The Skillet Lickers: A Study of a Hillbilly String Band and Its Repertoire
by Norman Cohen
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 309, Hillbilly Issue (Jul. - Sep., 1965), pp. 229-244
NORMAN COHEN: THE SKILLET LICKERS: A STUDY OF A HILLBILLY STRING BAND AND ITS REPERTOIRE
Playa del Rey, California
THE HILLBILLY STRING BAND grew out of traditional dance music, which was played Saturday nights in many communities in the rural south. One of the finest and most popular of the hillbilly string bands to record during the twenties and thirties was a group of north Georgians best known as Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers. Several other bands, each with slightly different personnel, were associated with the Skillet Lickers. The recording career of the Skillet Lickers began in March, 1924, less than a year after the historic first recordings of Henry Whitter and Fiddlin' John Carson, and continued through the end of the thirties with unabated popularity.
This long and fruitful career provides excellent material for a case study of a hillbilly band epitomizing the development of hillbilly music as a whole. This study will show how deeply rooted the genre is in traditional folk music, and how, as it became aware of itself as a commercial industry it began borrowing from other styles of American music-particularly jazz, blues, and "popular" (Tin Pan Alley) music. Finally, hillbilly music repaid its debt to folk music by creating new songs and styles that have entered the folk tradition. The Skillet Lickers are important not only because of their unusually rich traditional repertoire, but also because of their many attempts at recording "popular" music and jazz. Although not very successful in the latter genres, the group did produce some of the earliest recordings that combined hillbilly with popular music, and made a significant step in the development of a jazz-country music hybrid that is an important part of the modern country-western music scene.
Among the bands associated with the Skillet Lickers were McMichen's Hometown Band, McMichen's Melody Men, McMichen and his Georgia Wildcats, Fate Norris and the Tanner Boys, Arthur Tanner and his Cornshuckers, and The Georgia Organgrinders, all of which centered around three Georgia musicians, Gid Tanner, Riley Puckett, and Clayton McMichen. These three artists, although they were all from the Atlanta area and had been exposed to the same cultural milieu, developed differently in their musical growth. Their subsequent musical careers appear in a clearer perspective in the light of some biographical background.
James Gideon Tanner [1] was born in Thomas Bridge near Monroe, Georgia, on June 6, 1884 or 1885. [2] When he grew up he moved to Lawrenceville, where he owned a chicken farm. Later he moved to Atlanta, and finally settled in Dacula, Georgia. He learned to play the fiddle at the age of fourteen, when an uncle died and willed him an instrument. His fiddling can be heard on all but a few of his recordings. He won many fiddling contests in Georgia, and in the twenties was a frequent competitor of Fiddlin' John Carson. His appearance at a fiddlers' convention in those days was noteworthy enough to occasion a news item in the Atlanta Journal. As late as I955 he won the Old Time Fiddlers' Contest in Atlanta. His professional career began early in 1924 when Frank Walker, a talent scout for the Columbia Phonograph Company, asked him to come to New York to make some recordings. He was told he could bring one other person with him; he brought Riley Puckett.
Tanner and Puckett made their first recordings on March 7, I924, and were the first Southern rural artists to record for Columbia. Columbia was almost a year behind the General Phonograph Corporation, the producer of Okeh records, in this field. During the thirties Tanner worked at radio stations in Covington (Kentucky), Cleveland, Chicago, and Atlanta. He was twice married and had five sons; one of them, Gordon, played fiddle with the Skillet Lickers on their recordings in I934. Tanner's younger brother, Arthur, recorded with some of the groups between 1926 and 1929, playing banjo and guitar. Gid Tanner remained a chicken farmer almost until his death in 1960.
George Riley Puckett [3] was born in Alpharetta, Georgia, twenty-five miles northwest of Atlanta, around I890. He died on July I3, 1946, before there was much serious academic interest in hillbilly music and consequently biographical details are sparse. At the age of three months he was blinded when a lead acetate (sugar of lead) solution was accidentally used to treat a minor eye ailment. In 1901 he entered the Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon. During his teens he lived in Atlanta, and there, at the age of twelve, he begain to play the five-string banjo. Later he learned to play the guitar, which he used on all his recordings after I925. He made his radio debut over Station WSB on September 28, 1922; the following day the Atlanta Journal wrote, "Already favorites at WSB, the Hometown outfit scored a knockout by introducing Mr. Puckett as one of their stars Thursday night." [4] After the Skillet Lickers disbanded in I931, he worked on stations in Covington and Cincinnati with McMichen's Georgia Wildcats. He also appeared on stations in Huntington (West Virginia), and Memphis by himself. He travelled extensively with his own tent show, particularly around the Texas and Oklahoma oilfields. He was married and had one daughter. Later, his wife left him. He died in East Point, Georgia, in I946, from blood poisoning incurred from an infected boil on his neck. At the time of his death he was singing with the Stone Mountain Boys over station WACA in Atlanta.
Clayton McMichen [5] was born on January 26, I900, in Allatoona, Georgia. His Scots-Irish ancestors came to the United States around I8oo and became farmers. At the age of eleven McMichen learned to play the fiddle from his uncles and from his father, who was a trained musician. His father played the fiddle at square dances in the neighborhood and also played Viennese waltzes at the uptown hotel "crinoline" dances. From his father McMichen learned his first fiddle pieces, including "Pretty Little Widow," "Billy in the Low Ground," "Run Nigger Run," "Nancy Rollin," "Arkansas Traveller," and "Durang's Hornpipe." In 19I3 his family moved to Atlanta and McMichen became an automobile mechanic. It was there that he attended his first fiddle contest and won third place, though still a teen-ager. There is some indication that McMichen's broadcasting career began even before Station WSB started broadcasting. 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 career then. [6]
He made his first appearance on WSB on September 18, 1922, just nine days after Fiddlin' John Carson became the first rural musician to broadcast on the newly opened station. McMichen's band, called variously the Hometown Boys' String Band and the Lick the Skillet Band, first consisted of McMichen and Charles Whitten, fiddles, Mike Whitten and Boss Hawkins, guitars, and Ezra (Ted) Hawkins, mandolin. The following week Riley Puckett joined them, and a year or two later, fiddler Lowe Stokes joined the band. During the twenties, thirties, and forties, McMichen won many fiddle contests, and wrote that he was the National Fiddling Champion from I934 to I949. In addition to country music, his bands played a good deal of popular music and jazz, which they learned from phonograph records.
