I came to the banjo in the early months of 1994, at the age of 19, when I saw a PBS broadcast of the documentary The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time! (1981). In addition to being entranced by depictions of the banjo in the hands of the great Pete Seeger (1919—2014), I was also deeply moved by what I felt to be a positive sense of community projected in the film. It was a major turning point as I became transfixed, learning about how the power of music shaped various social movements in the 20th century. Within the next year, after getting my own banjo, I discovered that the instrument could serve as a gateway to learning about American history in ways that I had never before experienced.
Now, after 24 years of chasing the banjo and its long, complex history, I often reflect on the incredible people I’ve collaborated with through the years, building on that sense of community that attracted me to the banjo in the first place. I’ve enjoyed many rich opportunities to learn from a great diversity of individuals and traditions in the Americas, West Africa, and Europe. Here in the United States, some of the most significant people I’ve known in the banjo world are associated with the annual Banjo Gathering. Formerly called the Banjo Collectors Gathering, this event has informed many aspects of my life as an archivist, ethnomusicologist, and musician.
Since 1998, this informal network of collectors, researchers, instrument builders, and musicians has shaped the way people understand and appreciate the banjo’s deep links within the greater American experience. What makes the Banjo Gathering distinct from other banjo-centric events is that its founders – banjo collectors and scholars Peter Szego and Jim Bollman – have maintained the event to focus entirely on the banjo as a historical, cultural, and design object.
Each Gathering has met in a range of locations along the east coast with geographic significance to banjo history, such as Rochester, Boston, Long Island, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Williamsburg, Virginia. This year, the Banjo Gathering is celebrating its 20th anniversary (1998—2018) on November 1—4 by convening at Bristol’s Birthplace of Country Music Museum (BCMM). Here, registered participants will experience the Gathering’s signature activities while exploring the banjo’s intersections with the museum’s mission to illuminate Bristol’s role in the birth and development of country music.
One of those signature activities is an “expo,” which will occupy the museum’s Special Exhibits Gallery. In this space, attendees will display instruments and ephemera predominantly from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and they will also get the chance to network and to talk in a more casual atmosphere.
The “expo” at the 2016 Banjo Gathering: Display tables filled with banjos (left); attendees Andy Fitzgibbon, Kevin Enoch, and Richard Jones-Bamman discussing a banjo during a break between presentations (top right); attendee Chris Witulski visits display tables filled with banjos and related instruments (bottom right). Photographs courtesy of Kristina Gaddy / Banjo Gathering
The Gathering also provides a platform for the latest scholarship, talks, and panel discussions on banjo history. As outlined on the Banjo Gathering website, the event welcomes presentation proposals that cover:
* The art and craft of banjo-making from early gourd instruments to contemporary banjos
* The banjo’s role in the early recordings and music and dance in genres such as minstrelsy, jazz, country, old time, and bluegrass
* The American experience through banjo history, including the African Diaspora; America’s history of slavery, racism, and resistance; and social class and cultural stereotypes
Two presenters from the 2016 Banjo Gathering – Brooks Masten (left) and Christopher Dean (center) – share their knowledge about banjo-building traditions. Jerry Fabris, a 2014 Banjo Gathering presenter, explains early Edison recording equipment that was used at the Gathering to demonstrate historical recording techniques for the banjo (right). Photographs courtesy of Kristina Gaddy / Banjo Gathering
Every Gathering also typically includes site visits and field trips to locations that add value to the narratives surrounding banjo history.
In 2014 Banjo Gathering attendees visited the banjo holdings at the Met in New York City (left), and in 2017 participants got the chance to view a cross-section of the banjos and related ephemera in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (right). Photographs courtesy of Kristina Gaddy / Banjo Gathering (left) and Greg Adams (right)
I attended my first Banjo Gathering in 2001 at the invitation of banjo builder and historian George Wunderlich, and I’ve only missed one Gathering since that time. I keep coming back year after year because I see the constant potential of tapping into the knowledge of other attendees, exploring the instruments and ephemera they bring, and brainstorming ways of applying that knowledge in public-facing outputs. A goodly number of exhibits, books, and recordings have grown out of this event, and 2018 looks like it will maintain this trend.
