Clayton McMichen Biography
“Back in the early days,” said Bill Monroe, “he was the best.”
Clayton (nicknamed “Mac” and later called “Pappy”) McMichen was born on January 26, 1900 in Altoona, Georgia. He learned to play the fiddle at age eleven from his uncles and from his father, a trained musician who played the fiddle at square dances in the neighborhood and also played Viennese waltzes at the uptown hotel “crinoline” dances. His Scots-Irish ancestors came to the United States around 1800 and became farmers. McMichen learned his first fiddle pieces from his father, including “Pretty Little Widow,” “Billy in the Low Ground,” “Nancy Rollin’,” “Arkansas Traveler,” and “Durang’s Hornpipe.”
When Clayton was thirteen the family moved to Atlanta where he found work as an auto mechanic. He won third place in his first contest while still in his teens. The young McMichen attended the Georgia Old-Time Fiddler’s Convention but there is no record of him performing until 1922. Alabama fiddler Joe Lee was a mentor to both Lowe Stokes and Clayton McMichen and Lowe said that Joe was the best old time fiddler he ever heard! Although McMichen was adept at playing the old time style, he became one of the first Country fiddlers to master a jazzy Swing style.
Clayton McMichen’s Early Bands
Clayton’s Lick the Skillet Band was formed around 1918, which became Old Home Town Boys, and consisted of McMichen and Lowe Stokes on fiddles, Riley Puckett and Mike Whitten on guitars, and Ted Hawkins on mandolin. McMichen’s broadcasting career began even before Station WSB started broadcasting in March 1922. In the very early twenties the Georgia Railroad had a small radio station that broadcast privately to passengers on the train for their enjoyment, and McMichen has said that his band began its professional career then.
On September 18, 1922 McMichen and his string band the Home Town Boys started playing regular radio shows for Atlanta's first radio station WSB. The station received numerous telephone calls and letters praising the group and requesting “special numbers.” By now members included Clayton McMichen fiddle; Mike Whitten guitar; Charlie Whitten fiddle; Boss Hawkins guitar; Ted Hawkins banjo/mandolin; Riley Puckett vocal, guitar and banjo; Robert Stephens saxophone; K. D. Malone clarinet; and Lowe Stokes fiddle. The songs broadcast on WSB included “St. Louis Blues,” “Wabash Blues,” “Three O’Clock,” “Lonesome Mama” and “Dixie.”
The Atlanta Journal wrote that the Home Town Boys “introduced America to the famous breakdown tune of North Georgia mountaineers as well as putting a new twist on jazz numbers of the day.” One of the innovative features of the band was McMichen’s featuring a clarinet in the band. Kasper "Stranger" Malone (1909-2005), who lived in later life near Rome, Georgia and played recently in the LEAF festival in Black Mountain, NC. Malone was born in 1909 on a farm in Lovelaceville, Ky. His given name was Kanoy, but he wasn't too pleased with that so he changed it to Kasper. He played swing with the Jack Teagarden All Stars and in silent film orchestras and radio bands. The Home Town Boys band could lay the claim to being the first Country Music swing band!
In August 1923 members of the Home Town Boys “descended on a fiddler’s convention in Macon …and literally stampeded the assemblage.” Clayton won first place in the fiddle contest, Puckett took first and Whitten second in the guitar competition and Ted Hawkins first in banjo. McMichen “carried away a new nickname, “The North Georgia Wildcat” bestowed on him by Macon listeners.”
On July 7, 1925 McMichen’s Home Town Boys recorded their first sides at Columbia’s Atlanta studio. The songs were “Alabama Jubilee,” “Bully Of The Town,” “Silver Bell,” and the song that vaunted McMichen to fame in 1927 and he would become identified- “Sweet Bunch Of Daisies.” Coincidentally McMichen married Daisy, who was the sister of Bert’s Layne’s wife.
McMichen and the Skillet Lickers
On April 22, 1926 when and Puckett and McMichen went into the Columbia’s Atlanta studio and recorded as Riley Puckett and Bob Nichols (McMichen’s alias). Frank Walker, Columbia’s A & R man, came up with the idea to get the best Atlanta musicians together to record as a group and four days later Gid Tanner, Bert Layne and Fate Norris joined McMichen and Puckett in the studio to make their first records. McMichen came up with the name The Skillet Lickers, a variation on the name of his earlier Lick the Skillet Band (based on the local Lick Skillet Orchestra name).
