Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis Biographies-1924
After Fiddlin’ John Carson’s hit “The Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane” (eventually selling over 500,000 records) for Okeh, Columbia became interested in recording authentic country musicians. Samantha Bumgarner, a frequent winner at fiddle contests, was invited to NYC to record.
On April 22 and 23, 1924, Samantha Bumgarner and her friend and musical partner Eva Davis recorded fourteen songs (four of which were unissued) for Columbia Phonograph Company in New York City. Not only was this one of the earliest recording Country sessions but also it was the first recording featuring the mountain style banjo and the first recording of women in Country Music history.
The women from North Carolina entered the NYC studio on April 22 to find the Fisk Jubilee Singers finishing their last number. They waited quietly until it was their turn and then began with a song called “Cindy in the Meadows,” a very different sound than the African-American spirituals performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. In all, the recordings numbered twelve songs; the first two were released in August of 1924 to suitable sales. Six of the remaining ten songs were released soon after or in the years to follow. Unfortunately Columbia never released (issued) some country standards from that session: “Last Gold Dollar,” “Down the Road,” “Everyday Blues” and “(Foggy) Mountain Top.”
Almost immediately after the recording, Columbia began to advertise for the release of Bumgarner and Davis’ songs. Calling the fiddle a “violin” and attaching the phrase “discoveries from North Carolina” in the advertisement demonstrated just how unknowledgeable record companies were of the music of Southern Appalachia. Although Columbia had recorded string musicians Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett one month before Davis and Bumgarner, this marked the first time a female string band was recorded.
Samantha Biddix Bumgarner
Aunt Samantha was born in Jackson County, North Carolina in the year 1880 to Sara MaLynda Brown Biddix. Her father, Has Leander Biddix, a horseman who tended a stable, was born in 1853. He was known as a fiddle player who could make his instrument “croon like a loving woman.” Samantha always admired her father’s fiddle, but he never allowed her to play it. Samantha would sneak the fiddle out of the house and practice when her father was away. Noticing his daughter’s obvious interest in music, he made her a banjo from a gourd with cat hide used as the drumhead and waxed sewing thread for the strings.
After she learned to play Has Biddix finally bought her a banjo so father and daughter could entertain their family, friends, and neighbors whenever the chance presented itself. Later, Samantha married Carse (Carson) Bumgarner (1863-1951), who finally bought her a fiddle. She became a virtuoso at both instruments. After a fire burned Bumgarner’s house burned to the ground, Samantha’s fiddle and banjo were destroyed. She bought a “ten-cent banjo,” and with this brand new, but cheaply made banjo, she entered a competition at a fiddler’s convention in Canton, North Carolina. “I tell you, I was so nervous I didn’t know I was hitting the strings,” said Bumgarner. “But I won the contest. And I been winnin’ ‘em ever since.” The banjo contest in Canton marked the beginning of Bumgarner’s musical career. Bumgarner began to perform in banjo and fiddling contests all over the country.
Around 1910 she was given the nickname "Aunt," a title she was be known as for the rest of her life. When she was invited as part of the Bascom Lamar Lunsford troupe to the White House to play for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the First Lady and their guests King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, it was said the President even called her "Aunt Samantha."
In 1928, after her brief recording career for Columbia, Bascom Lamar Lunsford invited her to perform at
the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. Bumgarner became a mainstay and a crowd favorite at the festival. Performing with other nationally recorded musicians as well as local pickers and singers, Bumgarner played in every festival from its inception in 1928 until 1959 when arthritis would not allow her to pick anymore.
In the early 1930s, Samantha was asked to perform for Dr. John R. Brinkley’s border radio station in Del Rio, Texas. Brinkley, also a native of Jackson County, North Carolina was a quack doctor known for his promotion to cure erectile dysfunction with surgically inserted goat glands. Brinkley moved to Del Rio, Texas in part to evade federal authorities on charges of tax evasion, but also to promote his goat gland operation over the airwaves. In Texas, Brinkley built a powerful radio station that broadcast at 500,000 watts. Brinkly drove Bumgarner and Cagle with him to Texas in his big Cadillac. Bumgarner became a regular guest on the show along with her student and protege Harry Cagle, another native of Jackson County who later founded the band "the Country Cousins."
In Asheville she played with Marcus Martin from nearby Swannanoa, she also played with Bill Hensley from Avery Creek. Samantha also recorded several more times during the folk music revival of the 1950s, all while keeping her date with the Asheville Mountain Dance and Folk Festival every August. Her performance at the Festival in 1936 inspired a young Harvard student by the name of Pete Seeger. “When Seeger arrived at the festival he strolled up to the stage and saw a woman in a rocking chair plucking the banjo with a big smile on her face. The woman played the five-string banjo with such skill that Seeger was awe struck.” She branched out, playing in larger cities like New York, Washington, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City. She even made recordings for a record company in Liverpool, England. Now many of her recordings are in the Library of Congress. A Bumgarner/Davis 1924 Columbia record is among a collection of rare 78 rpm country recordings housed in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tenn.
Carse Bumgarner worked as a foreman in an extract plant. After her husband died, Bumgarner eked out a living from her public performances. In August of 1955, she appeared in a Life Magazine article entitled “Strummin’ Up A Banjo Boom.” In her later years, rheumatism and arthritic hands troubled Aunt Samantha. She died Christmas Eve 1960 at her home in Love Field outside of Sylva, North Carolina of arteriosclerotic heart disease at age 82 and is buried in Dillsboro's Franklin Cemetery.
John Parris writer for the The Asheville Citizen – Times called Bumgarner “the last of the old time balladeers” and said “her head was so full of ballads that she could keep right on playing forever and never play the same tune twice.”
Eva Smathers Davis
Eva Davis of Sylva, North Carolina was eldest child of James and Mary Davis. She was born 1889 and grew up in Reems Creek, Buncombe, North Carolina. After she married Bascum Davis, a farmer, they lived in Swannanoa and had a son, Shannon, who was born in 1909. By 1920 Eva had remarried was a mother of five and was living in Asheville. A banjo picker and singer she played with Samantha Bumgarner and accompanied Bumgarner to the sessions in NYC in April 1924. Davis recorded two songs by herself (banjo and vocal) “Wild Bill Jones” and “John Hardy” in the first session on April 22.
Several of the songs released by Columbia in 1924 have become Country and Bluegrass standards: Cindy, Wild Bill Jones, and John Hardy.
Complete Songs Recorded (Columbia April, 1924) : Big-eyed Rabbit; Cindy in the Meadows; Down the Road (Unissued); Everyday Blues(Unissued); Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss; (Foggy) Mountain Top(Unissued); Gamblin' Man; Georgia Blues; I Am My Mother's Darlin' Child; John Hardy; Last Gold Dollar(Unissued); Shout Lou (Shout Lulu); Wild Bill Jones; Worried Blues (Lonesome Road Blues)
Samantha Bumgarner, Banjo Songs of the Southern Mountains (Riverside RLP 610) reissued (Washington WLP 712); by Obray Ramsey, Henry Gentry, George Pegram, Walter Parham, Jeanie West, Samantha Bumgarner, Kenneth S. Goldstein, Harry West