After the Skillet Lickers disbanded in 1931, McMichen organized the Georgia Wildcats, which made radio appearances in Cincinnati, Covington, and finally Louisville, where he settled and now lives. In Louisville his musical career has had various aspects; he has appeared regularly over WAVE radio and television, had a Dixieland jazz band for a while, and was a disc jockey. Last year he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. He is now a welder.
These three Georgians, then, are typical of three types of hillbilly musician. Tanner, the oldest of the three, was already forty when his professional career began, and his styles and tastes seem to have been well established by then. He was primarily a farmer; fiddling was a second line only. His orientation was toward traditional music. Thus he was no different from the many singers and fiddlers recorded non-commercially by the Library of Congress or other private collectors. McMichen, on the other hand, had a much more modern outlook. He was only twenty-two when his band made its first public appearance, and he was actively involved in hillbilly music for over three decades. Although brought up in contact with traditional music, he was very much interested in jazz and popular music and even his father's scope of interest was broader than just the traditional folk music. He organized a succession of different bands and wrote some of his own material, including some songs, like "Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia," which have become standards in the hillbilly repertoire. He helped audition prospective talent for the Columbia company in the twenties. As a blind boy, Puckett's opportunities were limited, and he was probably forced to become a musician through necessity. He was primarily a singer, and although he had a large repertoire of traditional ballads and songs, he was heavily influenced by popular Tin Pan Alley music and minstrel music, as we shall see in detail below. Whereas Tanner and McMichen were essentially creators of string band dance music, Puckett was more in the tradition of the professional folksinger-balladeer-minstrel, singing old songs along with the new.
The following discussion surveys the recorded repertoires of these three musicians, noting where possible any marked trends in their careers. For the sake of clarity the bands organized by Clayton McMichen will be discussed separately, following the comments on the music of Puckett and Tanner. The material will be examined to determine the relative proportions of traditional and popular music. (With some degree of imprecision, the term "popular" refers to the music written by professional songwriters, aimed primarily at a Northern urban audience, and disseminated by mass media such as sheet music and phonograph records.) A few of the ballads and songs will be discussed in detail, primarily those that do not fall clearly into one of the two artificial categories of traditional and popular. One problem arising in connection with these records of thirty to forty years ago is that songs which have since entered oral tradition may still have been in the category of popular song at the time of the recording. Furthermore, popular songs were sometimes based on earlier traditional songs. Consequently, more evidence than the title itself is needed to establish whether a particular rendition derives from traditional or popular sources. Throughout this discussion the term "side" will be used; a "side" is the two and one half to three and one half minutes of recorded material whether a song, medley, skit, or instrumental-intended for release on one side of a ten-inch 78 rpm record.
From their first recording session in 1924 until 1931, Tanner and Puckett recorded exclusively for the Columbia Phonograph Company.[7] All but the first ten of their releases appeared on the Columbia 15000-D series, Columbia's line of hillbilly music ("familiar tunes, old and new," as their catalogs called them) which began in 1925 and ceased in the winter of 1932. Some of these selections were also issued on Columbia's less expensive labels or on Sears, Roebuck labels under various pseudonyms.
The use of pseudonyms was common in the hillbilly record industry in the twenties and thirties; often it was done because the artist had exclusive contractual obligations with one company but still wished to record for another company. In other cases, such as this one, it was done to protect the more expensive prime label. Puckett, either alone or with instrumental accompaniment, recorded approximately 150 sides for Columbia.
The Skillet Lickers, best known of the bands organized by Tanner, Puckett, and McMichen, recorded for Columbia from 1926 to 1931, at which time the effects of the depression sharply curtailed the activities of the recording industry. The recording sessions (two each year except in I93I, when there was only one) were all held in Atlanta. Personnel were Gid Tanner and Clayton McMichen on fiddle, Riley Puckett on guitar, and Fate Norris on banjo. Eighty-eight sides were recorded at those sessions, of which eighty-two were issued on the Columbia 5000-D series. The records from the first session, in April 1926, were labelled "Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, with Riley Puckett." McMichen objected to this-and with some justice, for the original Lick the Skillet Band had been his-and all the succeeding records were by "Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, with Riley Puckett and Clayton McMichen." Tanner recorded forty other sides; some were solo numbers, and some ere with either Puckett or Norris. He also recorded several sides with Arthur Tanner and Fate Norris; the band was variously called Arthur Tanner and his Cornshuckers, and Fate Norris and the Tanner Boys.
Throughout their recordings for the Columbia 15000-D series, Tanner and Puckett and the Skillet Lickers maintained a high percentage of material that is now traditional-that is, material that has appeared in one or more of the standard regional collections of folksongs. Thus, of the first ioo records in the 15000-D series 70 sides, or 35 per cent, consisted of traditional material. Of these first 100 records Tanner and Puckett made 26; 40 per cent of the material on these 52 sides was traditional. Of the last 100 records of the series, only io per cent was traditional material. This gradual decrease in proportion of traditional songs and tunes occurred in all hillbilly music. Tanner's and Puckett's share of these last 100 records was only 13 records, but of that portion, over one half was traditional.
