Fiddlin’ John Carson Biography- 1923
“I’m Hell broke loose in a new store shirt to fiddle all Georgia crazy.” Stephen Vincent Benet
Early Country Music’s fiddling champ and recording star, Fiddlin' John Carson (1868-1949) waxed his first record in 1923 and by 1924 was a sensation. Not only was he immortalized with a poem, The Mountain Whipporwill, written about his fiddling duel with Lowe Stokes (see excerpt above), but he recorded 165 titles (121 different songs) and established himself as the first successful country recording artist.
On June 14, 1923, in a vacant building on Nassau Street in Atlanta, Georgia, Carson cut two sides, "Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane" and "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow" for Okeh. This recording can certainly be considered the most important in early Country Music history. Carson was the first recording star, recorded on one of the first portable systems that could be used to record on location anywhere in the country, had the first hit Country record, and was the first Country radio performer.
A young, imaginative Atlanta record dealer named Polk Brockman organized Carson’s session. “I was planning on coming in and making records (in Atlanta) and they (Okeh) were depending on me to recruit the talent,” said Brockman. “I saw this news reel of this fiddler’s convention (at the Palace Theater in New York City) and I happened to think of Fiddlin’ John Carson who was the best known character in this area at the time. He also broadcast on WSB regularly.”
Several years Brockman ago had started working in his grandfather's furniture store, James K. Polk, Inc., managing the phonograph department. By 1921 the firm was Okeh's largest regional outlet with particularly heavy sales of the new race records. The young man from Atlanta convinced Okeh executive Otto Heineman and W.S. Fuhri to give him a wholesale distributorship, and Brockman soon met Ralph Peer in New York City. After viewing a newsreel of the Virginia fiddlers' competition he took out his memorandum pad and jotted down "Fiddlin' John Carson – local talent – let's record."
The record business was in trouble- radio had appeared on the scene and the cheaper form of entertainment was stealing their customers and cutting into profits. Brockman arranged an Atlanta recording expedition for Peer who had no particular type of talent in mind but wanted anything that might stimulate lagging sales. Both men went South via an extended Chicago detour for an Okeh dealers meeting held in conjunction with the National Music Industries annual convention.
Meanwhile, Okeh engineers Charles Hibbard and Peter Decker proceeded to Atlanta with the acoustical recording equipment. Hibbard Okeh’s chief engineer had worked closely with Edison and had already designed the first portable recording system. Brockman rented an empty loft on Nassau Street, off Spring Street, from a suspicious landlord. With an associate, Charles Rey, he rounded up his artists – Warner's Seven Aces, a local collegiate dance band; Eddy Heywood, a Negro theater pianist; Fannie Goosby, a young blues singer; and Fiddlin' John Carson. A number of other performers – the Morehouse College Quartet; Kemper Harreld, violinist; Lucille Bogan, blues singer from Birmingham; Charles Fulcher's novelty jazz band; and Bob White's syncopating band – also recorded but, apparently, not all their material was subsequently released.
The Atlanta Journal carried a more detailed story on the event: "Canned music" recorded by local musicians will be made for the first time in Atlanta by the Okeh company, of New York, it was announced Friday by R.S. Peer, production manager of the company, who is completing arrangements here for the recording of selections by a number of local musical organizations. About thirty recordings will be made at the laboratory of the company on Nassau street, including selections by the Morehouse college quartet of negro singers, "Fiddlin' John" Carson, the Seven Aces, and other organizations. Manufacture of the records here is made possible by a recording machine recently invented by an engineer of the Okeh company, which lowers the high cost of producing the records away from the home laboratories.
Peer’s recollection of the event is such, “We went down there to get Negro stuff. This fellow (Brockman) began scouting around but to my amazement didn’t know any of the Negro talent.” When one act cancelled Brockman brought in Fiddlin’ John Carson to, as Peer recalled, “take up some of the time. He said Fiddlin’ John’s been on the radio and he’s got quite a following. He’s not a good singer but let’s see what he’s got. So the beginning of the hillbilly (recording industry) was just this effort to take up some time.”