Bill Monroe recognized that McMichen, outspoken and brash, was the driving force behind the Skillet Lickers, “If it hadn’t have been for Clayton,” he said, “the Skillet Lickers would have suffered for a leader in the way of fiddle music.” McMichen, for his part, was not happy that the group was billed Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers with Riley Puckett because he believed that he was the leader and best fiddler in the group. It was also apparent to McMichen that Riley Puckett’s vocals carried the group and that the record buying public was more oriented to songs rather than string band instrumentals. At McMichen’s insistence the group was finally named Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers With Riley Puckett & Clayton McMichen.
Although McMichen participated in the Skillet Lickers’ cornpone humor, the progressive minded fiddler was never happy with the hillbilly label bestowed by Peer on the fledgling Country industry. He once remarked, “That Hillbilly, we fought it tooth and nail.”
What McMichen didn’t fully appreciate was that the success of the Skillet Lickers was Gid Tanner’s penchant for unabashed humor and absurdity. From 1926 until 1931 while Clayton played fiddle with the Skillet Lickers he was busy recording with other combinations of musicians that were more to his suiting. Although he tried his hand at sentimental ballads, recording under the pseudonym Bob Nichols, only one recording, "My Carolina Home," with Riley Puckett became a hit. Mac's first big hit came with a fiddle tune arrangement of a pop standard, "Sweet Bunch of Daisies" listed under McMichen’s Melody Men. Released in 1927, the song sold more than 100,000 copies.
The Melody Men began recording for Columbia on Nov. 4, 1926. The original line-up featured McMichen on fiddle, K.D. Malone on clarinet and Riley Puckett on guitar. Later sessions included Lowe Stokes on fiddle, Dan Hornsby singing vocals and Perry Bechel on guitar. The Melody Men also broadcast of WSB until around Jan. 13, 1931 (believed to be McMichen’s last radio appearance in Atlanta) and recorded six different sessions until Oct. 30, 1929.
When Bert Layne played fiddle Mac the Melody Men name was changed to McMichen-Lane String Orchestra. They recorded two sessions for Columbia as well. McMichen using the alias of Bob Nichols recorded multiple sessions with Riley Puckett from April 22, 1926 until October 30, 1931. Many of these sessions were done while the Skillet Lickers were recording in Atlanta. Later in the early 1930s McMichen (sometimes as Nichols) recorded several sessions with Hugh Cross.
He never really understood the public clamor for the Skillet Lickers and later commented, “Two or three in there couldn’t play” and that he didn’t like playing with Gid Tanner and Fate Norris because “they was just thirty years behind us in the music business.”
McMichen was equally adept at playing jazz, tin-pan Alley and pop songs. Fellow Georgian Lowe Stokes more than once related the story about a Skillet Licker 1928 recording session in New York in which A & R man Frank Walker rebuffed McMichen’s attempts to play jazz & pop ditties. Walker claimed that he could “open the window and whistle and get a dozen bands” that could do tin pan alley music, while nobody could play the authentic old-time tunes better than Tanner, McMichen, Norris, Stokes and Puckett.
McMichen and Slim Bryant- Georgia Wildcats
In 1930 he began recording with Hugh “Slim Bryant” and the next year started the Georgia Wildcats, a band whose hip, swinging style, was totally different from the Western Swing music of Texas and reflected McMichen's and Bryant's love of jazz.
Slim Byrant, the first of six sons, born in Atlanta on Dec. 7, 1908 was one of Wildcat’s first guitarists. Byrant spent sixteen months studying with renowned Atlanta jazz banjoist-guitarist Perry Bechtel who gave him a broad musical palette and a jazzman's soul. His heroes were jazz pioneer Eddie Lang and pop singer Nick Lucas. Of Lucas, he says, "I never heard anybody who could sing and then play a chorus. I copied his accompaniment because he was better than Country Music. I helped introduce this into Country Music."
In May 1931, Bryant abandoned electrical work to join Clayton McMichen's band, the Melody Men. He spent the next six years with McMichen and his renamed Georgia Wildcats at radio stations in Kentucky, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh (a brief 1931 stint at KDKA), Chicago, Cleveland and New York. During their 1933 residency at Chicago's WLS "National Barn Dance" show, a teen-age Les Paul faithfully attended to hear Bryant's guitar playing. In 1934, younger brother Raymond "Loppy" Bryant became the Wildcats' bassist.
McMichen and Jimmie Rodgers
In 1932 when Jimmie Rodgers wrote McMichen to offer him session work Clayton offered to come and bring Bryant. Jimmie wrote back: “Mr. Peer says he wonts [sic] me to do at least 10 numbers so if you have anything be sure to bring it along.” Regarding Bryant, Rodgers wrote: “I will pay his expenses if he cares to come along with you and takes a chance on working with us.” In August Clayton brought Byrant with him and they met Jimmie in Washington DC. After being chauffeured to Victor studios in Camden, NJ the men rehearsed with Oddie McWinders (banjo) Dave Kanui (steel guitar) and George Howell (string bass). After the first session produced no suitable takes, Peer dismissed Kanui and Howell.
