Bradley Kincaid- Biography 1927
On December 19, 1927 Bradley Kincaid cut his first sides for Gennett, “The Fatal Wedding” and “Sweet Kitty Wells” in their Chicago, IL studios. Kincaid would become one of Country Music’s finest collectors, interpreters and preservers of traditional Appalachian ballads and folk songs.
The young tenor was one of the most popular radio stars on the most popular country music station in the 1920s the WLS Barn Dance out of Chicago, where he received over 100,000 pieces of mail fan every year. In 1934 he was voted the most popular male Country singing star in the nation with a voice that rivaled the first great country vocalist, Vernon Dalhart. His 13 songbooks sold nearly a half million copies during the Depression years.
Early Life
William Bradley Kincaid (born July 13, 1895 Point Leavell, Garrard County, Kentucky; died Sept. 23, 1989 Springfield, Ohio) was born near Lancaster in a small town in the foothills. “I was born in Garrard County, Kentucky right at the edge of the Cumberland Mountains,” he said, “way back at the head of the holler, where the boulevard dwindles down to a squirrel’s path and loses itself at the foot of a giant tree.”
His father, William was a farm laborer, who led the singing from shape-note books in a Campbellite church. “My father was quite a singer,” said Bradley. “He led the singing in church and Sunday school. He had one of those tuning forks. He’d hit it against something and get the pitch- and off he’d go reading those notes. A good many of those books had shape notes and he could read those very well. That was my introduction to music and all through the years I could remember him singing songs like “Two Little Girls In Blue,” “After The Ball” and songs like that.”
His mother Elizabeth Hurt Kincaid sang the old songs. Bradley remembered, “She went further back. She sang the old English ballads. I learned a lot of ballads from her Like ‘Fair Ellender’ and ‘The Two Sisters.’ When my Mother used to sing the old blood curdlers to me my hair would stand straight up on my head!” Later he guessed he had learned as many as 80 songs from his parents.
One day his father made a trade that would change young Bradley’s life: “We lived in a county where there was a lot of fox hunting,” began Bradley. “Well, my father used to go out with some of the fox hunters and they’d take their dogs and get on top of some ridge and set the dogs off down a hollow chasing some fox. They’s build a fire and and sit around and talk and tell stories. And on one of these occasions a Negro friend of my father’s who would hunt with them once in a while, had this guitar, and my father traded him one of his hounds for the guitar. And he brought it home and all the kids learned to play it.”
The old worn-out guitar eventually became the prized possession of Bradley, the fourth of nine children. Bradley learned to strum his ‘old hound dawg guitar’ while he sang. Later after he became a radio star Sear manufactured copies of his guitar and sold them as Bradley Kincaid’s Houn’ Dawg Guitar. Today that old guitar is in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Kincaid attended Garrard County’s Back Creek School through fifth grade. He dropped out of school to work in a Louisville wheel shop. After riding a corn planter he tried tobacco farming but when he earned only $40 for a whole summer’s work he decided he would return to school and enrolled in Berea College Foundation School at age 19.
“I entered the sixth grade,” he recalled. “I remember how timid I was about going into that first class, because I was almost six feet talk and going in with little six graders. But when I got inside I was calmed down because there was a big fellow across the aisle from me who must have been six feet two- and he was twenty-three years old. I got a job waiting tables and odd jobs. I think they paid ten cents an hour then.”
Even though he was determined to get his Bradley left after the eighth grade to join the army, serving two years during World War I. For a brief period after the war, he worked as salesman for the Storrs-Schaefer Tailoring Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Begins Music Career
Kincaid soon resumed his education at Berea and it was during this time that his interest in music deepened. With the encouragement of Thomas Edwards, one of his teachers, he began systematically collecting ballads and other songs. He also worked with pioneer collector John F. Smith. Kincaid’s search led to several trips throughout the eastern part of the state, and the material he collected was eventually included in thirteen published songbooks.