After the session Peer dubbed Carson’s singing was "pluperful awful." According to Brockman, Peer asked, “How many of those records (of Fiddlin’ John’s) do you think you can sell?” Brockman replied, “Well I’ll buy five hundred right now.” Peer agreed and issued the item as an uncatalogued special without a label number for local Atlanta consumption. He could not imagine a regional or national market for the disc and felt it was poorly recorded as well. In fact, the first Okeh press releases on the southern session to a national trade journal featured the Morehouse College Quartet and Warner's Seven Aces.
Around one month later after the Nassau Street session the records arrived via Railway Express. “I went to the express company and picked them up myself,” said Brockman. The Elks were in town for their 59th reunion and were invited to a small but festive old time fiddlers' competition in Cable Hall, 82 Broad Street. On Friday night, July 13, Carson played both recorded numbers live on the Cable stage. Then while his record was playing on a large German phonograph with a morning glory horn he did a brisk sale of his own unnumbered discs across the footlights. He was pleased. Brockman recalled the mountaineer's quip, "I'll have to quit making moonshine and start making records."
With Fiddlin' John hawking them from the stage, Brockman sold many discs that night and within a few weeks had to ordered more. Peer immediately rushed into a major pressing on the Okeh label and invited Carson to New York to record twelve more sides on Nov 7. Okeh billed him as the "King of the Mountaineer Musicians." His recording career, which yielded some 165 recorded songs, lasted into the 1930s. [Brockman recalled Peer's initial response to Carson's singing in interviews. In Brockman's first letter to Archie Greene, September 3, 1957, he wrote: (Carson's disc) "was recorded by the Okeh Company at my insistence with a ‘fingers crossed' attitude…."]
By late July, when the first shipment of five hundred records had been sold and after Brockman had ordered another shipment, Peer acknowledged his early mistake and gave the recording the label number 4890, a move that placed the songs in Okeh’s popular catalogue and gave them national publicity.
Brockman got on the phone and said, ‘This is a riot’ ” recalled Per. “I’ve gotta get ten thousand records down here now!”
In November, as sales continued to mount, Peer called Brockman saying, “Get this fellow (Carson) on the train right away. We’ve got to remake the record. We can’t go on with that sort of thing. So we remade the two selections and another eight or ten, you see, and we were off.” Carson came to New York on Nov. 7, where he recorded twelve more songs and signed an exclusive Okeh contract.
Early Life
John William Carson born on a farm north of Smyrna in Cobb County, Georgia. “I was born in Georgia,” said Carson, “but my maw threw her dishwater over in Tennessee.” The birth date on his gravestone is March 23, 1874. John told his fans he was “born in the Blue Ridge, Fannin County, Georgia on March 23, 1868” perhaps to appear older. This year seems unlikely since his parents James P. Carson, a farmer whose father Allen Carson was a farmer, and Mary Ann Beaty were married August 7, 1869 and John older brother Wyatt was born after that. No one is certain of the exact year of his birth, I’ll go with the date on his marriage certificate making his birth date: March 23, 1973.
Some sources say when John was a boy he became a race horse jockey for Gus Mays of Cobb County. John who stuttered when he spoke, didn’t attend school. In the Carson family only one of his brothers had any formal education. “I never went to school but for two days,” John said. “Went in my brother’s place cause he was sick. Pa didn’t want him to lose no time.”
At the age of ten, Fiddler (one of John’s nicknames) traveled to see his grandfather Allen Carson, who gave the youngster his first fiddle, a Stradivarius copy dated 1714, reputedly brought to the north Georgia hills from Ireland in 1780. One family member said he could play “Old Dan Tucker” by the time he got home.
Becomes “Fiddlin’ John”
As a young man Carson made a living as a farmer, painter, railroad worker, horse jockey, and moonshiner before his talent as a musician made money. Carson once told a newspaper reporter, “Getting’ in jail was the makin’ of me.” He explained that in 1899 he and his fiddle were put in jail for making moonshine. After hearing Carson play the sheriff agree to let him out to play a fiddle contest and told him if he won he could go free. He won the contest, got out of jail and received a fifty-dollar gold piece as first prize. Carson reportedly won the same contest the next eight years in a row.
