David Holt

Partial Transcript: I’m David Holt. I live down in Fairview, North Carolina. I came to Asheville, North Carolina in 1969 looking for old-time music. Had fallen in love with the sound of the banjo when I was in college at UC Santa Barbara. Met Ralph Stanley and wanted to learn his old-time claw hammer that his mother taught him—not the blue grass style, but the old-time style. And he said, well, you have got to go back to Galax, a lot of music there or Mount Airy or Asheville.
So, I came back in the summer of ’69--part from his advice and part because of the people I was living with. We lived in this old 1900’s farm house in Santa Barbara. It was like this anomaly. It was an old—with a farm with it—and this guy loved old music and he had a record of old Obray Ramsey singing the French Broad River song—a song that he had written actually.
Thought it was a folk song but he had written it. And to me, it was so romantic in the mountains, in the valleys where the French Broad River flows, you can hear the history of the mighty things it knows. You know, it’s just—it was just—I said I have got to see that place. I really want to see that place and so, I came down here and was really just looking at the river—fell in love with it. Fell in love with the people and found lots of musicians.
This was 1969 so, all these old guys and gals were alive that were born in the 1800’s. So, that’s been my life ever since. I went back and finished college. Moved back here. Had no intention of making a living playing this music but, the Asheville Citizen Times did an article on me that was so weird that a guy would come from California to live here that—to search music—that it was a whole inside of the paper, the whole inside of the Asheville Citizen Times and a big picture.
And that started people started calling, saying can you come play at my school or my church or whatever and I said, well yeah okay. And I started doing it and it just built up from there.
 

Partial Transcript: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. And since I was one of the—I mean there are other people that come here, of course. It wasn’t—I wasn’t the only guy to do that. But, not many—many people they come to learn here like Mike Siegert and those kinds of folks but, nobody moved here. And so, that’s was so different and then, you know once I found—I mean Sheila Adams introduced me to the people in Sodom, North Carolina and that was like, wow!
This is like a step back in time. This is—who is going to see this anywhere else in the country? I am a young guy. I need to get into this and be here and see these people because they are not going to be here forever. This is the end of an era. So luckily, I had that inclination to follow that and come hell or high water because I wasn’t really—you know, my parents were ready to strangle me. They just sent me to five years of college and I said I want to be a banjo player. When I came here though, I found so many great musicians—it’s just a world of learning and still is.

Partial Transcript: So, we’re talking late 60’s, early 70’s. Sheila introduced me to her great aunt, Dellie Norton, and Dellie was a lot like my own grandmother, a Texas pioneer lady—very similar type person. And somehow, we just—Sympatico. She became like my substitute grandmother here and I think I became like a grandson to her. And the thing about her is, I sing some of her songs but, you couldn’t imitate—a guy like me couldn’t—I couldn’t imitate Dellie Norton.
But she had so much soulfulness and so much power in what she sang, what she knew, the folklore that she knew about, the mountains, the herb lore—all that kind of stuff. It was just much more wisdom—as much wisdom let me say as music and just seeing how the real old tiny mountain community worked. I mean just a small example of that—I began to see that stories and songs went right together in reality when you had a bunch of people sitting around—mountain people.
They weren’t going to watch TV. They were going to pull out the banjos and guitars and they were going to sing a while and then there would be break and people would tell stories. Usually about real things that happened. The guy that was killed over here or you know, whatever. It was always something pretty gruesome. But—and then go back to the music. And so, it just occurred to me that that’s the way humans actually were because story-telling and music just go right hand in hand. That is just one of the little things I’ve learned. It was exciting.
 

Partial Transcript: Oh, I think just how far out of the mainstream it was. I mean the gatherings—it wasn’t so much about gatherings. It was just a few people that would come over and get together and had—it wasn’t like a big hootenanny or something. It was just something at Dellie’s house and—but, I think just seeing that this person who was born in the 1800s and still living now, carried all this old-time wisdom.
I think that was something that I was really blown away by because you just don’t see that. At that time, even you didn’t see that in the society very much. These were all mountain people, old-time mountain people which are quite different than just a regular southerner or what people might call a redneck or even a hillbilly. These were like really down to earth, mountain people—been here for generations.