What makes the 20th Anniversary Banjo Gathering particularly special for me is that it coincides with the University of Illinois Press publication of Banjo Roots and Branches, edited by Robert B. Winans. Many of the authors of this highly anticipated book are regular Banjo Gathering attendees. The book’s subtitle – West African precursors, African-Caribbean origins, North American journeys – measures the breadth of dedication and influence that the Banjo Gathering represents. The book not only pays homage to another University of Illinois Press author – Dena Epstein and her book Sinful Tunes and Spirituals – but it is also dedicated to Shlomo Pestcoe (1958—2015), who was a part of the greater Banjo Collectors community and a driving force behind the book.
The book cover of Banjo Roots and Branches makes a strong statement with its graphic design. Image from the University of Illinois Press website, where the book can be purchased.
For some attendees, the Banjo Gathering is just a good time to get together with friends who like to collect similar things and to talk about their passion. For others, this event provides access to primary source materials that illuminate banjo history in ways that do not exist anywhere else. For me, I see the Banjo Gathering as an opportunity to ask questions about what it means to understand the American experience using an instrument whose history has the power to challenge and inspire.
Franklin County, Virginia, is at the eastern end of The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail. Today it’s known for good fishing and boating on Smith Mountain Lake and Philpott Lake, located at the northeastern and southwestern edges of the county. Before the lakes were created, Franklin County was known for its tobacco, dairy farms, apple orchards, and moonshine – indeed, it is called the Moonshine Capital of the World. A number of woodworking and textile plants were located in Rocky Mount, the county seat, and nearby companies like DuPont and Bassett Furniture competed for factory laborers.
But Franklin County isn’t just famous for moonshine and outdoor pursuits. It has also been home or the home-away-from-home for a number of storied musicians, not least of which was Charlie Poole (1892–1931), the North Carolina singer and banjo player. Charlie’s friend, musical partner, and later brother-in-law Posey Rorer (1891–1936), was born in Franklin County. Both would have been familiar with the musicians in the area – and, of course, the famed local moonshine.
One of Franklin County’s finest musicians, however, was a man you might not have heard of – Avery Nelson “Pedro” Cooper (1924–2001), a self-taught musician who played banjo, guitar, Dobro, mandolin, and fiddle. Pedro was born without a left hip joint, and at that time, there were no surgical options. According to his brother Cash Cooper, when Pedro was born, the doctor told his mother that “if he lived to be 12 years old, they would be fortunate to have him that long.” Pedro wore a built-up shoe to give him a “more steady walk.”
According to his 1942 Selective Service Registration, Pedro worked for barber Eldridge Martin. Cash reported that Pedro did shoeshining at the barber shop and did pretty well in tips. An article about the Palace Barber Shop in the September 17, 1953 “Tobacco Market Edition” of the Franklin News Post reports that “’Pedro’ Cooper has his shoeshine stand in the Palace Barber Shop and is known for the best shoeshines in town. He is also considered one of the better musicians in and around Franklin County.”
The September 17, 1953, edition of the Franklin News Post highlighted Pedro’s work as a shoeshine man.
Pedro was particularly enamored with the banjo, especially with Earl Scruggs’s three-finger roll technique. He was in several bands through the years, playing for dances and other events. One of the bands he played with performed on WMVA radio out of Martinsville, Virginia, and on WREV radio in Reidsville, North Carolina, in the 1950s. Pedro often had friends over to jam on Sunday afternoons; fiddler Tommy Magness and banjoist Rudy Lyle, both of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys fame, would visit and play with Pedro when they were in the area. Magness left Monroe to play with Roy Hall and his Blue Ridge Entertainers (based for a time in Roanoke, Virginia) and later with Magness’s Orange Blossom Boys. Magness also played shows for WDBJ in Roanoke (just north of Rocky Mount). Lyle was a Franklin County native and would return to visit family and friends, with visits documented in the local newspaper.
In 1972 Pedro married Doris Thurman, relatively late in life for both of them. It was their first and only marriage. Doris also loved music, and she and Pedro met at a friend’s while he was playing music. At local jams and get-togethers, you might hear Doris say she wasn’t feeling good, but when the music started, she’d frequently get up and flatfoot a bit!
At some point, Pedro went to work at Lane Furniture as a cleaner in the machine room – sweeping up the sawdust, clearing the wood scraps, etc. For those who have not been in a woodworking factory, it’s often hard, repetitive physical work on concrete floors. It’s usually either hot or cold, quite dirty, and one works around noisy and dangerous machinery. For Pedro, it had to have been more difficult work without his left hip joint – constantly bending and stooping, and walking and standing on unforgiving cement floors.