Kincaid graduated from the Berea College Academy (high school) in 1921 at age 26. A year later he married his Berea music teacher, Irma Foreman, a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He worked in Lebanon, Kentucky as a YMCA district secretary for two years (1922-1924). They then moved to Chicago to attend YMCA College (now known as George Williams College.)
He started singing with the YMCA College Quartet and taking voice lessons from a classical teacher. After appearing with the group on WLS in 1926 he arranged a solo audition in 1928 for the National Barn Dance, a radio program heard widely throughout the Midwest on Chicago’s 50,000-watt WLS (World’s Largest Store). He became a regular cast member on the program singing every Saturday night for $15 a week.
“One day after I’d been singing there for three or four weeks, I went down there a little early one Saturday afternoon and the girl at the outer desk said, ‘Bradley, there’s some mail in the back room for you.’ Well it never occurred to me that anyone would ever write or say anything about Bradley Kincaid. I went back there. You’ve seen those big laundry baskets the size of a desk. Here was a basket full of mail.”
Soon Bradley was being billed as “the Kentucky Mountain Boy.” His renditions of “Barbara Allen” and other old ballads and songs he had learned while growing up in Kentucky made him one of the most popular performers on WLS’s Barn Dance, the most popular Country radio station. Other ballads he made popular during his four years tenure at WSL were “Pearl Bryan” and “The Hunters of Kentucky.” Some of his popular fast fiddle tunes were “Liza Up A Simmon Tree” and “Gooseberry Pie.”
First Concerts
Eventually Bradley became the top star at WLS and soon he was getting offers to perform concerts: “The bookers started calling on me. Well I’d never made a public appearance in my life. They wanted me to go on stage and I said , ‘Gee Whiz, who’d want to see me on the stage’.”
Bradle finally agreed to play a concert in a theater in Peoria, Illinois. With some promotion on WLS the concert was sold out. When Bradley arrived to play he couldn’t figure out what all the people were doing there. "I walked up to the theater and there was a line several blocks long and people were being turned away,” he said. “I walked across the street and asked a fellow what was going on. He said, ‘Why the radio singer from WLS is going to be here.”
Kincaid learned he could make several hundred dollars playing a theater show compared to he $15 a night at WLS. Bradley approached concerts with “fear and trembling’ and was more comfortable doing radio. He was billed as Bradley Kincaid: the Kentucky Mountain Boy with his Hound Dawg Guitar.
There’s a funny story I heard about Bradley after he was a famous folk collector, radio singer and interpreter of traditional songs. One of the leading folk collectors in the country read about Bradley and heard that he was giving a concert in a nearby town. The collector knew all the Child ballads and had studied Sharp’s Appalachian ballads. He brought his notebook to the concert hoping to jot down some unusual version of one of the ballads Bradley might sing. Bradley stood center stage with only his old worn guitar and as his first song promptly warbled a rousing version of “After The Ball.” It reminded me of the time I watched Doc Watson sing “Nights in White Satin.”
Song Books
When people began writing the station asking if they could get the words and music that Bradley sang, the manager, Edgar Bill, asked Bradley to put together a songbook. Bradley doubted many people would order a book of songs but he went ahead and typed out the lyrics and had his wife help him write the music.
“I took them down and laid them on Mr. Bill’s desk and he said, “No, you get them fixed up take them to a printer and get them to publish them. So we made arrangements with a printer. He said, ‘How many do you think we ought to get printed first?” I said, ‘Oh, a couple thousand, anyway.’ So a few days before the songbooks came off the press I announced on the air that I had a little songbook and if they’d like to have one- they ‘d send fifty cents to me at the station. Two days later we had more than 10,000 ordered.”
His first book published in 1928, a 48-page unpaginated saddle-stitched booklet, about 7" square, became the first published Country music book. It was entitled, “Favorite Mountain Ballads and Old Time Songs as Sung By Bradley Kincaid 'The Mountain Boy' by Kincaid, Bradley.” The book included photos of "the National Barn Dance 'gang' up in the 'old hayloft,' the studios of WLS," Harold A Safford, WLS announcer and host of the National Barn Dance, and Bradley Kincaid.