Gene Wiggins, in his biography of John (Fiddlin’ Gone Crazy) quotes two accounts of a contest between Bob Taylor and a young John Carson, while Taylor was Governor of Tennessee (1887-91, or later again in 1897-99): "It was in an old-timers' fiddling contest in Memphis. John and Bob both were there. The judges gave it to Bob, who was then governor of the state. Stepping to the front of the stage, Fiddlin' Bob, in a touching speech, told the audience that he believed the judges had given him the prize only because he was the governor. He said he could never hope to play like Fiddlin' John, and he resigned the prize in the latter's favor." (attributed to Collier: "Fiddlin' John On Broadway")
".....Young Carson was declared winner and thereafter became known as Fiddlin' John, while Governor Taylor was so delighted with the young fellow's playing that right there on the spot, he bestowed his fiddle on the proud victor." (attributed to Radio Digest 11/7/1925 and reprinted in Mark Wilson's notes to Rounder LP 1003 Fiddlin' John Carson)
He fiddled constantly at political rallies for Taylor and his friends Tom Watson and Eugene Talmadge. One newspaper account made years later recalled John travelling to a rally: “It was Fiddlin’ John carson who in 1888 when quite a youth, walked from Atlanta to Washington D. C., leading as dog and playing his violin,”
Gets Married
Around 1894 when John was going to play at a dance, he spied a dark haired buxom girl plowing a yoke of oxen named Jenny Nora Scroggins. Soon after they were married on June 9, 1984. By the time they had three children, John found work at the Exposition Cotton Mill with his father and brother and the family moved to the Atlanta area in 1900. John and the eldest of his now nine children found work in Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill in 1911 so they moved to south Atlanta.
His wife occasionally accompanied John on his shows and “beat straws.” During his shows John would tell jokes about his wife, his favorite being: Me and my wife played a show in Tennessee and we rented a room there. After I went out to arrange the music making I came back to the hotel room and she was real mad.
“What kind of hotel have you got me in?” she asked.
“Why, the finest one in Tennessee,” I said.
“Well look out that window,” she said. ‘There’s a naked man in that room over there.”
I looked up and said, “Well you can only see him from the waist up.”
“Waist up nothin’!” she cried. “You get on top of that trunk and take a look.”
Little Mary Phagan- Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention
Carson's first brush with fame came in 1913, during the Leo Frank trial. Frank was tried and convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year old worker in the National Pencil Factory. Carson wrote a 16 stanza ballad entitled Little Mary Phagan, which portrayed Mary as a sweet young girl and Frank as a fiendishly evil brutalizer. Carson would play the song as boys tried to sell sheet music to the crowd for 10 cents a sheet. The song was incredibly popular and would be sung for decades after.
Between 1913 and 1935 Carson was a major figure at the prestigious Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers' Conventions, held annually in Atlanta, which he won three times. A favorite among contesting fiddlers, he was a colorful character who knew the value of publicity and understood how to cultivate it. He played upon his rural north Georgia origins and regaled audiences with tales about making moonshine, hardscrabble farming, and time spent in jail. He frequently brought his fiddle to the contests in a flour sack.
The Atlanta Journal reported after the first night of the 1913 contest: “John Carson of Blue Ridge was the favorite and the audience did not hesitate to call for him- as “Carson” or “Blue Ridge”- when the evening grew informal. “Fiddlin’ John as he is known is one of the state’s prime artists with a bow. Moreover he can sing and he was encored time and time again.” John would go on to win $12 (around $180 today) for fourth place.
In 1914 Carson brought his old hound dog, Trail, “the sorriest looking hound dog that bayed the moon,” with him. While Carson played “Listen to the Mockingbird” his dog, “raised his voice in song.” Carson said, “If old Trail will jest sing that-a-way when the fiddler’s convention opens, I’ve done got the prize won. But I don’t know- he’s kinda scared of strangers.”