Partial Transcript: She didn’t play anything but, she—I do have a wonderful picture of her showing me how her father played the banjo—the claw hammer kind of style. She was a ballad singer so, she knew these old-timely ballads that were many of them from Europe and had been passed down in her family. And you know she would deliver them in a most antiquated voice you can imagine with a little turns up at the end and I don’t hear anybody singing like that anymore.

Partial Transcript: Okay, so the heart of that ballad singing community was Berzilla Wallin; Doug Wallin, her son; Evelyn Ramsey, who was a fabulous singer; Obray Ramsey, the guy I told you about that wrote the French Broad River song. Byard Ray didn’t sing those ballads but, he did a lot of—these are all people from Sodom basically.
He played an instrument as well but, he knew a lot of those old songs. And did we say Cas Wallin? He was another one. That was the heart of the strength but, to see some—that many people in a community that sang old English and Scotch Irish ballads, was just incredible. I mean you are not going to find that too many other places in the United States even in the late 60’s.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, why did it not disappear there? Is way back in the mountains. In those days, there was no fast way to get there. It was about thirty miles away. It took about an hour and a half to get there, you know because you had to go down by the French Broad River and it took a long time to get there. So, you couldn’t just run in and out of that place and it was pretty isolated.
And I think that has a lot to do with it, why it survived. And I think the people were ornery and just didn’t give it up when that whole religious revival came in the 1830’s and sort of swept over the mountains and did away with you know, the vast majority of ballads and secular songs. I mean some people say that’s why it’s called Sodom.
I don’t—you know there is no real definitive story on that but, what I heard was that you know, a preacher left and said, “This place is like Sodom!” and it stuck. Sodom Laurel it was called. I don’t know if that’s true but, in essence the truth of it is just that it feels true because you know, people were stubborn and they were old timing and they were going to do it the dang way they wanted to do it. And music was a big part of their lives.

Partial Transcript: No, I didn’t know Dillard. That was Dellie’s brother and I missed Lee Wallin. He was another one that passed away right before I got here. I mean I’ve named them. Do you want me to tell you about what they were like?
Interviewer
Yeah.
David
Oh man, now you are in trouble.
Interviewer
Let’s hear some of the juicy stories.
David
No. I can’t tell you the juicy stories. They were just very grounded people. I like to say these people were—came of age before self-doubt was invented. They didn’t have any self-doubt. There wasn’t any like a need for fame or they didn’t give a hoot about any of that stuff. It was like the whole rest of society was all worried about notoriety and you know, it had nothing to them which was refreshing to see. They weren’t doing it for that.
They weren’t doing the music for that. They were doing it because it was just something that they grew up with and it made them feel at home. I mean well, for example, you know Dellie would mainly sing the ballads. You could get her to sing the ballads around the house, you know if you had somebody visiting, particularly sing us a song, Dellie and she would sing the House Carpenter or something like that. But, she said when she was younger, where the real music was out in the fields working.
These old ballads had like thirty verses and you know, no accompaniments so, they didn’t need any instruments and they’d just be up there hoeing, singing these ballads—a way to pass the time and I think in a lot of ways, the ballads were work songs. And I believe they all used them that way. I have seen all of them. I remember planting tobacco with Doug Wallin and he sang the whole dang time. The whole hillside. I mean it took all day to do it and he sang the whole time. I think they were functional songs, even though they were stories.

Partial Transcript: Oh, no. They didn’t even think about that. But, I mean the essence of ballads are stories. It really needs to be a story to be a ballad. Otherwise it’s just—it’s a song. So, in everything—in every kind of music from then on, in country music whether it was Coming to Us Dead, an old song or you know, Little Log Cabin in the Lane or any of these songs like that. They all told a story and still do in a lot of country music. I think that was the real essence of the thing that you still see involved in country music. It’s story telling. The good ones are. Not all of them.

Partial Transcript: Sorry. They were the heart of the place I think. These were super self-reliant people. They’d been through everything. They had been through times when there was no food and super cold weather. One time Dellie’s whole cabin in a giant flood was picked up and taken down the mountain while the family was in it. They were just powerful people that could put up with just about anything so that disappeared. Those kinds of people disappeared because who knows how to ride a cabin in the rain? But, you know—so, it was more modern—slightly more modern people but, you know younger people.