A number of the traditional ballads were of British origin. These included "Boston Burglar" (Laws L i6b), "Ramblin' Boy" (P ib), "Knoxville Girl" (P 35) and "Drunkard's Dream." One Child ballad, "Three Nights Experience" (274), was recorded but not released. "Boston Burglar" may not have been learned from oral sources, since a published version of 1888 had become widely popular. As is true of hillbilly music in general, the number of native American traditional songs recorded by Puckett and the Skillet Lickers far exceeded the number of imported songs. Among the older narrative songs, which were probably already established in oral tradition at the time of the recording, were "Jesse James" (E i), "Simple to Flirt" (G I9), "Rovin' Gambler" (H 4), "Little Maumee" (H 8), "Burglar Man" (H 23), "John Henry" (I i), "Poor Boy" (I 4), and "Railroad Bill" (I 12). In several cases Puckett's recording was the first one made, and consequently he could not have learned from another phonograph record. "Rovin' Gambler," however, had been recorded four years earlier (1925) by a Virginia folksinger, Kelly Harrell (Victor 19596), and by Vernon Dalhart, using the pseudonymn of Al Craver (Columbia I5034-D). Puckett's version differs mainly in the order of the stanzas, although one stanza has been added which is not very common:
He's gambled in the wild woods,
He's gambled in the train;
He's gambled all over Georgia
And never lost a game. [8]
In this stanza only, the person has shifted from first to third, suggesting a later addition. "John Henry" has been one of the most often recorded folksongs as well as one of the most extensively studied. [9] Puckett recorded the ballad twice, first in I924 and then again in I927 with the Skillet Lickers. His 1924 recording was probably the first one made of this folksong, and there is no question but that the ballad was well established in oral tradition at the time of the recording. When asked where they learned "John Henry" McMichen replied, "That's born in you. You heard that all your life; your mother sung that rocking you in the cradle." [10] The two recorded texts were not identical, as maintained by Professor Guy B. Johnson. [11] The last stanza of the later recording does not appear in Puckett's earlier version:
Well it's where did you get those pretty red shoes,
Dress that you wear so fine;
Got my shoes from a railroad man,
My dress is from a driver in the mine.
This along with the stanza, "Who's going to shoe your pretty little feet . . ." is a floating stanza, and appears in many songs. [12] The theme of John Henry's woman wearing red and going down the track to where John Henry fell dead does not occur in either of Puckett's versions. Johnson considered this one of three persisting themes in all the versions of the ballad. The 1924 version of Puckett can be heard on Riverside RLP 12-601, sung by Ed McCurdy. McCurdy must have learned the song from Johnson's transcription rather than the original recording, for he makes some of the same textual errors. There is a large class of American folksong which defies the classical dichotomy of traditional texts into ballads and song. D. K. Wilgus has coined the term "blues ballad" for these songs. [13] They are often weak in narrative cohesiveness and treat the subject in a subjective manner not found in older imported ballads. Blues ballads such as "Pretty Polly," the American descendant of the British broadside "The Gosport Tragedy," have been developed from an older ballad form, whereas the earliest known versions of blues ballads such as "Railroad Bill" are as disjointed and subjective as current versions. Puckett's rendition of "Railroad Bill," the first recording of this ballad, agrees with other versions in its lack of coherent narrative. Curiously, Puckett's refrain is "Well it's drive, drive, drive," instead of the much more common "Well it's ride, ride, ride." Many of the ballads recorded by Puckett or the Skillet Lickers were popular songs of the last decades of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century that have since become traditional. Thus "Preacher and the Bear," published in 1904 by Joe Arzonia, is now established in oral tradition; similarly, the 1910 song by the Leighton Brothers and Ron Shields, "Steamboat Bill," a parody of "Casey Jones." Also in this category are the sentimental parlor ballads, "East Bound Train," [14] "The Orphan Girl," [15] and "Jack and Joe."[16]
These melodramatic songs of obvious professional composition have generally been overlooked by field collectors, but they are as much a part of traditional folk music as "John Henry" or "Three Nights Experience." With the development of the hillbilly recording industry there arose a group of songwriters who composed new ballads in the folk tradition, following in the footsteps of the broadside writers of two centuries earlier. Many of the ballads from the pens of such writers as Reverend Andrew Jenkins, Carson Robison, and Bob Miller, written expressly for hillbilly records, have become traditional. Puckett recorded one of Miller's most widely known ballads, "Twenty-One Years" (E i6) and also Robison's composition "Altoona Freight Wreck" (dG 38). "All Bound Down in Prison" is Puckett's version of the traditional ballad "Prisoner's Song." [17] The Traditional "Prisoner's Song," for its part, shares some lines with a different, and historically important, hillbilly ballad of the same name recorded by Vernon Dalhart in 1924. Dalhart's song, incidentally, has also entered tradition-if indeed it is not derived from traditional sources. [18]
Some traditional ballads that Puckett recorded have undergone just the reverse procedure-that is, they were originally folksongs that were subsequently recomposed by professional songwriters for popular consumption. In this category are "Frankie and Johnny" (I 3), "Bully of the Town" (I I4), and "Casey Jones" (G i). The origin of "Frankie and Johnny" has been much debated and will not be discussed here, inasmuch as Puckett's version is very close to the popular version of 1912 by the Leighton Brothers and Shields. "The Bully" was published in 1896 by Charles Trevathan, apparently based on a song he heard at Babe Conner's place, a classy brothel in St. Louis that was very popular in the I890's. [19] ("There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," which was also recorded by the Skillet Lickers, is believed to have originated at the same establishment. [20] The song was made famous by May Irwin in the popular stage show "The Widow Jones." Her rendition appeared on a Victor phonograph record (No. 31642) in the early 1900's. [21] The version by the Skillet Lickers has but one stanza and a chorus:
Looking for that bully, bully of the town;
Lookin' for that bully, that bully can't be found;
I'm lookin' for that bully of the town.
When I walked this levee round and round,
Everyday I may be found;
When I walked this levee round,
I'm lookin' for that bully of the town.
But for minor textual variations, this version is the same as half a dozen or more other hillbilly recordings of this oft-recorded tune. Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly), a Negro singer of the older pre-blues tradition, recorded an almost identical version (Folkways FP 242) in the I940's. Leach and Beck collected in I947 a version with one stanza and a chorus. [22] Earlier collected versions did not have a chorus. [23] The stanza cited above did not appear in Trevathan's popular recomposition, although the chorus, slightly changed, did. All the hillbilly recordings, as well as Leadbelly's, sound more like one another than like the popular version. The evidence, therefore, suggests that the single stanza of the Skillet Lickers' recording predates the popular version, although the origin of the chorus is uncertain. More recently, this song has lost all its words and becomes a purely instrumental number (for example, versions by Roy Acuff on Columbia 20561 [1949], Cornelius Greenway's Smokey Mountaineers on Disc 633 [1947], and Mrs. Etta Baker on Tradition I007 [1956]).