Although Carson did win the 1914 fiddle competition and legend has it that “old Trail sang” while his master fiddled, the judges surely didn’t allow his dog in the contest. John served as master of ceremonies and also won the competition two more times in 1923 and 1927.
The contests featured many of the top fiddler’s and musicians in the Atlanta region, which was the center of Country music for many years. John developed a friendly rivalry with fellow fiddler Gid Tanner [According to Wiggins, Tanner occasionally played engagements with Carson] who was listed as attending the 1913 contest although there is no mention of him winning a prize. Other noteworthy performers included A. A. Gray, R. M. Stanley, Lowe Stokes, Earl Johnson, Riley Puckett and Anita Sorrells Wheeler.
Early Road Shows- Earl Johnson and T.M. Brewer
One of Carson’s early road shows featured two men with the same name: Earl Johnson! “Fiddlin’ Earl” was a winner of the Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers' competition in 1926 and later recorded with his own band, Earl Johnson and his Dixie Entertainers. “Freckle-faced Earl” was a blackface comedian who played a one- string cigar box fiddle and musical saw.
Another of John’s early musical sidekicks was T. M. “Bully” Brewer, a part Cherokee Indian born in 1885, who lost his leg up to the knee in a railroad accident. Bully was a good singer and an excellent guitarist. Later in the 1920s he took up playing the fiddle and learned the finer points from Lowe Stokes.
As an entertainer John had a special kind of charisma that was enhanced by his stuttering. Peanut Brown, a guitarist who would later record with Carson in 1934, remembered: “He’d stand there and pick on the fiddle and stutter and crack jokes so that nobody cared if he played that thing or not. He put on a better show than Clayton McMichen did. Clayton could play beautiful fiddle music, but how many people want to hear two hours of beautiful fiddle music? John just sort of had people mesmerized.”
First Country Radio Performer
Carson, at the age of fifty-four, also was the first country musician to broadcast country music over a radio station WSB in the spring of 1922 only one week after the station opened. Fiddlin' John Carson was a working as a housepainter in Cabbagetown (near Atlanta) when he visited the new station. When he announced that he would "like to have a try at the newfangled contraption," Lambdin Kay obliged him. His only pay being a snort of the engineer's whiskey, Carson performed "Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane."
The Atlanta Journal reported that Carson's fame spread "to every corner of the United States were WSB was heard." Taking his place before the microphone, Carson launched into an impromptu concert of mountain music that lasted, according to one station official, until "exhaustion set in." The response from listeners was instantaneous and profuse. Telephone calls, telegrams, and letters poured in for days afterward. After nearly weekly performances for the rest of the year by May, 1923 the Atlanta Journal claimed that Carson was the most popular performer on the radio station.
“In 1939, when John was about to play on his birthday, March 23, Ernest Rogers wrote that he had first played on that day in 1922: Seventeen years ago tomorrow a slender man with an engaging smile and manner came to WSB’s studio on the fifth floor of the Atlanta Journal Building. Under his arm was a fiddle case which showed it had been used…and frequently. With that same friendly smile that characterizes him now, the fiddler removed his hat and inquired if it would be alright for him to play and sing a song or two
over WSB.
Well, it just so happened that it would be all right and so Fiddlin’ John Carson, “The First of the Hill Billies,” went on the air. As near as we can trace it down, the first tune John played and sang was a
backwoods song called “Little Log Cabin in the Lane.” He had a repertoire that apparently was limitless. He played and sang until, shall we say, exhaustion set in. But not before he had scored a signal triumph and the phones were jumping up and down with requests from listeners who liked this return to the old-time mountain music that John Carson had been playing and singing for years.
In the month of September 1922, John was given considerable Journal publicity. The Journal showed him with T. M. “Bully” Brewer, guitarist; Earl Johnson, fiddler; and L.E. Akin, banjoist. The headline “Georgia Fiddlers Invade Radio World” let the public know that what we, the public, call country music had come to the radio.
