Down the Road on the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina

Chester McMillian is a legend of old-time guitar in Mount Airy, NC, playing the distinctive Round Peak music of Surry County for decades. Chester grew up in a family of musicians, and started playing early in life, when his father helped him make a cigar-box guitar.

Ola Belle Campbell was just a teenager in 1934 when her family moved from Ashe County, NC, to Maryland, but she was already a skilled mountain banjo player and singer. At her first radio gig in 1939, Ola Belle sang the “St. Louis Blues. Her voice overpowered the broadcasting equipment and knocked the station off the air. In 1949 she became Ola Belle Reed when she married country musician Bud Reed. Their influence is still felt in the thriving bluegrass scene around Baltimore.

Doc Watson spent much of the 1950s playing electric guitar in a country and western dance band. In 1960 he switched to acoustic guitar and banjo. Just as the folk music revival was sweeping college campuses, he made his recording, "Old Time Music At Clarence Ashley's" and his career took off . Doc talked about this time in an interview with David Holt for the "Legacy" box set.

Arthel Lane Watson, better known as "Doc," grew up on Osborne Mountain in Watauga County, NC. Doc lost his sight to an eye infection before the age of one but he would grow up to become the most celebrated Appalachian musician ever. Doc talked about his childhood in an interview with David Holt, included on the 2001 Legacy box set.

Clarence “Tom” Ashley, a banjo player and guitarist from Mountain City, Tennessee, got his start in the medicine show circuit in the late 20s, but was “rediscovered” in the Folk Revival of the 1960s. Ashley’s famous solo recordings are “Dark Holler Blues” and its flip-side, “The Coo-Coo Bird,” both eerie clawhammer banjo performances recorded in 1929. In the 1960s, Ashley recorded with Doc Watson, then at the beginning of his career. Their record on the Folkways label, “Old-Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s,” remains a classic.

Ray Hicks grew up on a hardscrabble mountain farm on Beech Mountain. From his grandfather, young Hicks learned a dozen Jack tales, part of the rich storytelling tradition of the Appalachians. Standing nearly seven feet tall and illustrating his stories with animated expressions and gestures, Hicks was naturally engaging teller of tales. Alan Lomax once called him “the greatest of all American folktale tellers.” Ray Hicks received the National Heritage Award in 1983.

In 1938, Frank Proffitt of Beech Mountain recorded the song “Tom Dooley.” The murder ballad tells the true-life tale of a Civil War love triangle that ended in the death of a young Wilkes County, N.C., woman named Laura Foster, and the hanging of Tom Dula for her murder.Twenty years later, the Kingston Trio recorded their own version, helping launch the Folk Revival of the 1960s. The album sold more than 3 million copies. Soon people all across the country were singing this song from the North Carolina hills.

One of the pioneers of country music, Charlie Poole was born in 1892 in Franklinville, a small town in Randolph County, N.C. He played the banjo from an early age, and developed a distinctive three-finger style to compensate for a baseball injury. Poole was famous for his rough and rowdy ways, and you can hear the voice of experience when he sings songs of drinking and rambling. With his band the North Carolina Ramblers he made dozens of records between 1925 and 1930, mostly for Columbia Records.

Surry County’s Round Peak area, and the surrounding communities between Mount Airy, N.C., and Galax, Va., have shaped the sound of Old-Time music heard across the nation and around the world. Two of the best-known members of this tradition were Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham. During the old-time music revival of the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, young musicians from all over visited Tommy and Fred and their fellow Round Peak artists, learning their tunes and enjoying their warm welcome.

Throughout this series, we’ve invited you to journey down the road with us on the highways
and byways that make up the Blue Ridge Music Trails. But just what and where are these roads
that we’re traveling? The music of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains includes old-
time string band music and bluegrass, blues, ballads, and gospel traditions, and the ancient
songs and instrumental music of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. The Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina brings recognition to hundreds of traditional music venues and events held year round in Western North Carolina.