Partial Transcript: That’s a good question because it’s pretty hard to go backwards but, I think you know for me studying about it and being around it and thinking about the old timers and the music that they played—so to me, the traditional music is good medicine. That’s why I call that CD, Good Medicine because it’s—there is a curative power in it—in the music itself and it was—if those things could have just been put into words, the tunes could have been put into words or the ballads could have just been told, people would have done that.
But, they needed the music with it and the music has a power that I think has a power to affect people that we don’t really—I mean we have no way of measuring that or anything like that. But, I think it—the closest thing I can think to it is like a mantra in something you repeat over and over—or a prayer that people repeat over and over. It’s a prayer of positivity pretty much.
I mean there is a lot of killing and stuff like that going on but, that’s the entertaining part. (Laughs) But, the actual sound of the music and the sound of the tune is invigorating and restorative I think. I mean that’s out there but, that’s what I feel. I know it’s worked for me.

Partial Transcript: So let’s give you the overall look at it. So, the folks came over from England, Scotland, and Ireland—came to the southern mountains—brought that music with them. They brought the fiddle with them. They didn’t have guitars in those days. They had Jew’s harps, they had fiddles—some dulcimers. There weren’t many dulcimers around here but, you know you are looking at the end of the instruments right there.
And then in the 1830s, white guys started to learn to play the banjo in Virginia—Appomattox, Virginia, and places like that. Joel Sweeney was one of the first. Learned to play the old claw hammer style from the black plantation workers and began to teach it to white people. People like Dan Emmett and people who wrote—I mean he’s the guy who wrote Dixie and he was a northern. These were northern people. These were not Southerners.
And so, that was the very first time that black influence came into the American music. And it was just this incredible big bang I think of—that’s affected our music from that day to this, you know? So the banjo—people didn’t have the banjo in the mountains until the civil war came and the guys left here. This is what most people think nowadays. They left here. They saw the banjo. They came back home. They began to build their own banjos. They realized it was great with the fiddle.
These were fretless banjos so you could really slide around like the fiddle was sliding around and just get some bluesy, funky sounds that you know, just sort of revolutionized the fiddle tunes which had been probably a little more stately until then. If you listen to Scottish music, it’s not as hard driving. So the banjo which was the black instrument and the banjo rhythm which was a black rhythm, integrated with the fiddle tunes—these old Scotch Irish fiddle tunes. And it was rocking, man.
You would go to a place like Mount Airy and you hear the tunes have—they’re simplified. There are not as many notes as some of the tunes from Europe. But, they have a drive that’s undeniably American, and that American is that combination of the African American and the Anglo and so, that just began to happen in the mountains and then, the minstrel shows became a big deal. In the 1850’s during the civil war, after the war—in fact, Broadway was founded because of the minstrel shows.
They were so popular that there were theaters built all over New York and that’s what started Broadway. That was the next big bang because we don’t talk about the minstrel shows anymore because it means a lot of racist lyrics and the white men blacked up. But people were just fascinated with black culture and the songs were pretty great. I mean we’re talking songs written by professional song writers imitating black songs.
Guys like Stephen Foster with Old Suzanna, The Yellow Rose of Texas, the Buffalo Gals—all these songs that we consider folk songs now—Old Dan Tucker. They weren’t folk songs. They were professionally written songs. And so, the minstrel show swept across the United States. That was the most popular form of entertainment from about 1850 to about 1890.
That changed the music here because if you find anybody that plays old-time music around here, a part of their repertoire will be from that minstrel show period. All the racist type lyrics have been taken out but, the tunes are the same and you know, the people have just re-written the words to make them more generalized—not racist. And—