Rosa Lee Carson
Rosa Lee Carson was born in Atlanta on October 10, 1909, the youngest of their nine children. She began singing and buck-and-wing dancing at stage shows and political rallies as part of her father's musical act when she was five years old. By the age of fourteen she was already proficient on the guitar and the banjo. During the early 1920s she began performing with her father on Atlanta's flagship radio station, WSB, and touring with him and the Virginia Reelers at stage shows throughout Georgia and the Southeast. After graduating from high school, Carson became a permanent member of her father's band.
Carson made her recording debut in June 1925 at the age of fifteen, when she accompanied her father on guitar on four songs for OKeh Records. At the session she also recorded two solo sides, "The Lone Child," a Tin Pan Alley song about a ragged, wandering orphan boy, and "Little Mary Phagan," a sentimental ballad, composed by her father, about the 1913 murder of an Atlanta factory girl.
For the next nine years Carson accompanied her father and the Virginia Reelers on tour and on recording sessions in Atlanta, New York, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Camden, New Jersey. In addition to the recordings she made with her father, she also recorded a handful of solos and duets on which she sang lead, including "The Drinker's Child," "Texas Blues," "The Last Old Dollar Is Gone," and "The Poor Girl Story."
In 1928 Polk Brockman, OKeh's Atlanta records distributor and talent scout, gave Carson the nickname Moonshine Kate to enhance her hillbilly image, and she embraced it proudly for the rest of her life.
Between 1928 and 1930 Carson performed with her father on eighteen skit recordings for OKeh Records, including "Moonshine Kate," "John Makes Good Licker," and "Corn Licker and Barbecue, Parts 1 & 2." These skits, combining comedic dialogues with brief musical interludes, revolved around the manufacture and consumption of moonshine whiskey in the north Georgia mountains. On them, she played Moonshine Kate, the spirited, sharp-tongued hillbilly daughter of her father's moonshiner character.
After the collapse of record sales during the Great Depression ended their recording contract, Carson and her father worked as campaign entertainers for Eugene Talmadge's 1932 Georgia gubernatorial campaign and in several of his subsequent campaigns for governor and U.S. senator. When she wasn't performing, Carson worked for the Atlanta Department of Recreation during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1944 she married Wayne Johnson, an Atlanta machinist. She lived briefly in Portland, Maine, where her husband was stationed in the navy during World War II, but after his discharge they returned to the Atlanta area.
After retiring, Carson and her husband ran a fishing lodge on Lake Seminole, near Donalsonville. In later years she gave dozens of interviews about early-twentieth-century Atlanta and its old-time music scene, including a series of oral histories with Gene Wiggins for his 1987 biography of her father, Fiddlin' Georgia Crazy. In 1983 Carson and her father were among the first group of old-time musicians inducted into the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame. She died in 1992 in Bainbridge at the age of eighty-three.
Fiddlin’ John’s Recording Career
Carson’s recording career began in 1923 (for details see the beginning of this biography). Ralph Peer didn’t think the initial recording was properly recorded and when sales took off he told Brockman to bring John back to New York to re-record the songs and make new ones. Early in November 1923 Brockman sent the fiddler to New York to record a dozen more selections and to place him under an exclusive Okeh contract.
Carson was listed as a southern hill-country musician and the current discs by Carson and by Whitter as "old time tunes" played "in the real ‘old-time' way. Early in 1924 Peer released a second Carson disc, "You Will Never Miss Your Mother Until She Is Gone/Papa's Billy Goat.” Carson’s first recording of “Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane” would go one to sell over 500,000 copies and make him a star. He also made the first commercial recording of John Henry which was a hit for him.
Anyone who has listened to Carson singing has had trouble understanding his lyrics. Irene Spain, Step-daughter of Andy Jenkins (recording artist and writer of Floyd Collins) wrote: “Poor John couldn’t make a record unless he was more than half drunk and he always had to have a jaw-breaker, a candy about half as big as a golf ball, in his mouth and he would roll that around when he was singing.”