Machine operators are supposed to turn the machines off and turn on locks to stop the various blades when they step away or when the machine area is being cleaned. But people don’t always follow the safety rules, and accidents happen. And so one happened to Pedro in 1974 when he lost his left hand and forearm at a bandsaw machine. Afterwards he was fitted with a prosthetic hook that enabled him to grip items. Pedro’s brother Cash states: “He didn’t make any music for a good while, but someone mentioned or inspired him [to use a wooden peg].” Pedro would lay the instrument (banjo, guitar, or Dobro) across his lap and would use the wooden peg or dowel in his prosthetic hook to note the instrument.
The back cover of the 1976 Pumpkin Vines album bears a photograph of Pedro Cooper sitting with his banjo across his lap and the pegs that helped him play attached to his prosthetic hook. Album released by Outlet Records
While he couldn’t navigate the fretboard as he did before, he developed a new technique and continued to perform with The Pumpkin Vines, a band he and fiddler Elva Phillips had established. The band was named after the Norfolk & Western railroad line that went through Franklin, Henry, and Patrick Counties in Virginia, and was called the Pumpkin Vine because the route twisted and turned like a growing vine. The Pumpkin Vines released two albums on Outlet Records (out of Rocky Mount, Virginia) in 1976 and 1977 featuring old-time, bluegrass, and gospel tunes. Live recordings of Pedro and the Pumpkin Vines, made at the 1982 Blue Ridge Folklife Festival at Ferrum, Virginia, are available through the Digital Library of Appalachia. The tunes “John Hardy” and “Under the Double Eagle” are particularly fine examples of Pedro’s post-accident banjo style.
The front cover of the 1976 Pumpkin Vines album: the band stands on a railway line, presumably that of the Norfolk & Western. Album released by Outlet Records
I was lucky enough to know Pedro and Doris as family friends; we went to the same church, and our families were often at the same events. People would bring food to share at these gatherings, and a core group of folks brought instruments and played music together. When the music was particularly tight, some folks would get up and flatfoot. Pedro and Doris visited at my parents’ home in Rocky Mount one summer. I had a tape recorder and asked permission to record the music. My father had been after me to learn to play “Down Yonder” as Del Wood did on the Grand Ole Opry, and so he asked Pedro to play it for me on the banjo. I don’t know that Pedro had ever played it, but he gave it a go in the home recording below with my mother accompanying him softly on guitar. At the end you can hear Pedro, ever humble, saying: “That’s not exactly right, either.”
Pedro Cooper made music a big part of his life while facing disability and hard times, and he then later overcame a horrible factory accident to remake his musical self, not letting go of the songs and tunes he’d played his entire life. And so remember Pedro should you travel the eastern end of The Crooked Road, near the route of the Pumpkin Vine rail line.
West Virginia marks its admission to the Union on June 20, and with this anniversary, it is common practice to celebrate all the contributions West Virginians have made in history through the decades. There are many contributions for us to be proud of, but the ones that are closest to my heart are those made by a few men from Bluefield and Mercer County that became part of the history of the birth of country music.
In 1927 Ralph Peer, a talent scout and recording engineer for Victor Talking Machine Company, searched the south, including Appalachia, for new talent. After setting up a makeshift recording studio in Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia, he spent two weeks with various singers and musicians that came out of the mountains for a chance to record. Today when people think of the Bristol Sessions they often think first of Ernest Stoneman, The Carter Family – known as the First Family of Country Music – and Jimmie Rogers – referred to as the Father of Country Music – but all the musicians who recorded there still influence music today.
West Virginia was part of that important history – the state was represented at those recordings by Blind Alfred Reed and the West Virginia Coon Hunters.
Alfred Reed was born blind in 1880 in Floyd County, Virginia, the son of Riley and Charlotte Akers Reed. According to census records, they originally hailed from the Alum Ridge/Indian Valley area of Floyd County, Virginia. Their family, like others, migrated to Bluefield, West Virginia, in search of work. Bluefield was central to the coal boom, especially since it was a railroad hub, and it brought many workers to the coal fields from other areas. In 1927, the year of the Bristol Sessions, Reed and his wife Nettie and several of their children were living in Bluefield on Lilly Road. They are listed in the 1927 Bluefield City Directory with Reed’s occupation noted as music teacher. He made his living playing music long before the Bristol Sessions.
