festivals, she got a little bit of known and that record actually did a pretty decent, I guess. So there was a guy who got rich. He was a sort of a snake oil salesman who sold goat bladders for a reptile dysfunction and got rich or something. Named, oh, I forgot his name, but I don't think I put it in here. What would they do with the bladders? Probably put it where the dysfunction was. Because I don't know where else you're going to put it. Great question. So anyway, he invited her to come. So he had to get out of the East Coast, apparently, from some of the taxes. Ended up in Del Rio, Texas, where he bought a border radio station called XERA. And he wanted Samantha Bumgarner to come down there really bad. So this back then, and I guess this one, the radio station was so powerful, the broadcasting, 500,000 watts, that they could actually hear it back up in the North Carolina mountains, I guess. So people would sit around and listen to their banjo picking ballad woman all the time. Anyway, she played at Baskham's Festival up until 1959, so like 30 years or so. She was the one that Baskham Lunsford wanted to bring with him the work the most, and he did when they played for President Roosevelt and King and Queen and all that. So she was pretty well known, but then she went back to North Carolina and didn't get out much. But it became like a sort of a pilgrimage place for musicians to come down there, meet her, and have a lesson with her and stuff like that. This is one of the songs from that first recording session, Cindy and the Meadows. I think that's the first song, so that's considered the first five-string banjo song or first like any of this, all this kind of music record, I guess. Big Eye Rabbit. Eva Davis, she went with her and played here, but then she stopped playing. So she didn't, I mean she probably kept playing, but she didn't appear on any more records or anything like that. Samantha Bumgarner appeared on like the anthology, the Harry Smith anthology of folk music and some of these things that got well known. While Bill Jones was another, that's just Eva Davis. This is like the kind of stuff that would come out. This was, I think, with those records, and so they had a little bit of a tour and stuff, and so she got decently known, which like I said, you know, got her mixed up with this goat guy. But you know, they're paying, you gotta take. So in this book, Finding Her Voice, The Illustrated History of Woman and Country Music, Mary Buffwack and Robert Orman wrote, of all the female pickers of the 20s, the one who has the strongest link between Appalachian folk music and what became the commercial country music scene was Samantha Bumgarner. And Baskin-Lunsford called her the best all-around musician that I ever met. So that says a lot. Here she is again. She's smiling there. She's smiling there. She is smiling. Got a lot of instruments there. And the worried blues, worried man blues is what you're gonna play, which we're not 100% sure if that's this, but we're gonna say it is. For our purposes. Yes. Sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you there. No. Dodge all of the obstacles. This is the last song, too, because I know what's getting up there. Last one. So as I mentioned, I was privileged to go to concerts with my family and hear Pete Seeger and one of the groups that I heard was the Kingston Trio. My brother was a huge Kingston Trio fan. So I actually learned the Kingston Trio version of this song, which is probably the one that really got popular. But I think it dates back to Samantha and her song, Worried Man and the Blues. I'm pretty sure this was the original recording, but it's probably not. So I think it evolved. These lyrics goes back to that time, which is about someone who gets arrested and ends up on the chain gang, which was all too common for both black and white men. And, you know, they'd be, you know, hard labor for, in this case, 21 years, so building railroad. So at any rate, this is Worried Man Blues. It takes a worried man to sing Worried Song. It takes a worried, worried man to sing Worried Song. It takes a worried man to sing Worried Song. I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long. Off's the river and I lay down to sleep. Oh, I went across the river. I lay down to sleep. When I oh, had shackles on my feet. To sing Worried Song. Oh, it takes a worried, worried man to sing Worried Song. It takes a worried man to sing Worried Song. I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long. The shackles on my feet had 21 links of chain. Oh, the shackles on my feet had 21 links of chain. Oh, the shackles on my feet had 21 links of chain. Shackles on my feet had 21 links of chain. And on each link was initials of my name. Well, I asked the judge, tell me what's going to be my fine. Oh, I asked the judge, tell me what's going to be my fine. I asked that judge, tell me what's going to be my fine. Years on the Rocky Mountain Law. It takes a worried man to sing Worried Song. It takes a worried man to sing Worried Song. I'm worried now to the station. 