During the sessions Rogers was sick and McMichen had to give him morphine shots for the pain. One song they collaborated on was McMichen’s already recorded “Prohibition Blues.” The song was recorded as “Prohibition Has Done Me Wrong” but not issued probably because it was copyrighted by Columbia. It may have been similar to “Prohibition Is A Failure” which McMichen knew through Lowe Stokes. The master was accidentally destroyed in 1944. They recorded one of Bryant’s songs “Mother Queen of my Heart” and then one of McMichen’s the popular “Peach Pickin’ Time Down In Georgia.” They were asked to stay in NY to record another session with Rodgers two weeks later. Because of Byrant’s innate ability to follow Rodgers, who played his own rhythm, Peer said of “he’s our regular guitar player.” Jimmie was planning to take the group to London for a tour but his deteriorating health prevented it from coming to fruition.
While in New York McMichen Byrant and McWinders played a few vaudeville gigs and contacted Bob Miller, author of “Twenty-One Years” and sometime recording director with Columbia. Through Miller they were signed to record some twenty-four sides for Crown, an independent cut-rate label (see McMichen Discography) for Victor owned by Peer’s competitor, A & R man Eli Oberstein.
McMichen’s Georgia Wildcats- Louisville
McMichen and Bryant moved to Louisville around 1932-33, where Clayton reorganized the Georgia Wildcats who began broadcasting regularly over radio station WHAS. The different line-ups of McMichen’s Georgia Wildcats had some of the best guitarists in country music including Slim Bryant, Riley Puckett, Merle Travis in 1937 and Lester Flatt. “McMichen had a fine band,” said Country legend PeeWee King about the Georgia Wildcats. “They were the Glenn Miller of the Country Music field.”
Clayton was based in Louisville for the remainder of his musical career and the rest of his life. In 1932 he won his first National Fiddling Championship and from 1934 he won the National Fiddling Champion each year for fifteen straight years! When the Skillet Lickers regrouped in 1934 at the request of the Bluebird label who were trying to record all the Country stars of the 1920s, McMichen did not participate. At that time he was busy with the Georgia Wildcats; the 1934 line-up of Georgia Wildcats included McMichen and Slim Bryant, Jack Dunnigan guitar and singer, Pat Berryman on banjo, violin, and mandolin.
To supplement his income as a musician, he promoted fiddle contests and, in 1936, operated a medicine show. McMichen made many radio appearances in the next several years on KDKA Pittsburgh, WSM and The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, WWVA Wheeling West Virginia, KMOX St. Louis, WLW's Boone County Jamboree and WCKY in Cincinnati and WLS, the National Barn Dance, in Chicago.
The Wildcats recorded extensively for Decca (as Clayton McMichen’s Wildcats; see discography below for a list of songs) throughout the late thirties and into the early forties. This material included arrangements of jazz and popular standards as well as hillbilly material and some original songs. Around 1939 McMichen recorded an album of fiddle tunes for Decca--three or four records with medleys of three tunes to a side.
McMichen’s Later Life (Above McMichen's bar on 300 Spring St. 1948)
McMichen’s band became a Dixieland orchestra shortly before Bryant spilt from McMichen to form his own band. McMichen’s Georgia Wildcat Modern Dance Orchestra is listed as follows: Orville Furrow,sax and clarinet; Eddie Reinhart, Piano; Jimmie Pearson, Drums; Paul Swain, sax, clarinet and flute; Bill Swain, bass; Gene Edwards, sax , clarinet and shouter Dave Durham, trumpet and hot fiddle. They made regular daily broadcasts on WAVE in Louisville and played dance halls all over south-central Kentucky and southern Indiana until 1955 when McMichen retired from the music business.
When McMichen formed his 12-piece dance band in Louisville, Slim Bryant, guitarist Jack Dunigan and several others amicably parted ways. "I liked the music," Bryant said. "But I also liked to make money, and I didn't see any money to be made. McMichen was a wonderful man. You see him, you like him. I hate to say this because I owe him a lot -- he wasn't that good a businessman."
McMichen remained busy with his music after he retired. Here’s an account of his activities from a recent obituary: “Alene Wilson-Russ started with local bands singing country music, and performed with Clayton "Pappy" McMichen who sponsored her into Local 11-637 in 1957. On the local radio circuit they played on WAVE and WHAS, and also on live broadcasts from Howell’s Furniture Store.” Although he was sought out during the folk revival of the 1960s, he was frustrated by the folklorists' reverence for the Skillet Lickers. While he maintained a low profile for the rest of his life, he agreed to perform at the Bean Blossom festival in 1964 and 1966 and the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. McMichen continued to dazzle audiences with his virtuosic fiddling.