The ballad "Casey Jones" describes a train wreck that occurred on the Illinois Central "Cannonball" in 1900. [24] The evidence indicates that the song was written by Wallace Saunders, a Negro engine-wiper, based on one or more earlier Negro ballads. The Lomaxes have put together a composite text which they believe resembles the original ballad, but their case is not convincing. [25] Two popular recompositions of the ballad were published, one by Siebert and Newton in I909 and one by the Leighton Brothers a few years later. [26] Both texts have become traditional. Puckett recorded "Casey Jones" first in 1924 and then again in 1927 with the Skillet Lickers. The two texts clearly came from sources other than the popular versions. The text of Puckett's 1924 recording follows:
Casey Jones
Listen: Skillet Lickers- Casey Jones Listen: First hand account of the wreck by fireman Sim Webb
1. Come all you rounders if you want to hear
The story told about a brave engineer;
Casey Jones he was the rounder's name,
On a six-eight wheel rider is where he won his fame.
2. He walked to the shed just at four o'clock,
He told his fireman get the boilers hot;
Fireman said "Yes sir, because we oughta been gone,
For I feel like ridin' if it's all night long."
Casey Jones, feel just like ridin',
Casey Jones, if it's all night long;
Casey Jones, feel just like ridin',
I feel like ridin' if it's all night long.
3. Up in the morning, well, it look like rain;
Around the curve swung a passenger train;
Up on the bumpers lay Casey Jones,
He's a good old rounder, but he's dead and gone.
4. It was after the Four Mile Curve,
Johnny Devine that's where he lost his nerve;
Casey he didn't weaken a bit,
Had his hands on the throttle when the engine hit.
5. Casey went to Heaven, went straight from here,
Told St. Peter he's a brave engineer;
St. Peter said, "Well, you're looking mighty bold,
I guess we'll have to put you back to shovelling coal."
6. I whistled to the paper boy, the paper boy stopped;
"What kind of paper, little boy, have you got?"
"The Atlanta Journal and the Baltimore Black,
Just where Mr. Casey stopped his engine at."
7. The last (?) places that I sung this song,
The place got raided on a Sunday morn;
The judge told me I better leave the town,
I believed him, I told him, said from Alabam. (?)
Casey Jones, Judge O'Vinney told me,
Casey Jones, I better leave the town;
Casey Jones, Judge O'Vinney told me,
I believed him I told him, said from Alabam.
8. You ought to been there and a-seen the sight,
People was screamin,'b oth black and white;
I was there and that's a natural fact,
Saw two coaches as they left the track.
9. "Mama, mama, well I can't see,
Papa got killed on the Santa Fe";
"Go to bed, children, before you cry yourself hoarse;
I got you another papa on the police force."
The 1927 version has the same first four stanzas and the same last two stanzas. A chorus follows every other stanza. Stanza five of the later version is one that figures prominently in Negro versions, such as Bessie Smith's "J. C. Holmes Blues" recorded on Columbia No. 14095-D in 1925. (This is currently available on an LP
reissue Columbia No. 855.) Puckett's version is
On that train sat Miss Alice Fry,
Said "I'm goin' to ride with Mr. Casey or die;
I'm not good lookin' but I take my time,
I'm just a ramblin' mama, got a ramblin' mind."
The first stanza of the 1924 version is identical with that of the Siebert and Newton popular version, and the last stanza is an unusual variant of the popular text. The eighth stanza can certainly be traced to traditional sources. Lomax has collected a version of "The Wreck of the Six-Wheel Driver," one of the traditional antecedent songs to "Casey Jones," in which this couplet appears:
Oh you ought to been there for to have seen the sight,
Screaming and yelling, both colored and white .. .[27]
More recently Sam Eskin has collected a version that contains three lines of Puckett's stanza:
You oughta been there for to see that sight,
The women stood crying, both colored and white;
I was there, for I tell the fact;
They flagged him down, but he never looked back. [28]
The last two lines of Puckett's seventh verse are remarkably similar to a couplet in the version recorded in 1928 by Furry Lewis, a Negro blues singer and guitarist, on Victor No. 21664 (and reissued on Folkways FP 251):
The deputy told Kassie, well you must leave town,
Believe to my soul (?) I'm Alabama bound.
The closest recording textually to Puckett's is that by Fiddlin' John Carson, recorded on Okeh 40038 a few months earlier in 1923. Carson was also from Atlanta and knew Puckett, so their versions probably come from the same source. Carson's version of the third verse in Puckett's rendition reads:
Was on a Friday mornin' she's a lookin' like rain,
Around the curve come a passengert rain;
On the pilot lay little Bill Jones,
A good old rounder, but he's dead and gone.
This is reminiscent of the fragment collected by the Lomaxes in 1933 from Cornelius Steen. Steen claimed to have taught Wallace Saunders the ballad "Jimmie Jones":
On a Sunday morning it begins to rain,
Round the curve,s pied a passengert rain,
On the pilot lay po' Jimmie Jones,
He's a good old porter, but he's dead an' gone. [29]
In spite of all that has been written about "Casey Jones," the complete story has not yet been told. It does seem clear, however, that the Atlanta version recorded by Puckett and Carson is close to some of the early Negro ballads that predated the disaster and subsequent ballad of 1900.
The Wreck of the Southern Old 97" (G 2) provides a good example of the new tradition that hillbilly music brought-the tradition of learning songs from phonograph records. This process of transmission differed significantly from the older oral tradition in that local ballads could now be learned by people over a wide area, and small communities could easily learn new versions of their own stock of songs.