21 coaches long. Oh, the train came to the station. 21 coaches long. Train came to the station. 21 coaches long. What I love is on that train and gone. I looked down the track as far as I could see. Oh, I went down the track as far as I could see. I looked down that track as far as I could see. Little bitty hand was waving after me. One should ask you who made up the song. One should ask you who made up the song. Tell me it was me. I sing it all day long. It takes a worried man to sing Worried Song. Oh, it takes a worried worried man to sing Worried Song. It takes a worried man to sing Worried Song. So the last little bit I'll do is I'm going to read something from the interview that I read. I'm Smitha Bumgarner and I think it sort of is appropriate here in Vermont. Sort of the sentiment she gives sort of is part of what I'm looking for and have here. So she said, I always know when fall is coming into these mountains, I see the early morning tendrils of wood smoke reaching from the neighbor's chimney and snow that aroma that assures a warm comforting hearth. In the next holla, they are harvesting the sorghum cane to make that dark-rich molasses which will drip off a cathead biscuit on another crisp fall morning. Fall is always the time for celebrating the end of harvest. The cans are full, the tobacco is hung in the barn, and I get called to play. Many a ho down these days. Summer's long hot days give way to the crisp, fragrant fall and the notion of readying for a hard winter. The black squirrels have been seen in these mountains for the first time in a long time and folks are stacking wood and getting ready for the snow that is bound to come. Fall also is the time when many of our country churches celebrate homecoming Sundays. Mama Sue will have her stack up filled with corn, green beans, and Oprah all from her garden. Aunt June will have her big pot of chicken and dumplings and there will be puddings and paisa pleni. Dinner will be spread out on the church lawn under the big oak trees. After a couple of cool glasses of freshly brewed tea the singers will adjorn to the choir loft to sing the old shaped hymns from the Christian harmony. My favorite is that old song French broad, higher over the hills, the mountain rise. There are summits tower towards the skies. I can still hear the high tenor pushing up toward our high mountains and so ultimately all this stuff is really about that like family, you know, locale sort of this kind of thing and everything that reached out to the broader world was a product of authenticity and the realness of that and that's what I think people were looking to find and they looked for this kind of music and stories and stuff. And that's sort of capturing that a little bit. And that's her. She's on this record. Did not pay Baskin-Lonford for that. Good old Mountain Dew. I read something. I couldn't find it again where he was not. He was kind of a perturbed about that. And that's her grave. It's in Dillsboro. And this is just a picture I found. That looks like the biggest whistle-pick binge I've ever seen. It is, and I just like her. That was a big roundabout. She looks like she's having fun. But that ain't Samantha. I'm going to be done. I think it was a neighbor of hers. So, I think that's it. Thank you guys. If anybody has any questions or anything they want to share, of course you can't. That gentleman looks a little like Sam Clowns that was sitting with... Way back here. I know who you're talking about. This... Bill Hinley, maybe? Hansley? I don't know for sure. I have no notes to the pictures, but... He was one of the other pictures. I think that is Fiddlin' Bill Hinley. That could be him, too. He's in a lot of these pictures. I think that's him, too, maybe a little older. Fiddlin' Bill Hinley, I think. But I'm not 100% sure. Fortunately, we're not... you won't be testing. Yes? There's both music from another part of America that is kind of... I don't know. I feel like Appalachian folk music is one of the most famous American music, so I'm wondering if there's a part somewhere else in the country. Well, in the South, I think Zydeco or French Cajun music, which... French Canadian music has some similar bits. I don't know if French Canadian fiddle music and stuff has as much of the African influence, but certainly Zydeco and a lot of the stuff coming out of New Orleans. I think this old-timey music is sort of super