1924 Fiddlers Contest With Lowe Stokes
Fiddler Lowe Stokes (Born May 28, 1898 in Elijay, Gilmer County, Ga.) moved to Atlanta from Cartersville in 1922 and lived with T.M. Brewer, one of John’s playing partners. In 1924 the upstart Stokes defeated the savvy veteran Carson at the Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention to win the coveted state championship. The winning song was “Hell Broke Loose In Georgia,” a song that Stokes would be known for and would be his last recorded song in 1982.
“John got so mad he liked to have busted,” said Ed Kincaid. Stokes represented the other faction of fiddlers in Atlanta led by Clayton McMichen that played in a more modern style. The newspaper reported: “Pitted against Stokes were 50 of the best known fiddlers in the state including the nationally known fiddler John Carson, fiddlin’ John.”
Many credit the Carson and Stokes duel with inspiring the Charlie Daniels’ song “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” which is reportedly based on the famous competition. After Poet Stephen Vincent Benet read a 1924 article in the Literary Digest describing Stokes victory, he penned his 1925 poem, “The Mountain Whippoorwill” (Or, How Hill-Billy Jim Won the Great Fiddlers' Prize) which begins: Up in the mountains, it's lonesome all the time, (Sof' win' slewin' thu' the sweet-potato vine.) Up in the mountains, it's lonesome for a child, (Whippoorwills a-callin' when the sap runs wild.)
Fiddlin’ John Carson and The Virginia Reelers
Probably at Peer’s urging, John was asked to bring a band with him to his recording sessions. Even though all the members of the band were from Atlanta, John named the string band- The Virginia Reelers, after a fiddle tune called “The Virginia Reel.”
The Reelers line-up featured John Carson (fiddle and vocals) Earl Johnson (fiddle), Moonshine Kate Carson (guitar or banjo), T. M. "Bully" Brewer (usually guitar or banjo- sometimes fiddle) and occasionally Land Norris (banjo) or L.E. Atkin (banjo). They recorded some 50 sides for Okeh between 1924 and 1930; the first session was March 1924.
Carson still recorded some solo sides singing and playing fiddle but the majority of his recordings included his band. His first national hit was the 1925 ballad of “Floyd Collins,” a song also recorded by Vernon Dalhart whose version would become a million seller (reportedly selling three million copies).
After the Skillet Lickers had a hit with their skit, “A Corn Licker Still In Georgia” Carson recorded “Moonshine Kate,” the first of three skits cut on August 10, 1928. After this recording, Rosa Lee would adapt the stage name “Moonshine Kate.”
The Depression Years
According to Rosa Lee, “The Depression knocked us wide open.” The first sides Carson cut after the Depression on Dec. 17, 1929 were issued. Record sales began to drop and many of their recordings after that were not issued. The Carsons contract was not renewed and after their Oct. 1931 session (only two unissued sides were cut) they stopped recording for Okeh.
Alton Delmore tells of a chance meeting with Fiddlin’ John and Rev. Andrew Jenkins at the recording studio in 1931 when the Delmores were waiting to cut their first record. John introduced the Delmores to the “big recording stars” that were present which included Riley Puckett, Gid Tanner and Clayton McMichen, and asked them to play a song and they would join in. As the Delmores played “Left my Gal In the Mountains” they were soon joined in song by the big recordings stars “singing along just like a choir.”
John started a fish camp on the Chattahoochee River where he made a little money renting boats and fishing gear. He continued playing when he could and was busy playing at political rallies for Gene Talmadge in 1932. He took a job as an elevator operator in Georgia's capitol, a position secured for him by Talmadge.
In 1934 Bluebird (Victor’s discount label) began trying to corner the market on the popular performers from the 1920s by offering opportunities to record their most popular tunes on Bluebird. John backed by Peanut Brown, and Bill Willard was joined by Rosa Lee and they recorded 24 sides for Bluebird on Feb. 27-28, 1934
Last Years
John’s music fell out of favor in the 30s and blues yodelers and cowboy yodelers like Gene Autry were replacing the archaic string band sound. By the late 30s the honky tonk and western swing styles made the music John played passe.