Songwriter, singer, and fiddler Blind Alfred Reed. The man to the left is Fred Pendleton, a member of the West Virginia Coon Hunters. Courtesy of Goldenseal Magazine
There has been a lot of speculation about the many ways that all that musical talent came to Bristol in 1927. Were they brought there by advertising, handbills, or word of mouth? Newspaper and obituary accounts recount that Ralph Peer attended a convention around this time – presumably a fiddlers’ convention – and heard Blind Alfred Reed’s rendition of “The Wreck of the Virginian.” It makes sense that Peer, as a talent scout, would go to where music was being played in the summer of 1927 and invite musicians too. I would argue that invitation could have been one of the methods to bring musicians to Bristol because of the type of music he seemed to be looking for and the type of music he ended up recording. And so Peer, after hearing Reed, might have invited him to Bristol.
The song “The Wreck of the Virginian” would have personal appeal for Reed. Several of his family worked for the railroads. For instance, his brothers Monroe and Matthew Reed worked for the B&O Railroad. His son Collins D. Reed is listed in the 1927 Bluefield City Directory as living with him and working as a machinist for the Virginian Railway Co. His other son Arville Reed, who played guitar on three of the songs at Bristol, is also listed in the 1927 Bluefield City Directory as living with him and as working as a brakeman on the B&O Railroad. Arville’s name is misspelled as Orville in several records.
Blind Alfred Reed recorded four songs for Peer: “The Wreck of the Virginian,” “I Mean to Live for Jesus,” “You Must Unload,” and “Walking in the Way with Jesus.” Reed continued recording until 1929, the year when his most famous side was released: “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?,” a song that has been modified and sung in modern times by musical artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Ry Cooder.
We don’t know the reason why Reed quit recording in 1929 – there is only speculation on that front – but we do know that he still played music locally and became a lay preacher for the Methodist church. He and his family moved around Mercer County, and for a time, he was a street musician in Princeton until the city created an ordinance against busking in 1937. Today there is a mural in his memory on Main Street in Princeton and so he has become a permanent fixture on the street he was once forbidden to play on. Blind Alfred Reed died in 1956 and is buried in Elgood, West Virginia; in 2007 he was inducted into the first class of the West Virginia Hall of Fame.
Most members of the West Virginia Coon Hunters also hailed from Bluefield and the surrounding area, many migrating there for the same reasons as Reed’s family. The band recorded two songs on August 5, the last day of the 1927 Bristol Sessions: “Your Blue Eyes Run Me Crazy” and “Greasy String.”
The West Virginia Coon Hunters, standing left to right: Fred Belcher, Clyde S. Meadows, Jim Brown, and Vernal Vest; seated left to right: Dutch Stewart, Wesley “Bane” Boyles, Regal Mooney, Fred Pendleton, and Joe Stephens. From the Birthplace of Country Music Museum Collection, gift of Denise Smith
There are several pictures of the West Virginia Coon Hunters from this time. One is the large group photo of nine musicians seen above, but several simply show four of the men and the full group didn’t play on the songs recorded at the Bristol Sessions. The record has Clyde S. Meadows and my grandfather Wesley “Bane” Boyles included on its label – they are also in the pictures of the smaller group and the large group. However, the record has Clyde’s name as C. A. Meadows (and on the session sheet it is mis-written as W. A. Meadows), while on one side of the record, W. B. Boyles was misspelled to W. B. Bayles.
The smaller group of the West Virginia Coon Hunters: Wesley “Bane” Boyles on fiddle, Joe Stephens on banjo, Fred Belcher on guitar, and Clyde Meadows on guitar. Image courtesy of Denise Smith, given to her by John Lilly at Goldenseal Magazine
I’ve tried to track down the personal histories of where each of the members of the band was living in 1927. Several of the band members had migrated to West Virginia, and all of them seemed to be living in and around Mercer County – many were found in the 1927 Bluefield City Directory or had connections to Bluefield. Most continued to play and influence music here in this region for generations.