Bradley shared the profits with WLS The Sears, Roebuck Radio Station who printed the books and by the early 1930s sold over 100,000 copies. The music and words to the following favorite Bradley Kincaid songs were included: Barbara Allen; I Gave My Love a Cherry; Froggie Went A-Courtin’; Pearl Bryan; A Fatal Wedding; Sour Wood Mountain; Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird; Tildy Johnson; Two Sisters; I'm Dying for Someone to Love Me; Bury Me Out on the Prairie; Billy Boy; Four Thousand Years Ago; The Turkish Lady; Rip Van Winkle; As I Walked Out; Fair and Tender Ladies; Sweet Kitty Wells; Soldier? Soldier? Will You Marry Me?; I Asked Her If She Loved Me; Gypsie Laddie; Paper of Pins; Pretty Polly; Fair Ellen; Little Mohee; Swapping Song; Dying Cowboy; Frankie; Methodist Pie; Butcher Boy; No, Sir No; I Loved You Better Than You Knew; Lily of the West; No, I Won't Have Him!
Bradley began traveling around collecting songs for his songbooks. Fans sent him songs and he also traded songs with fellow performers like Doc Hopkins. He eventually published 13 songbooks between 1928-36, which reportedly sold over 500,000 copies. His original songbooks can still be purchased on-line.
Recording Career
Kincaid began recording on December 19, 1927 when he cut his first sides for Gennett, “The Fatal Wedding” and “Sweet Kitty Wells” in their Chicago, IL studios. On Feb. 27, 28 in 1928 he recorded Barbara Allen, Froggie Went A-Courtin’, Methodist Pie, Swapping Song, Bury Me Out On The Lone Prairie and Sourwood Mountain. Bradley cut a total of 63 for Gennett; his last session with them was on Oct. 4, 1929 in Richmond, Indiana.
He also cut 30 sides for Brunswick in Chicago from Nov. 1929 until Jan. 3, 1931 until the Depression curtailed his recording career. In 1933 Bluebird began recording all the Country stars of the 1920s and Bradley cut 28 songs including many he had recorded before. His last sessions in the 1930s were with Decca in New York City, the last being on Nov. 4, 1934.
Radio Star
Bradley knew Scotty Wiseman’s brother from school and collected some songs from Scotty. Bradley put in good word for Scotty with the management before he left WLS in 1930 and eventually Scotty a job playing on WLS. The Girls of the Golden West were originally from Mt. Carmel, Illinois when they joined WLS. Bradley Kincaid would later work with the girls in their recordings. They first started recording for Bluebird Records in 1933, where they stayed for quite some time.
Kincaid went on to have similar success on radio station WLW in Cincinnati in the 1930s. “I went to WLW and told then I didn’t want a salary,” he recalled. “I just wanted to get some time on the air, sell my songbooks and make personal appearances, and I’ll give you a percentage of what I make.” During his first month he received 50,000 letters and his concerts were standing room only.
From WLW he went to WKDA Pittsburgh, , SGY Schenectady, WEAF New York and finally WBZ Boston. When a “Radio Guide Star Poll” was conducted in 1934 on a nationwide basis Bradley was the only male Country singer to place on the list, out-polling Al Jolson and Gene Austin. In 1939, while at WHAM in Rochester, New York, he adopted a tent show format for much of his warm weather personal appearance work and continued what he called his "Radio Circus" throughout the remainder of his career.
Among the musicians he partnered with during this period was Kentuckian Louis Marshall “Grandpa” Jones. In 1935 he was working at WBZ (AM) radio in Boston, Massachusetts where he performed with a band that included a young singer and banjo player named Marshall Jones. Kincaid teased the twenty-two-year old fellow Kentuckian for always being grumpy when he came to the studio to do the early morning broadcast, nicknaming him "Grandpa Jones." Kincaid had him outfitted with a vaudeville costume—including fake mustache—and at age twenty-two Marshall Jones became Grandpa Jones. The moniker became permanent for the future Grand Ole Opry star.