Bob Pinson, who was one folklorist that interviewed McMichen, remembered: “And I think he also felt, and rightly so, that he was a better fiddle player than Bob Wills and he couldn't understand why Bob Wills was such a big artist and why he had not made it in that realm of music. Of course, located where he was geographically didn't help any. Louisville is not a hotbed of Western Swing.”
Pinson added: “He worked at a used-car lot at the time-I don't know if he was doing any kind of personal appearances or not, probably he was, but he was making a living at least as a used-car salesman. We went to the used-car lot to find him, we told him we'd be interested in interviewing him and he said, "Yeah, we'll go on out to the house if you want to, we can do it out there." He wanted to stop at a bar along the way and get a drink before he got home, so we made that stop. When we got to the house, he was more interested, at least in the beginning, in showing us his workshop where he did a lot of wood work. So we had to go through that whole routine before we finally got him sitting down with the tape recorder on, then after that it seems he was more interested in talking about the Decca McMichen recordings rather than the Skillet Licker recordings.”
At the age of 68, he placed first in the senior division of the Kentucky State Championship. Clayton McMichen died Jan 3, 1970 in Battletown, KY. Merle Travis and Mac Wiseman celebrated McMichen's legacy with an album, The Clayton McMichen Story, released by CMH Productions in 1988. McMichen’s scrapbook is in the Country Music Hall-of-Fame.
McMichen Bands And Recordings
McMichen’s first band was Lick the Skillet Band formed in 1918. Mac then put together McMichen’s Home Town Boys (also known as Hometown Boys String Band) and performed on WSB radio in 1922. The band recorded for Columbia in 1925. In 1926 he recorded with the Skillet Lickers and also as McMichen’s Melody Men (with Lowe Stokes, Riley Puckett and KD Malone). He recorded several sessions with Lowe Stokes and His North Georgians (See: Lowe stokes discography). Mac recorded duets with Riley Puckett and also Hugh Cross until the early 1930s. In 1929 he formed The Georgia Organ Grinders for a session for Columbia with Bert Layne, Lowe Stokes on organ, Fate Norris, Melvin Dupree and Dan Hornsby. Following the McMichen-Layne String Orchestra with K. D. Malone and Riley Puckett, was McMichen's Harmony Boys, consisting of McMichen and Layne, fiddles and Hoyt "Slim" Bryant, guitar. Then McMichen formed his famed Georgia Wildcats and they recorded first for Columbia in Oct. 1931. In August 1932 McMichen’s Georgia Wildcats band members Slim Bryant and Clayton McMichen did a series of recordings with Jimmie Rodgers. During this time McMichen wrote and recorded with Rodgers “Peach Pickin’ Time In Georgia.” While they were working for Rodgers in the NY area, they recorded 24 sides for Crown and indy label. The Georgia Wildcats recorded their last sides for Decca from 1937 to 1939.
McMichen Discography:
McMichen’s Home Town Boys (Clayton McMichen; Robert “Punk” Stephens; Lowe Stokes): Alabama Jubilee; Bully Of The Town; Silver Bell; Sweet Bunch Of Daisies
Clayton McMichen (also as Bob Nichols) Solo: Fiddlin’ Melody; Grave In The Pines; Killing Of Tom Slaughter; Original Arkansas Traveler (dialogue by Dan Hornsby); Prohibition Blues; St. Louis Blues
Riley Puckett and Clayton McMichen (Bob Nichols) (April 22, 1926): Arkansas Shiek; Bill Johnson; Cindy; Cumberland Valley Waltz; Done Gone; Don’t You Remember The Time; Farmer’s Daughter; I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles; Let the Rest Of the World Pass Me By; Little Brown Jug; McMichen’s Reel; My Blue Ridge Mountain Queen; My Carolina Home; My Isle Of Golden Dreams; ‘Neath The Old Apple Tree; Old Molly Hare; Paddy Won’t You Drink Some Cider; Ring Waltz; Rye Straw; Slim Gal; Till We Meet Again; Trail Of The Lonesome Pine; Underneath The Mellow Moon;