Wesley “Bane” Boyles, my grandfather, was born in Bland County; in 1927 he was living in Bluefield at 501 Rogers Street with his parents and brothers. He was a moonshiner by occupation so unsurprisingly there was no occupation listed in the 1927 Bluefield City Directory! To read more of his story, check out my own blog.
In 1927 Clyde Meadows is listed as living at 717 Hardy Street in Bluefield. His occupation was noted as engine cleaner for the Norfolk & Western Railway. More of his story can be found in the Spring 2003 issue of Goldenseal Magazine in an article by John Lilly entitled “The West Virginia Coon Hunters: On the Trail of a Lost String Band.”
Vernal Leonidas Vest was a mandolin and ukulele player. He was a true son of West Virginia, born in Summers County to Salunda Jackson and Emma Robbins Vest. In 1927 he was living in Oakvale, West Virginia, and the 1930 census has his occupation listed as a fireman on the railroad. His brother Robert Vest lived in Bluefield in 1927 and worked for the Virginian Railway. In 1930 and 1931 Vernal also recorded with fiddler Fred Pendleton’s West Virginia Melody Boys.
Fred Pendleton was born George Fredrick Pendleton to George Woodruff and Matilda Blankenship Pendleton in 1904 in Princeton, West Virginia; in the records he is listed as George Frederick or Fred G. Pendleton. In 1920 Pendleton was living with his parents on a farm in Oakvale, West Virginia, and by 1930, he was living in Princeton and also working for the railroad as a repairman on steam trains.
Pendleton is one of the most locally famous musicians after the 1927 Bristol Sessions, and he and Clyde Meadows continued to have recording careers as the West Virginia Coon Hunters for a while after they recorded in Bristol. Indeed, Peer asked them to return to Bristol to record again in 1928. Pendleton also recorded with Blind Alfred Reed and his son Arville for Victor later in 1927, as a group called the West Virginia Night Owls.
Pendleton can be found in newspaper articles and ads playing numerous events in West Virginia and beyond – everything from a reunion to a political rally, though my favorite is the Calico Frolic. In over 50 West Virginia news articles, his bands are listed playing events under many different names such as the Fred Pendleton Orchestra, Fred Pendleton’s Lilly Mountaineers, Fred Pendleton’s Swingsters, Fred Pendleton’s Hillbilly Band, etc. As long as his name was first, whoever joined him seemed to form a new band, at least for the event. He also was elected as a commissioner of Mercer County in the 1950s. He passed away in Princeton, West Virginia, in 1972.
The ad on the left is for the “Calico Frolic,” found in the Beckley Post-Herald & Register, May 6, 1956, page 23 – Fred Pendleton’s and His Swingsters played this event. The ad to the right notes that Fred Pendleton’s Orchestra will be providing music for square and combination dancing at the 4th of July festivities.
Regal Mooney was born Ovid Riggle Mooney in Tazewell County, Virginia, to Charles and Barbara Cruey Mooney. His father worked for the N&W Railway freight station in Williamson, West Virginia. In 1927 his father had passed and he was living with his mother and his wife Lake Palmer Mooney on Hale Street in Bluefield. His occupation at this time was listed as coil maker. I don’t have much information about his musical career, but he died in Columbus, Ohio, in 1973.
The rest of the band led to scanty information. Jim Brown worked for the Foley Printing Company and was also the music teacher at the Bland Methodist Episcopal Church in Bluefield. Joe Stephens – possibly Joseph H. Stevens – was a truck driver for Holt Brothers living at 305 Roanoke Street, a couple of blocks away from Fred Belcher at 113 ½ Roanoke Street, according to the 1927 Bluefield City Directory. And finally the most elusive band member: Dutch Stewart. I could find no one by that specific name though many Stewarts are listed in Bluefield and Mercer County during this timeframe.
Each of these men lived every day and ordinary lives, with music being an important part of those lives – and no matter their station in life, for a brief period of time, they came together in Bristol, Tennessee -Virginia and represented West Virginia at the “big bang” of country music.