famous partly because of, like, country music comes out of it, bluegrass music. Even in that similar area, Piedmont blues is a type of blues that comes out of it and things. You know, and it's a fairly big area. But I think that aspect of how isolated they were for so long... I mean, it was the poorest place in this country for so long, and so they just didn't get out. I mean, it was ending when I was growing up, but there was a saying, like, the only way out was cars and guitars. Nascar... Nascar racing or stock car racing developed in that area. Originally from the moonshiners, bootleggers, to suit up their cars so they could, you know, get away from the feds. And then they needed something to do with these things, so they started driving them around, you know, in the red clay ovals. And so one of the first... I lived in the Piedmont of North Carolina for a long time, too, and there was this place we used to go in high school and stuff, which was one of the first race car tracks. That was carved in the woods. It was just red clay oval, and it is sort of overgrown, but there were some places you could get to that were hard to find. But that kind of thing, so that's why it's sort of like cars and guitars. Where was your shot? Of course, that changed somewhat and stuff, but... You should give a top-hunt to EVs in front of the road. I grew up, I always thought it was stupid to just drive around left and constant. But I heard, I mean, it's very big. But yeah, I mean, there's some crazy wrecks and stuff, but you know, I just... But I always loved the old stuff. Like, you know, like there's all these... The original stock car racers, 40s, 50s were crazy. Like, one guy drove backwards in the first Daytona 500 with a monkey in his car. Like, they were wild people. Because you know, it's dangerous. Like, it still is, but back then it was very dangerous. So there's all the... I actually wrote a... I worked in Hollywood for a while, I wrote a screenplay of dealing with that a little bit. Did not get produced or bought, unfortunately. But I think the answer to your question, Vermont certainly has a folk tradition. And I went to guard college and we would go to Contra Dances at my advisor's house and dance in his... I think it was like the old kitchen junket in the Southern Appalachians. And we would Contra Dance and Square Dance in the house. And I think that was part of a big tradition in Vermont of dancing. And it was more of the British Isles tradition here, less of the influence of Afro-American and Native American culture to some extent. But even though there were Native Americans here, of course. That was their social outlet. That was where you met hopefully your... There's gonna be your spouse all of it. There wasn't, you know, Rock Show to go to or Rave or something. That was the original Raves. So, Jilly, you have a question? How big was Shape Note? They did it. There were churches that did it. I found it, you know... I love it. I love it now. But I knew about it. Like, my grandma would do it. Yeah. They used to do Shape Note singing. I would go to their church sometimes and they'd be going like, you know, this and stuff. It's not good to listen to, but it's really fun to do. It was cool. At that age, I didn't appreciate anything, really. But, yeah, there was a fair bit. You know, that had tied out somewhat. People still are somewhat religious down there. There's still Shape Note down there. There still is. Yeah. And then, you know, there's a couple of movies. You know, there's small revivals of it sometimes. But I like going to the black churches. That's where, when I went to church, that's where I went. The music would go out. Like, you could go down eastern North Carolina, and there'd be like some of the best music you ever heard in the Hardee's parking lot or something like that. You know, like... It's kind of... Because, you know, those women mostly could just sing like crazy. If it was like first African Zionist, something you knew the music was good. Yeah. Any other questions? That's a different speech, though. It's a different presentation. Oh, I have one story. I've told Judy this story. So, I got a hand-me-down on guitar for my brother when I was about 11, and my own string guitar. And you mentioned the ballad of Jesse James. So, the first song I ever performed was my first gig, which was in a nursing home when I was 11 years old. I sang Jesse James. Cool. So, I think people really liked it. I'm sure they did. But your mom told you they did. Yeah. Yeah, he was a bad dude. Very few songs about, like, accountancy stuff. Like, the nice guy. Friendzone. No, one else. But you should write one. Friendzone. I'll give you that. I appreciate everybody. Yeah. Thank you so much.