The history of this railroad ballad has been amply documented. [30] Describing a wreck that took place between Monroe, Virginia, and Spencer, North Carolina, in 1903, the song was first recorded by Henry Whitter, a Virginian, in 1923 on Okeh 40015. Whitter's version was based on older, longer texts, fragments of which are still being recorded. [31] A few months later, Vernon Dalhart recorded the song (Edison 51361),
copying the words from the Whitter recording. Dalhart misunderstood several words on the technically poor recording-a fact which identifies clearly those versions which were based on the immensely popular Dalhart recordings-particularly the Victor record (No. I9427) which was made two months after the Edison record and sold in the millions.
By the time the Skillet Lickers made their recording of "The Wreck on the Southern Old 97" in 1927, there were, in addition to the Whitter recording and over a dozen recordings by Dalhart on various labels and under various pseudonymns, two other versions of interest: that of Ernest Thompson (a North Carolinan) for Columbia (No. 130-D) in 1924, and that of Kelly Harrell (a Virginian) for Okeh (No. 70I0) in 1925. Both the latter records had verses from the earlier ballads that did not appear on the Whitter-Dalhart version. The Skillet Lickers' text adheres closely to the recording of Whitter; consequently it is probable that they learned the ballad from Whitter's record rather than from oral tradition.
The remainder of Puckett's traditional repertoire consisted of familiar lyrical songs and fiddle tunes, such as "Little Brown Jug," "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down," "Cindy," "Sally Goodwin," "Old Joe Clark," "Liza Jane," "Ida Red," "Old Molly Hare," "Fire on the Mountain," and "Oh Susanna." "Oh Susanna" is deserving of special note; the chorus is the usual Stephen C. Foster chorus (with slight changes):
Oh my Susianna, don't you weep for me;
Just from Alabama with a banjo on my knee.
The stanzas, however, are taken from other songs, all of which are traditional: [32]
1. Raccoon carries a bushy tail, raccoon's so fair;
Rabbit got no tail at all but a little bunch of hair.
2. Went up on a mountain top, did not know the route,
Put me in a coffeepot,b low me out the spout.
[3] Where'd you get the liquor now, where'd you get this ham;
Got it from a nigger, way down in Alabam.'
[4] Went up on a mountain top, give my horn a blow;
Every gal in Georgia ... come runnin' to the door.
The majority of Riley Puckett's other solo recordings were ephemeral popular tunes and perennial favorites. The dates of publication of these songs spanned almost three quarters of a century. Typical among them were "Old Black Joe" (1860), "Silver Threads Among the Gold" (1873), "Rock-a-bye Baby" (1887), "Hello Central, Give Me Heaven" (19go), "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie" (1905), "Down By the Old Mill Stream" (1910), "M-O-T-H-E-R" (1915), "When I'm Gone You'll Soon Forget" (1920), and "Moonlight on the Colorado" (1930).
Throughout his recording career Puckett showed considerable Negro influence. This was evident not only in the large number of traditional ballads of Negro origin that he recorded, but also in the extent of popular songs of Negro origin. Two well known examples are "Puckett's Blues," actually W. C. Handy's big hit of 1914, "St. Louis Blues," and Charles "Cow Cow" Davenport's 1929 composition, "Mama Don't Allow No Low Down Hanging Around." Some of these songs Puckett sang with a trace of a Negro accent, most noticeable on the pseudo-Negro songs, such as "Steamboat Bill."
Aside from the above-mentioned ballads and a few strictly "pop" songs, such as "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" and "Darktown Strutters' Ball," the recordings made under the name of the Skillet Lickers consisted entirely of traditional dance songs, fiddle songs and instrumentals-the standards of any country string band. Among these hundred sides were "Leather Breeches," "Cripple Creek," "Liberty," "Soldier's Joy," "Mississippi Sawyer," "Turkey in the Straw," "Bile Dem Cabbage Down," "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain," "Cotton-Eyed Joe," and "Molly Put the Kettle On."
As can be seen from these titles, the Skillet Lickers' repertoire consisted primarily of lively traditional tunes, essentially instrumentals, suitable for dancing or entertainment. The typical Skillet Lickers' instrumental arrangement consisted of two fiddles, often doubling each other at the unison, which carried the lead; a back-up guitar, and a banjo also used primarily as a rhythmic back-up instrument (A back-up instrument is one that does not play the melody but just provides a rhythmic background. It can consist of either chords or harmonic bass notes). All four members of the band contributed to the vocals, with Puckett typically taking the lead. Usually in a hillbilly string band one instrument would take the lead with the other instruments providing back-up. Most often the lead instrument was the fiddle, the oldest traditional folk instrument in America and therefore the one upon which most string band music was based. The banjo was the second most popular lead instrument and was probably the second instrument to become widespread in the rural Southeast. The mandolin and steel guitar did not become widespread in hillbilly music until the thirties. The use of two lead fiddles was not very common, except among the Skillet Lickers and and other bands in the Atlanta area.
The unique instrumentalist in the Skillet Lickers' band was the guitarist, Riley Puckett. As a back-up guitarist, he seems superior to all the others of that period. Briefly, the main characteristics of his back-up style are as follows. His back-up was essentially single note work, always clear and easily heard, and non-chordal in structure. His runs, usually on the bass strings, seldom used chromatic notes. The most distinguishing feature of his playing is that he often did not return to the tonic note at the beginning of each measure. Sometimes his patterns would run for eight or twelve beats, after which he would return to the tonic, but very often the tonic would appear on one of the other three beats. These runs seldom doubled the melody notes. He made frequent use of double- or quadruple-time runs. These were probably done with thumb pick held with thumb and forefinger and used like a flat pick, as the North Carolina guitarist Doc Watson does today. (Flat picks, although used by jazz guitarists, were not common among hillbilly guitarists in the twenties. [33])
Sometimes these double- or quadruple-time runs were extended-perhaps taking up a full measure, or even running into the next measure. In such a case they might run through the full measure, but often just to the second or third beat of the measure; then would begin the basic four count in the beginning of the measure. An occasional device of Puckett's was hesitating, so that one of the four basic beats came half a beat late. Another characteristic seldom found among other hillbilly guitarists was strumming the strings upward (that is, from high E string to low E string).