John continued to play at political rallies until 1942 and when Talmadge lost the election Carson lost his elevator job- so he retired. He was a notary but seldom charged anyone for his services. By 1944 his house was empty except for Chester and his wife Jenny. He played in Gene Talmadge’s 1946 campaign with the Rice Brothers but Talmadge died before he could be inaugurated.
In 1948 Talmadge’s son Herman won the governor seat and Carson again returned to his elevator position. His wife Jenny got cancer and died in No. 29, 1948 so John lived with his children. He died almost penniless in Atlanta on Dec. 1, 1949.
His old friend Ernest Rogers wrote in the Atlanta Journal: “Those of us who new and loved Fiddlin’ John Carson in those day when he was bringing a fresh clear note to the nation, mourn his passing. Yet we commit him to eternity with the recollection that he gave to humanity his greatest possession: the beloved songs of his boyhood that always sang in his heart.”
Recordings: I’ve listed the Carson recordings in alphabetical order by the groups. He played a fiddle accompaniment (sometimes the melody) while he sang during his solo recordings. After several solo sessions Peer suggested he record with other musicians so he formed Fiddlin’ John Carson and His Virginia Reelers, a curious name since the musicians were from Georgia. John Carson sang and played fiddle; usually Earl Johnson played second and/or unison fiddle. At first Land Norris played banjo and later his daughter Moonshine Kate played guitar or banjo with T.M. Brewer playing fiddle or banjo. Some of the group sessions (which I’ve included under the Reelers) are just listed as Fiddlin’ John Carson and usually the group is Carson with Moonshine Kate and T.M. Brewer. The duets with his daughter are listed under Fiddlin’ John Carson and Moonshine Kate. On Kate’s solo recordings John occasionally played. For the Bluebird Sessions in 1934 I only listed the songs that were new recordings not the remakes of earlier recordings. The exact personnel for some of the group session were not kept. I’ve used Tony Russell and also Guthrie Meade as a basis for my discography.
Fiddlin John Carson Solo Recordings In Alphabetical Order: All Alone By The Seaside; Baggage Coach Ahead; Be Kind to a Man When He's Down; Bachelor’s Ball; Billy In The Low Ground; Boil Dem Cabbage Down; Casey Jones; Cat Came Back, The; Charming Betsy; Death of Floyd Collins; Dixie Boll Weevil; Dixie Cowboy (When The Works All Done This Fall); Do Round My Lindy; Drunkard’s Hiccoughs; Everybody Works But Father; Fare You Well Old Joe Clark; Grave of Little Mary Phagan; Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane; Farmer Is the Man That Feeds Them All; I Got Mine; I'm Glad My Wife's in Europe; I’m Nine Hundred Miles From Home; It Takes A Little Rain with the Sunshine; Jimmie On The Railroad; John Henry Blues; Kickin’ Mule; Letter Edged In Black; Liberty; Lightning Express; My North Georgia Home; Nancy Rowland; Old Dan Tucker; Old Hen Cackled and The Rooster’s Going To Crow; Old and Only in the Way; Old Frying Pan and Camp Kettle; Old Sallie Goodman; Old Uncle Ned; Orphan Child; Papa's Billy Goat; Run Along Home With Lindy; *Run Jimmie Run; Steamboat Bill; To Welcome Travelers Home; Tom Watson Special; Turkey in the Straw; When You and I Were Young Maggie; You Will Never Miss Your Mother Till She’s Gone; When Abraham and Isaac Rushed The Can;