“I had the good fortune of playing up and down the New England Coast with Bradley,” said Grandpa Jones. “I’d watch the audience when he’d sing an ballad and you could hear a pin drop. They wanted to know how the story went and his voice was perfect for the song. They were spell bound when he’d sing those songs.” His last major radio work was on WSM's Grand Ole Opry in Nashville from 1942-1947. “I was just fairly popular at the Grande Ole Opry- not like I was on WLS,” said Bradley. “It may have been a change of taste, for I was very old-fashioned.”
Later Years
He had become a partner in building a radio station in Springfield WSSO. The station was losing money and Bradley left Nashville to get it straightened out. He managed the station for five years and recorded and wrote occasionally like his 1945 Majestic label song, “The Legend Of Robin Red-Breast” and his 1950 song about the atomic bomb “Brush The Dust From That old Bible.”
He met future bluegrass great, Hylo Brown, whose family relocated to Springfield, Ohio in 1949. Hylo honed his skills by working on the local music scene in Ohio while holding a day job in a local factory. It was during this period when Brown started to write songs and went on to secured a job singing tenor with country artist Bradley Kincaid. The job lasted for the next five years, in which time Kincaid and his band recorded sides for Capitol Records. It was during his stint with Kincaid that Brown penned the "Grand Ol Opry" song which was later brought to prominence in the bluegrass genre by Jimmy Martin.
Around 1954 he sold the radio station and “retired” from the music business. He was well aware of the changes in Country music, which featured electric guitars, and an up beat honky-tonk style. After playing golf for a year he became bored and accepted a return offer from WLW in Cincinnati. “I noticed my old guitar case was looking pretty bad,” he explained, “I went down to a Springfield music store to get a new case and met one of the best salesman I’ve ever seen. He sold me a new case and talked me into buying the whole store!”
Bradley continued to issue commercial recordings well into the 1970s. Bradley Kincaid was twice nominated to the Country Music Hall of Fame and lost to Johnny Cash and Roy Rogers. He was featured in a biography, “Radio's ‘Kentucky Mountain Boy' Bradley Kincaid” by Loyal Jones published in 1980 by Appalachian Center: Berea College. He donated his collections and papers to Berea College. On September 23, 1989 Bradley Kincaid died in Springfield, Ohio, at age 94, and was interred there in the Ferncliff Cemetery.
Recordings: Bradley’s repertoire consisted on 322 songs that he either recorded or appeared in his songbooks. In 1944 Kincaid cut two songs for the Bullet label and eight songs for the Majestic Record Company in 1945 including “The Legend Of Robin Red-Breast.” He recorded four sides for Capitol in 1950 including “Brush The Dust From That Old Bible.” His 162 song recorded for Bluebonnet in 1962 included 22 songs he had never cut before. They were released on six LPs all titled, ‘Bradley Kincaid, “The Kentucky Mountain Boy” Mountain Ballads and Songs.’ In 1973 he recorded 26 numbers in Springfield for McMonigle Music which were released as LPs “Bradley Kincaid: the Mountain Boy” and “Bradley Kincaid: Family Gospel Album.” They also released a single “There’s a Light Ahead” back by “The Legend Of Robin Red-Breast’.