Puckett recorded one record of two purely instrumental numbers, one of which is a bottle-neck style rendition of "John Henry." ("Bottle-neck" or "knife-blade" or "Hawaiian" style guitar refers to the technique of tuning the instrument to an open chord and using a hard utensil-such as an iron bar, or knife-blade, or broken bottle top-to stop the strings. This is as opposed to the conventional Spanish or classical style of fretting the strings with the fingers of the left hand.) In his introduction to the song, entitled "Darkey's Wail" on the record label, Puckett says, ". . . I'm gonna play for you this time a little piece which an old southern darkey I heard play, comin' down Decatur Street the other day, called 'His Good Gal Done Throwed Him Down.'" This is the only recording of Puckett using bottle-neck style. Interestingly, the only bottle-neck style song that Doc Hopkins, a popular hillbilly artist of the thirties, plays is also "John Henry," and he too states that he learned it from a Negro. Mrs. Etta Baker, a North Carolina guitarist who usually uses a finger-picking style, also plays "John Henry" in a bottle-neck style. It has been stated that this guitar style was brought to this country from Hawaii in I900 by Frank Ferrara. [34] Among southern whites, however, the style seems to be associated with Negro musicians and Negro ballads and blues.
On his other solo recordings, Puckett usually played a very simple guitar style often referred to as "pre-Carter Family" to distinguish it from the style popularized, but not originated, by Maybelle Carter. The Carters of Virginia were one of the most popular and influential groups to make hillbilly recordings. Maybelle Carter's style featured playing melody notes on the bass strings, and utilized up-and-down brushing in place of the earlier down-brushing style. In the earlier pre-Carter style the guitar seldom played single melody notes. On twelve of his earliest recordings Puckett played the banjo, in a style suitable for hours of continuous accompaniment of dance music played on a fiddle; it was not primarily a solo style.
Puckett's singing was partly responsible for the great popularity of the Skillet Lickers, as well as for his solo recordings. McMichen said that they found out quickly that if Puckett didn't sing on the records, they didn't sell. [35] Like that of two other very popular hillbilly vocalists of his day, Vernon Dalhart and Jimmie Rodgers, Puckett's singing was heavily influenced by blues and pop singers. Like Rodgers, he could sing a blues or pop song without sounding out of place-something many hillbilly artists tried to do but failed.
In March, 1934, a new Skillet Lickers band recorded twenty-four sides for the RCA Victor Company in San Antonio, Texas. The recording industry was just beginning to pull out of the depths of the depression-partly inspired by the success of the Decca company, organized in December, 1934. The personnel for these numbers, which were mostly instrumentals, included Gid Tanner and Gordon Tanner, fiddles; Riley Puckett, guitar; and Ted Hawkins, mandolin. The band sounded different from the old Skillet Lickers; the mandolin was now often the lead instrument, the guitar did not have so much presence as in the earlier Columbia recordings, and Gid Tanner often sang lead, whereas previously Puckett almost always had sung lead. At the same session Tanner and Puckett recorded several duets. The repertoire of the band at this time was similar to the material recorded earlier for Columbia-almost entirely traditional dance tunes, fiddle songs, and instrumentals. Two Child ballads were recorded at this time: "George Collins" (85) and "Three Nights Experience" (274). With the exception of "Barbara Allen," these are the two Child ballads most often found on hillbilly records. Puckett's version of "George Collins" is typical of the story type Coffin designates as type B; [36] "Three Nights Experience" is an example of the Coffin type C, found widely in America. [37]
That was Tanner's last recording session; Puckett, however, continued to record for Victor until October, I94I. In addition, he had one session with Decca in 1937. Some of these pieces were solos and some were with mandolin accompaniment by Ted Hawkins. Others were duets with Red Jones. This material showed a decided shift in emphasis from Puckett's earlier recordings. Whereas his recorded repertoire for Columbia during 1924-31 consisted of approximately 40-50 per cent traditional material, of the Ioo sides he recorded between 1934 and 1941 only 20 per cent were traditional. He still recorded many perennial favorites, but now the bulk of his recordings consisted of currently popular hit tunes. In this regard, Puckett showed himself to be less firmly tied to the older traditional folk music than Tanner was. Puckett's development was more typical of hillbilly music in general, moving closer and closer to the mainstream of northern urban popular music.
Before, during, and after the time of the Skillet Lickers, Clayton McMichen was continually organizing and reorganizing bands of his own, none of which included Gid Tanner or Fate Norris, whom he considered twenty years behind him musically. He wanted to play modern, rather than traditional music, and it was only the insistence of Frank Walker, Columbia's A & R (Artist and Repertoire) man, that kept the bands on traditional music as much as possible. (McMichen, like many other country musicians of his day, did not distinguish between "country music" and "pop music" or "jazz," but rather between "old fashioned music" and "modern music.") Walker assured them that there were far better bands in New York playing pop music; Columbia, he said, brought their recording equipment to Atlanta to record country music, not popular music. McMichen insisted that he thought the rural audience would rather hear popular songs played on strings instead of on horns. In this notion of McMichen's lay the roots of a country-jazz style that grew to resemble western swing, an analogous hybrid of cowboy and western music with Mexican music and big band swing music.
The first of McMichen's bands to record commercially was McMichen's Hometown Band, consisting of McMichen, fiddle; Riley Puckett, Boss Hawkins, and Mike Whitten, guitars; and Ted Hawkins, mandolin. They recorded four selections for Okeh in Atlanta in 1925-McMichen's earliest recordings. Two of these selections were traditional, two were popular.