Claude Davis and Bob Nichols (Clayton McMichen) April 1929 Columbia: Down in A Southern Town; Meet Me Tonight In Dreamland; Underneath The Southern Moon; We Were Pals Together;
Georgia Organ Grinders (1929 featuring McMichen- Fiddle; Bert Layne- Fiddle Lowe Stokes- Organ; Fate Norris Banjo Melvin Dupree- Guitar; Dan Hornsby- vocals): Back Up and Push; Charming Betsy; Four Thousand Year Ago; Georgia Man; Skip To My Lou; Smoke Behind The Clouds;
Bob Nichols (Clayton McMichen) and Hugh Cross: Corinne, Corrina; I left My Gal in The Mountains; In The Hills Of Old Virginia; Smoky Mountain Home; When I Lived In Arkansas; When It’s Peach Pickin’ Time In Georgia;
McMichen’s Melody Men (Usually a trio with Riley Puckett; sometimes Bert Layne as McMichen- Layne String Orchestra or Lowe Stokes): Ain’t She Sweet; Back In Tennessee; Blind Child’s Prayer; Daisies Won’t Tell; Down The Ozark Trail; Down Yonder; Dying Hobo; Home Sweet Home; Honolulu Moon; House of David Blues; Let Me Call You Sweetheart; Little Blue Ridge Girl; Lonesome Mama Blues; Sailing On The Bay Of Tripoli; Silver Threads Among The Gold; Sweet Bunch Of Daisies; Wabash Blues; When Clouds Have Vanished; When You And I Were Young Maggie; When You’re Far From The Ones Who Love You; Where The River Shannon Flows;
Oscar Ford (McMichen, Bert Layne, Riley Puckett) Columbia 1930: Georgia is my Home; Girl I Love In Tennessee; Little Nan; Race Between a Ford and Chevrolet;
McMichen's Harmony Boys (McMichen and Layne, fiddles; Hoyt "Slim" Bryant, guitar): Ain’t She Sweet; Sweetheart Days;
Jimmie Rodgers with Clayton McMichen, Slim Bryant, Oddie McWinders- banjo (August 1932): Gambling Bar Room Blues; I’ve only Love Three Woman; In The Hills of Tennessee; Miss The Mississippi And You; Mother Queen Of My Heart; Peach Pickin’ Time Down In Georgia; Prairie Lullaby; Rock All our Babies To Sleep; Sweet Mama Hurry Home; Whippin’ That Old T.B.;
Clayton McMichen’s Georgia Wildcats (includes duets with Slim Bryant from 1931; includes Merle Travis in 1937; Lester Flatt): Alexander’s Ragtime Band; All I’ve Got Is Gone; All Through The Night; Anna From Indiana; Arkansas Traveler; Back In Tennessee; Bile Dem Cabbage Down; Blue Hills Of Virginia; Bummin’ On The I.C. Line; Chicken Don’t Roost Too High; Counting Cross Ties; Devil’s Dream; Don’t Trouble Me; Down In Old Kentucky; Down The Ozark Trail; Downhearted Blues; Dream Trail; Farewell Blues; Fiddler’s Dram; Fire In The Mountain; Fisher’s Hornpipe; Frankie and Johnny; Georgia Wildcat Breakdown; Georgiana Moon; Give The Fiddler A Dram; Hog-Trough Reel; I Cannot Tell A Lie; I Could Tell By The Look On His Face; I Don’t Love Nobody; I Want My Rib; I Gotta Ketch Up With My Settin’; I Wonder Whose Kissing Her Now; I’m Free A Little Bird As I Can Be; I’m Gonna Learn To Swing; I’m Riding The Trail Back Home; Ida Red; In The Pines; Is There Still Room For Me; Jesse James; Just An Old Chimney Stack; Just Tell Them You Saw Me; Little Darling I’ll Be Yours; Log Cabin in The Lane; Old Fashioned Locket; Old Joe Clark; Old Hen Cackled; Only A Faded Rose; Lily That Bloomed For Me; Mary Lou; Misery On My Mind; Mississippi Sawyer; My Gal’s A Lulu; Peter Went Fishin’; Please Don’t sell My Pappy Any More Rum; Pretty Little Widder; Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet; Put Your Arms Around Me Honey; Red Wing; Rose Of Shenandoah Valley; Rickett’s Hornpipe; Sally Goodin; Shortenin’ Bread; Singing an Old Hymn; Smoky Mountain Home; Soldier’s Joy; Sourwood Mountain; St. Louis Woman; Sugar In The Gourd; Sweet Bunch Of Daisies; Sweet Florine; Trail of The Lonesome Pine; Turkey in The Straw; Under The Old Kentucky Moon; Wang Wang Blues; Way Down In Carolina; What Good Will It Do; When The Bloom Is On the Sage; Where The Skies Are Always Blue; Whispering; Wild Cat Rag; Wreck of the Old 97; Yum Yum Blues;