Songs Bradley wrote or co-wrote: Captain Bill; Cornpone and Molasses; Fifty Years From Now; Fond Of Chewing Gum; I Won’t Be Back In A year Little Darling; Innocent Prisoner; Legend Of Robin Red-Breast; Little Darling Don’t Say We are Through; Little Rooster and The Old Black Hen; Mammy’s Precious Little Baby; Now The table’s Turned on You; Sleepy Head; Some little Bug Is Going To Find You; That Old Tintype Picture;
Complete Recorded Songs:
After The Ball; Ain't We Crazy; Amazing Grace; And So You Have Come Back To Me; Angels In Heaven Know I Love You; Barbara Allen; Beautiful Dreamer; Beautiful Isle of Somewhere; Billy Boy; Blind Girl; Blind Child; Blue tail Fly; Brush The Dust Off That Old Bible; Bury Me Beneath the Willow; Bury Me Out On The Lone Prairie; Captain Bill; Charlie Brooks; Cindy; Cornpone and Molasses; Cowboy’s Dream; Darlin’ Clementine; Darling Nellie Gray; Death of Jimmie Rodgers; Dog and Gun; Don’t Make Me Go To Bed And I’ll be Good; Down By The Railroad Track; Down In The Valley; Fair Ellen; Fatal Derby Day; Fatal Wedding; Fifty Years From Now; Fingerprints Upon The Window Pane; First Whipporwill Song; Fond of Chewing Gum; Foot Prints In the Snow; For Sale A Baby; Foggy Dew; Four Thousand Years Ago; Froggie Went A-Courtin’; Give My Love To Nell; Gooseberry Pie; Grandfather’s Clock; Gypsy’s Warning; Happy Days Long Ago; High Grass Town; Hills Of Old New Hampshire; House Carpenter; Housekeeper’s Tragedy; How Beautiful Heaven Must Be; How The Banjo Was Invented; Hummingbird Special; Hunters Of Kentucky; I Am Not Ashamed Of Jesus; I Could Not Call Her Mother; I Love My Rooster; I Loved You Better Than You knew; I Will Be All Smiles Tonight; I Wish I Had Someone To Love Me; I Won't be Back in a Year, Little Darling; I’d Like To Be In Texas; I’ll Remember You Love In My Prayers; I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen; In a Village By the Sea; In The Hills of Old Kentucky; In The Little Shirt Mother Made For Me; Innocent Prisoner; Kickin' Mule; Jimmie Rodgers’ Life; Just Plain Folks; Legend of the Robin Red Breast; Let That Mule Go Aunk Aunk; Letter Edged in Black; Life Is Like A Mountain Railway (Life’s Railway To Heaven); Life Of Jimmie Rodgers; Lightning Express; Listen To The Mockingbird; Little Brown Jug; Little Darling Don't Say We Are Through; Little Green Valley; Little Joe; Little Mohee; Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane; Little Red Rooster and the Old Black Hen; Little Rosewood Casket; Little Shit My Mother Made For Me; Liza Up In The ‘Simmons Tree; Long Long Ago; Mammy's Precious Baby; Mary Wore Three Links Of Chain; Methodist Pie; Miner's Song; Molly Darlin’; Mrs. Jimmie Rodgers’ Lament; My Little Home in Tennessee; My Mother's Beautiful Hands; My Mother’s old Red Shawl; My Sweet Iola; Night Time In Nevada; Ninety and Nine; Nobody’s Darling; Now The Table's Turned on You; Red Light Ahead; Red River Valley; Old Coon Dog; Old Joe Clark; Old Number Three; Old Rugged Cross; Old Tintype Picture; Old Wooden Rocker; On Top Of Old Smoky; Only As Far as The Gate; Paddle Your Own Canoe; Paper Of Pins; Pearl Bryan; Picture From Life’s Other Side; Pretty Little Pink; Red Light Ahead; Roll Along Kentucky Moon; Sleepy Head; Ship That Never Returned; Showers Of Blessing; Since The Cross Cast It’s Shadow On Me; Somewhere Somebody’s Waiting For You; Some Little Bug is Going to Find You; Sourwood Mountain; Steamboat Bill; Streets of Laredo; Swapping Song; Sweet Betsy From Pike; Sweet Inniscarta; Sweet Kitty Wells; That Tumble Down Shack; There was An Old Soldier; There’s A Church In The Valley; There’s A Red Light Ahead; There’s No Place Like Home; Those Precious Love Letters; Three Wishes; Tildy Johnson; True And Trembling Brakeman; Turkish Lady; Two Little Girls in Blue; Two Sisters; Unclouded Day; What’ll I Do With The Baby-O; When Irish Eyes Are Smiling; When Jesus Beckons Me Home; When The works All Done This Fall; Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight; Whispering Hope; Will the Angels Play Their Harps For Me; Wreck of the Number; Wreck on The C & O Road; Zeb Turney’s Gal;