McMichen's Melody Men was the most recorded of McMichen's several groups in the twenties. Between 1926 and I929, twenty-four sides were recorded in Atlanta, of which twenty were issued on the Columbia 15000-D series. The personnel were McMichen, fiddle; Puckett, guitar; K. D. Malone, clarinet; Bert Layne (McMichen's brother-in-law from Arkansas), second fiddle; and possibly others. Most of the recordings by this group were slow, sentimental lyrical songs of perennial popularity: "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" (1866), "Silver Threads Among the Gold," "Aloha Oe" (1878), "Home Sweet Home" (1823), and "The Missouri Waltz" (1914) were among them. A few livelier tunes were recorded, including "Ain't She Sweet" (1927), "Down Yonder" (1921) and "House of David Blues" (1923) "Ain't She Sweet" provides a good example of double fiddling at the unison. McMichen stated that his inspiration for multiple fiddling probably came from symphony orchestras that he admired: he particularly liked the sound of a great number of violins together. [38]
None of the material of McMichen's Melody Men could be called traditional rural music. The slow pieces have little interest for the present-day student, but the "hotter" pieces represent McMichen's first recorded attempts at what he called "modern music," probably meaning jazz, but more aptly characterized as "hot" country music or country jazz. The clarinet made the entry into the field of jazz plausible, but later disappeared as McMichen's style developed. To have retained the clarinet and the sound suggested by it would probably have led to an imitation of the jazz groups of the day that had fiddlers and guitarists far more experienced in that type of music, and with which the hillbillies-turned-city-slickers could not compete. Walker was right, as McMichen later admitted: those pop numbers were not what people wanted to hear.
The same personnel constituted the McMichen-Layne String Orchestra, the very title of which emphasized McMichen's idea of horn music played on strings. This group recorded eight sides for Columbia in Atlanta in 1928, of which six were issued. These selections were divided between traditional and popular titles. Following the McMichen-Layne String Orchestra was McMichen's Harmony Boys, consisting of McMichen and Layne, fiddles; Hoyt "Slim" Bryant, guitar; and possibly others. With this 1929 band, McMichen abandoned the clarinet, and the contrast that instrument had afforded with the fiddle leads was now provided by Bryant's flat-pick guitar work. Bryant became the lead vocalist, replacing Puckett, and was an important member of the latter bands that descended from this group. In 1931 McMichen organized Clayton McMichen's Georgia Wildcats, which recorded first for Columbia, and in the following year for the Crown Company in New York. The personnel included McMichen and Layne, fiddles; Bryant, guitar; Pat Perryman and Jack Dunigan, guitars; and possibly Perry Becktel, guitar or banjo. Among the twenty-five sides recorded for Crown were many traditional numbers, including "Hog Trough Reel," "Ida Red," "Old Joe Clarke" (sic), "Red Wing," "Give the Fiddler a Dram," and "Wreck of the Old 97." Instrumentally, their version of "Wreck of the Old 97" sounds like typical Dalhart records: a sentimental fiddle sounding slightly like a viola, and a tenor banjo, played with a flat pick. The words are the same as those of the earlier recordings by Henry Whitter and then the Skillet Lickers, except that one stanza has been added. In 193I McMichen and Bryant accompanied the immensely popular Mississippi hillbilly artist, Jimmie Rodgers.
In 1937 McMichen reorganized the Georgia Wildcats and began recording for Decca. This group consisted of McMichen and Kenny Newton, fiddles (Carl Cotner, third fiddle on some sides); "Slim" Bryant, guitar; Loppy Bryant, bass; and Jerry Wallace, banjo. (It was with this band that Merle Travis made his first recording.) This group was decidedly in the country-jazz style that resembled western swing in some respects. These recordings, more than forty altogether, included some traditional songs, such as "Bile Dem Cabbage Down," but the majority were slicked-up versions of popular tunes, including "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Put Your Arms Around Me Honey," and "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now."
A few years later, McMichen and Wallace left the group and it became Slim Bryant and his Wildcats, with the addition, in I943, of Al Azzaro, accordionist. This group was still active after the war, and represents the culmination of two decades of development of musical style, starting with the traditional string band of the early twenties and ending with the country-western band that occupies the corresponding position in rural and southern urban areas that rhythm and blues occupies among urban northern Negroes. [39]
Gid Tanner, Riley Puckett, and Clayton McMichen made one other important contribution to hillbilly music in the rural drama records, or "Entertaining Novelty Records," as they were classified in Columbia's catalog. These records, borrowing a well-known format from minstrel shows, consisted of humorous dialogue interspersed with snatches from songs and instrumentals that the group had recorded on other records. In this way they served somewhat as samplers. The skits, written by the group and produced by Bill Brown, featured all the regular members of the Skillet Lickers and several others, including Lowe Stokes, Bert Layne, K. D. Malone, and Tom Dorsey. There were nineteen such records recorded for Columbia between 1927 and I930, and one record for Victor in I934. The most popular of these were the "Corn Licker Still in Georgia" series, which ran for fourteen sides. Within a few years of the first successful skits, other companies began to produce similar material: Okeh released its "Medicine Show" series; Victor recorded "Jimmie Rodgers Visits the Carter Family," Clarence Tom Ashley and others recorded a pair of skits for Conqueror entitled "The Fiddlers' Contest," and "Over At Tom's House." These recorded skits are of interest to folklorists as examples of rural humor.
The careers of the three Georgia musicians considered in this article began when the hillbilly industry was in its infancy, and their performances continued to delight audiences for several decades. Their careers exemplify in part the development of hillbilly music from field recordings of folk music to a highly commercialized industry similar in many ways to that of "pop" music. Hillbilly music deserves attention if for no other reason than that it is an exciting part of today's mass culture music. But it is of particular interest to folklorists because it provides a conclusive refutation of the theory that folk cultures live in isolation from the surround The Skillet Lickers ing more industrialized society. More accurately, the rural folk music exists in a symbiotic relationship with urban popular music, and frequently the agency for communication between the two is hillbilly music.
NOTES
1. The sources for the biographical material are drawn mostly from the John Edwards Memorial Foundation archives. The primary source for biographical information on Gid Tanner is a letter from him (actually written by his son Gordon) to John Edwards, dated March 3, 1958.
2. Tanner's letter states that he was born in 1885; however, notes to some LP records give 1884.
3. The primary source for biographical information on Riley Puckett is a brief sketch in a 1936 song folio, entitled "Bert Layne and His Mountaineer Fiddlers with Riley Puckett and Richard Cox."
4. Atlanta Journal, September 29, 1922, 21.
5. The primary sources for biographical information on Clayton McMichen are a letter from McMichen to John Edwards, dated January 5, I958; and a taped interview with McMichen by Fred Hoeptner and Bob Pinson made in Louisville on July 7, I959.