There’s an old church joke about when Jesus returned to heaven after his time on earth. All the angels gather around to celebrate Jesus’s success overcoming death, and someone asks, “So now what’s the plan? How are we going to tell the world the good news?” Gabriel offers to blow his trumpet. Michael suggests a multitude of heavenly hosts. Jesus looks at the angels and says, “I’ve got it covered. I told these twelve guys, and they’re going to tell some people, and then those people will tell some people…”
As ridiculous as this sounded to the angels, this method of sharing the gospel tells us something about the music and ministry of Ernest Phipps of Gray, Kentucky, who was born on May 4, 1900. Ernest Phipps and His Holiness Quartet recorded six sides on Tuesday, July 26, the second day of Ralph Peer’s 1927 Bristol Sessions. Their recording of “Don’t You Grieve After Me” was issued with the earliest Bristol Sessions serial number and released in the first batch of Bristol sides in September 1927.
The music Phipps and His Holiness Quartet made in 1927 sounds like spirited old-time music. Phipps sings lead accompanied by a high harmony; a guitar or two and fiddle back the singing, and the fiddle plays the melody on instrumental breaks. Charles Wolfe conjectured that Ancil McVay played guitar and Roland Johnson played fiddle and that perhaps Alfred Karnes, another preacher from the Corbin area who recorded his own gospel sides that week, played the driving guitar bass runs. The singing and playing are raw and real, someone stomps on the one and three, and the distinguishing element of these songs, particularly “Do, Lord, Remember Me” and “Old Ship of Zion,” is a galloping, deep-in-the-beat feel.
Phipps worked his whole life in the coal business, as a miner, a truck driver, and later as co-owner of a small operation. He also preached and sang in the Holiness churches around Corbin, Kentucky from the 1920s until his death in 1963, minus a few years he was in the army during World War II. Much of what we know of his life comes from his youngest sister, Lillian McDaniel, and his stepsons W. R. and J. Randall Mays. Their memories do not fill in the whole picture of Phipps’s life, but they tell us enough to know that his ministry was his major focus, and that his music was likely a component of his ministry. He often visited churches to preach, and would also sing, but no one remembers his visiting churches to sing and not preach.
Ernest Phipps loved fishing and is pictured here at Cherokee Lake sometime around 1953. In the picture on the right, he is seen with his first wife Minnie and a friend posing on a rock outcrop; a historic site marker nearby references the Civil War’s Battle of Wauhatchie. Left: Courtesy of Rev. J. Randall Mays and Rev. W. R. Mays, stepsons of Rev. Ernest Phipps; Right: Donated to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum by Teresa Phipps Patierno in the memory of her grandfather, Ernest Phipps, a coal miner and Holiness preacher from Kentucky, a simple man who loved his Lord.
The idea that Phipps’s recorded music constitutes an early form of mass media evangelism may involve projecting motives from our time onto his, but nothing in Phipps’s story suggests that he sought a career in music; however, much evidence exists that Phipps sought to share his faith. When he returned to Bristol in October 1928, he brought eight members of his congregation – three female vocalists and five instrumentalists – who recorded six songs that “give us some sense of the power and drive of a real Holiness service,” in the words of Charles Wolfe. The group vocals shift moment to moment between harmony and unison singing and overpower the instrumentation on most songs. The string band groove of Phipps’s 1927 sides is replaced here with a less precise but no less energetic backing shuffle. During refrains, a chorus of handclaps on the one, two, three, and four beats propels these songs into a frenetic pace. These sides sound more like field recordings of a church service than commercial records, but Ernest Phipps and Ralph Peer were onto something: “If the Light Has Gone Out of Your Soul” backed with “Bright Tomorrow” sold almost 12,000 copies.
Here’s “Went Up In The Clouds Of Heaven,” one of the songs recorded by Ernest Phipps and His Holiness Singers at the 1928 Bristol Sessions:
Phipps’s recordings, especially from the 1928 sessions, have sent folk music scholars and fans in a number of interesting directions. Charles Wolfe remarked that Phipps’s recordings preserve “rare examples of the exuberant, ragged, hand-clapping Holiness music” of 1920s Appalachia, particularly Eastern Kentucky. Harry Smith included “Shine on Me” from the 1928 Sessions in his Anthology of American Folk Music alongside the most important American folk musicians of the first half of the 20th century. My work on Phipps suggests that his recordings pioneer a Southern Gospel music antithetical to the harmony singing of the Stamps Quartet, who also recorded at the 1928 Bristol Sessions.
The cover of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.
Because of the spirit it preserves and represents, Phipps’s music has lived a remarkable life of its own. The life of Ernest Phipps suggests that his brief recording career served a purpose: to share the gospel with as many people as he could.
