Master Musician and Tradition Bearer

Samantha Bumgarner of Sylva, NC was one of the first women and traditional Southern banjo player to be recorded. Playing both banjo and fiddle, she and Eva Davis were recorded in 1924 and these were some of the first Southern old-time music records released. Samantha, like many other musicians of her time, learned to play fiddle by sneaking out at night with her father’s instrument to play with others. Learning to play the banjo during these forays, she was accompanying her father when he played in surrounding counties by the age of 15. She performed at the first Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in 1929, a brainchild of Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and appeared every year until 1959. In the 30s she traveled the country and for a time had her own radio show in a Texas border town. In 1939, she was invited by Lunsford to play for President and First Lady, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the King and Queen of England during their visit to the US. Until her death in 1960, she continued to play music in the Asheville area, winning instrumental and clogging contests and catching the attention of the folk revival enthusiasts.

Published in 2020

Samantha Bumgarner

Hazel Dickens embodied a fearless honesty expressed in her singing, songwriting, and support of coal miners and women. She never lost her West Virginia mountain vocal style despite her success as an artist and feminist icon. Her life began to change when she met Mike Seeger of the New Lost City Ramblers. Seeger introduced Hazel not only to the folk music scene but to Alice Gerrard. The two blended beautifully musically, and they began a then unheard of female bluegrass duo. Beginning in 1965, they recorded two seminal albums for Folkways with two more released by Rounder during the early 1970s. A fifth album, compiled from practice tapes, appeared in 2018. They also recorded with the mixed gender group, the Strange Creek Singers. During this time, Hazel’s songwriting began to develop alongside her sense of social justice. Gaining courage to sing her new material in jam sessions, her first expression of concern for women’s issues came with “Don’t Put Her Down, You Put Her There.” She was the subject of Mimi Pickering’s Appalshop film “It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song”. The University of Illinois press in 2008 published “Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens”, co-written by Hazel and historian Bill Malone. In 2001, she received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2017 Hazel and Alice were inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, fifteen years after they received the Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award.

Published in 2018

Hazel Dickens

One of the most accomplished and adventurous old-time fiddlers in the country, Ralph Blizard was also an encouraging teacher and a tireless advocate for traditional music. By the time he was 14 years old, Ralph was fiddling. He formed his first band, the Southern Ramblers, in 1932 and began playing on local radio stations. During the early to mid-1930s, old-time music gained regional and national popularity, and Ralph Blizard and the Southern Ramblers were in the thick of it, playing radio shows almost daily. After serving in WWII and starting a family in the 1950s, Ralph took time off from music. In 1982 the New Southern Ramblers was formed and he spent the next twenty years making music. In June 1987 he was appointed to the Tennessee Arts Commission and worked hard to insure that future generations would have the chance to know and love the music that has meant so much to him. He received numerous awards and honors, including the 2002 National Heritage Fellowship, for which he was immensely grateful.

Published in 2016

Ralph Blizard

“Dock” Coble Walsh, the self-proclaimed “Banjo King of the Carolinas”, was a teacher by profession but music was his legacy. He became known for playing the banjo in the “claw hammer style”, “three finger style”, and for placing pennies under the bridge of the banjo and playing the strings with a knife. Along with Dock, Gwin Foster, Garley Foster, Tom Ashley and Dave Fletcher made up the Carolina Tar Heels. Together, this group recorded over 40 songs for Victor Records. Dock and Gwin recorded four duets for Victor Records. The song “Going to Georgia” showcased Dock’s three-finger banjo picking style and his lead vocals were seconded on the chorus by Gwin’s harmony and harmonica playing combining blues, slides, and wild improvising that resounds of both swing and early jazz. This early recording is much the way of modern bluegrass and a true example of bluegrass music being in place some twenty years before bluegrass was made more popular by artists like Bill Monroe.

Published in 2014

Doc Walsh and the Carolina Tar Heels

Robert “Tut” Taylor who is known as “Tut Taylor the flat-picking Dobro man”. He came from a musical family. Tut began playing mandolin when he was twelve. He later acquired a six string National-Dobro lap steel and started playing it with a flat pick. Then he heard the sound of the Dobro being played by Brother Oswald. He found one and learned to play it with his flat pick. In 1970 he moved his family to Nashville. Along with George Gruhn and Randy Wood they opened GTR, a music store and repair shop. Tut is a songwriter, a vintage instrument collector and dealer, a craftsman, an instrument designer, an album producer, an artist, a sign painter, an author and a Grammy winner. Tut has received many awards including one from the Governor of Tennessee in 1976 for “Tennessee Ambassador of Goodwill”. He has been a friend, mentor and personal booster to many young and upcoming musicians.

Published in 2012

Robert "Tut" Taylor

Etta Lucille Reid Baker was born in Caldwell County, NC in 1913. She was the product of a musical family and learned to play guitar at a young age from her father, Boone Reid. Her style of playing, often referred to as the “Piedmont Blues”, made her the foremost practitioner of acoustic finger picking on the guitar. Fame came to Etta later in her retirement years when she decided to pursue her musical career. Prior to her death in October of 2006 at the age of 93, Etta Baker had achieved international recognition for her artistry as a traditional blues picker.

Published in 2010

Etta Baker

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