Fiddlin’ John Carson and His Virginia Reelers (John Carson- fiddle; usually Earl Johnson- fiddle; sometimes Land Norris- banjo; Moonshine Kate- guitar or banjo; sometimes T.M. Brewer- fiddle or banjo): Ain’t No Bugs On Me;After The Ball;Alabama Gal Won’t You Come Out Tonight; Arkansas Traveler; Be Kind To A Man When He’s Down; Bully of The Town; Burglar and the Old Maid; Cacklin’ Pullet; Corn Licker and Barbeque; Cotton Eyed Joe; Christmas Will Soon Be Over; Did He Ever Return?; Didn’t He Ramble; Dixie Division; Dominicker Duck; Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down; Down Where The Sugar Cane Grows; Engineer On The Mogull; Fire In The Mountain; *Flat Footed; Georgia Wagoner; Goin’ Down To Cripple Creek; Goin’ Where The Climate Suits My Clothes; Gonna Swing On The Golden Gate; Goodbye Liza Jane; Hawk and the Buzzard; Hell Bound For Alabama; Hell Broke Loose In Georgia; Hen and The Rooster; Hop Light Lady; I’m Glad My Wife’s In Europe; If There Wasn’t Any Women In The World; If You Can't Get the Stopper Out, Break Off the Neck; In My Old Cabin Home; It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’; It Won't Happen Again for a Hundred Years or More; It’s A Shame To Whip Your Wife On Sunday; Jesse James; John Makes Good Licker; John’s Trip To Boston; Kate’s Snuff Box; Little Log Cabin By The Stream; Little More Sugar In The Coffee; Long Way To Tipperary; Moonshine Kate; My Ford Sedan; My Home in Dixie Land; Old And Only In The Way; Old Aunt Peggy Won’t You Set Em Up Again?; Old Joe Clark; Old Ship Is Sailing For The Promised Land; Pa’s Birthday; Papa’s Billy Goat; Peter Went Fishing (Georgia Railroad); Quit That Ticklin’ Me; Raccoon and The Possum; Run Along Home Sandy; She’s More Like Mother Every Day; Smoke Goes Out The Chimney Just The Same; Soldier’s Joy; Sugar In The Gourd; Sunny Tennessee; Swanee River; Take The Train To Charlotte; Times are Not Like They Used To Be; Turkey In the Hay; Whatcah Gonna Do When Your Licker Gives Out?; Welcome The Traveler Home; When We Meet On That Beautiful Shore; Who’s The Best Fiddler?; Who Bit the Wart Off Grandma’s Nose; You’ll Never Miss Mother Till She’s Gone;
Fiddlin’ John Carson and Moonshine Kate: Boston Burglar; Down South Where The Sugar Cane Grows; Going To the County Fair; Hawk and the Buzzard; Honest Farmer; I Intend To Make Heaven My Home; Meet Her When The Sun Goes Down; My Ford Sedan; Old Grey Horse Ain’t What He Used To Be; On The Banks of The Tennessee; Polecat Blues; Run Along Home With Lindy; Sally Ann; Silver Threads Among The Gold; There’s A Hard Time Coming; You Can’t Get Milk From A Cow Named Ben; You Gotta Let My Dog Alone;
Rosa Lee Carson (Moonshine Kate): Are You Going To Leave The Old Home; Brave Soldier; Daddy Blues; Drinker’s Child; Dying Hobo; I Smell Your Hoecake Burning; Last Old Dollar Is Gone; Little May Phagan; Log Cabin Home; Lone Child; My Man’s a Jolly Railroad Man; Poor Girl Story; Ragged Riley; Texas Blues; Texas Bound;
Fiddlin' John Carson’s 1934 Bluebird Recordings (Fiddlin’ John Carson- Fiddle; Bill Willard- Banjo; Marion “Peanut” Brown- guitar; Moonshine Kate- guitar): Bear Me Away On Your Snowy Wings (Angel Band); Do You Ever Think of Me?; Georgia’s Three Dollar Tag; Honest Farmer; Gonna Raise A Ruckus; Mamma’s Nanny Goat; I’m Old and Feeble; New “Coming Round The Mountain”; Since She Took My Licker From Me; Stockade Blues; Storm That Struck Miami; Take Your Burdens To The Lord; Taxes On The Farmer Feeds Them All; When The Saints Go Marching In;
*Offensive titles changed