6. Interview with McMichen at Newport in the summer of 1964 by D. K. Wilgus; also mentioned in Bill Ladd's column in Louisville Courier-Journal, December 2, 1963.
7. Discographical information is based on John Edwards' discography, compiled in November 1959, which listed recording dates, master numbers, release numbers, and personnel for all recordings made by Tanner, Puckett, McMichen, and some related groups. This included sides recorded but never issued. Edwards omitted all of McMichen's records made after 1937, for he considered them to be in the modern country-western style, and therefore not of interest. Also omitted were records on which members of the group served as instrumental accompanists for other singers but were unidentified on the record label or in the record company's files. Such was the case, for example, with the recordings of Oscar Ford for Columbia, on which Puckett played guitar.
8. The record number and recording date for this record, and the others discussed in detail in this paper are as follows:
Rovin' Gambler Columbia I5447-D March 8, 1929
John Henry Columbia I50oI-D September 12, 1924
John Henry Columbia I5I42-D March 29, 1927
Railroad Bill Columbia I5040-D September II, 1924
Bully of the Town Columbia I5074-D April I7, 1926
Casey Jones Columbia II3-D March 7, 1924
Casey Jones Columbia 15237-D March 28, I927
The Wreck of the Southern Old '97 Columbia 15I42-D March 28, 1927
Oh, Susanna Columbia 15014-D September II, 1924
George Collins Bluebird B-5818 March 29, I934
Three Nights Drunk Bluebird B-5748 March 29, I934
Wreck of the Old 97 Crown 3384 August 1932
9. See, for example, Guy B. Johnson, John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend (Chapel Hill, 1929) and Louis W. Chappell, John Henry: A Folk-Lore Study (Jena, Germany, I933).
10. McMichen taped interview (see Note 5).
11. Johnson, I05.
12. See, for example, "High Topped Shoes," in Newman I. White, The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, III: Folk Songs from North Carolina (Durham, 1952), 355.
13. D. K. Wilgus, notes to The Doc Watson Family, Folkways Records Album No. FA 2366 (New York, I964).
14. For a collected text, see Vance Randolph, Ozark Folksongs (Jefferson City, I950), IV, 186.
15. For a collected text, see Randolph, IV, I96.
16. For a collected text, see Brown, II, 635.
17. For a collected text, see W. Roy Mackenzie, Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (Cambridge, 1928), 303. See also "Seven Long Years" in Brown, III, 416.
18. For collected texts, see Brown, III, 41. For a history of the commercial recording of this sons, see Jim Walsh, "Vernon Dalhart, Part IV," Hobbies, August 1960, 33.
19. Sigmund Spaeth, A History of Popular Music in America (New York, I948), 286.
20. Spaeth, 287.
21. For a text of the popular version, see James J. Geller, Famous Songs and Their Stories (New York, I931), 99.
22. Leach and Beck, "Songs From Rappahannock County, Virginia," JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, LXIII (I950), 279.
23. Howard W. Odum, "Folk-song and Folk-Poetry in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes," JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, XXIV (1911), 293.
24. For a complete historical account see B. A. Botkin, A Treasury of Railroad Folklore (New York, 1953), 40.
25. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Folk Song U.S.A. (New York, I947), 264.
26. For readily available texts of the popular versions see A. Friedman, The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World (New York, 1956), 309.
27. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs (New York, 1934). 40. Contributed by H. M. Harris, who learned it in I906 from a Negro cottonfield worker.
28. Obtained from Harry ("Haywire Mac") K. McClintock in San Pedro, California, 1951. McClintock had experience with the industrial unions and also as a hillbilly recording artist. Mr. Eskin has very kindly provided me with a transcription of McClintock's remarks concerning the ballad at the time it was taped: "Well, I learned the song in I909 when I was switching box cars in Memphis for the I.C. Railroad. And I heard Wallace Saunders sing the song myself...."
29. Lomax, Ballads, 36.
30. Brown, II, 512. References to further sources are given therein.
31. Currently available LP records on which long versions of the ballad can be heard include Folkways FA 2315, The Stoneman Family, and Riverside RLP 148, Gospel, Blues and Street Songs, sung by Pink Anderson.
32. See for example, Paul G. Brewster, Ballads and Songs of Indiana (Bloomington, 1940). 334; Brown, III, 209 and 482. Brown, III, 208, states that verse i appeared early in blackface minstrel songs.
33. Sears, Roebuck mail order catalogs did not list flat picks among guitar accessories until 1930 or 1931; thumb and finger picks-and flat picks for banjo-were listed many years earlier.
34. Jim Walsh, "Vernon Dalhart, Part III," Hobbies, July I960, 37.
35. McMichen, taped interview.
36. Tristram P. Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad in North America (Philadelphia, 1950), 91.
37. Coffin, 134.
38. McMichen, taped interview.
39. Clayton McMichen and his Georgia Wildcats can be heard on one currently available LP record: Decca DL 4172, Country Jubilee. The 1934 Skillet Lickers band can be heard on the following LP's:
RCA Victor LPV 507, Smoky Mountain Ballads (2 selections)
RCA Camden CAL 689, Country Music Hits
RCA Camden CAL 737, Grand Ole Country Hits
RCA Camden CAL 793, Country Stars-Country Hits
RCA Camden (English) CDN 5111, Authentic Country Music (2 selections)
Old Timey Records, Old-Time Southern Dance Music
In addition, County 501, A Collection of Mountain Fiddle Music, contains a fiddle-guitar duet by Stokes and Puckett and one by McMichen and Puckett.
40. A discography and discussion of the rural drama records was given by John Edwards in Caravan, No. 19, January I960, 36.
41. I am pleased to acknowledge the many helpful comments and suggestions by D. K. Wilgus while this paper was in various stages. I am also greatly indebted to Eugene W. Earle for making available the materials in the John Edwards collection and also many records from his personal collection. Finally, I should like to acknowledge helpful discussions on various aspects of this work with David Cohen, Al Ross, Mayne Smith, Archie Green, Ed Kahn, and especially my wife, Anne