Partial Transcript: Oh, I am sure it did. God, they were so used to being alienated by—you know, I mean people were pretty rough in those days. But, it also allowed black people to get into show business. That is the first time black people—I mean a guy like Louis Armstrong or his first deal was in the minstrel show. A black guy—they would still put on the black face and perform but, white people began to see these black people play and they realized whoa, those guys are great.
We want to see more of that and that started black entertainment in America, which of course is a good thing. That’s the good part of all that. And so, the minstrel shows were usually pretty big affairs—you know, a pretty big band and they couldn’t come back here in the mountains. But, the medicine show guys from the 1800s on and I mean I saw one of the last medicine shows at the Stockyards down here at Asheville in 1969.
Peg Leg Sam was playing the harmonica. Anyhow, what I am trying to say is, they took a lot of these minstrel show songs, put them in a little show with a doctor selling medicine and one entertainer or two entertainers and they would go way back in the mountains and that’s where a lot of these songs like Lost John and these definitely kind of bluesy kind of songs.
That’s how they got into the mountains through those minstrel shows and guys like Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff, the McGee Brothers—they were all worked in the medicine shows and spread that music all around through the mountains. So, now were in about from the 1870s to the 1920s. Those medicine shows still continued.

Partial Transcript: I don’t think I could say. I don’t think I really know. There were some famous black minstrel show guys but, I don’t know where exactly they were getting their material—if they were writing it or—there were a lot of great songwriters in those days. See the civil war had just ended. The civil war produced all these super talented songwriters that were writing for the war and they wrote you know war songs and well, just about any song you can name from that period, was written by a professional songwriter, and then when the war was over, they had nothing to do—no way to sell the stuff.
So, they started writing these black minstrel show tunes or black-like songs like Old Suzanna, you know? And then that was carried in the 1840’s to California where it became a big hit out there during the gold rush. So it began to spread. So one other thing was that with the blues folks, the blues sort of came of age in the late 1890s and really started integrating into the music in the early 1900s, and then finally in 1920, Mamie Smith had the Crazy Blues, the first record of a blues song.
We wouldn’t even think it was blues these days but, then it was. And then blues became very popular around here and changed the music again.

Partial Transcript: So, Dr. John Brinkley from Tuckasegee, North Carolina was—he was you know doing his stuff in the late 20’s, early 30’s. I think he died in ’36—something like that.
So he was from here, from western North Carolina, Jackson County and he always wanted to be a doctor and he had some—he did a few scams with people in this area you know curing cancer by just injecting them with blue water and charging $25.00 a shot which was a lot in those days. And finally, they ran him out of town in Rainbow, South Carolina where he was and he ended up going to Milford, Kansas, and starting a practice there with his wife—a little teeny town.
And one day—this is the story anyway—Bill Stittsworth came in and he said, ‘You know Doc, those goats are so frisky, all the lead has gone from my pencil. I wonder if you can install those goat glands into me and I would be that frisky?” And he said, “Well, we’ll try it.” And so, this is the story—the apo copal story—he did and he got his wife pregnant, Bill Stittsworth did they named the goat, Billy. I mean the named the child, Billy. He didn’t have a goat. He had a child. (Laughs)
And so this was picked up by newspapers all around the country and that just was wild because people starting coming all over the country to have this operation. So, he started making millions of dollars, built a hospital there in Milford and he was called the Goat Gland Doctor and people would ride across America with their particularly frisky goat in the train with them to have that goat be used for the operation. Of course, he was—you know, he—I mean they say 42 people died from infection so, finally—the AMA was not strong in those days but, it kept building and building and building.
It got strong enough to run him out of Kansas. So, being Dr. Brinkley—being this very bold dude—he ran for governor and probably won. But, the powers that be made sure that all the votes didn’t get counted and so anyway, they closed him down. He tore down the hospital. He didn’t want anybody to re-do what he had been doing and he moved to Del Rio, Texas because they said, “We need some business. Come down here.” It is on the very southern border of Texas, right close to Mexico.
Mexico was going to give him some land to build a radio station because he had found in Kansas that if he had country music on—these were just cowboy singers, fiddlers, people like that—on his radio station, that people listened in and came to the hospital. So, he built a million-watt station in Mexico and America was at war basically with Mexico about this new thing called, radio and we weren’t going to give him any of the frequencies. We were going to keep them all.
And so, they were mad and they said, you just build your radio station right here and you just blast it as loud as you want. And so, he had a million watts and it stretched all the way—this is when radio was new, so it stretched all the way up the east coast, the west coast, central part of the United States, over through Canada.
And they say, the KGB learned to speak English from listening to XERA—or XRA at that time. XERA and so, he had the Carter family. He had JE Mainer. He had Samantha Bumgarner from down here to come down and play on the radio station and from that, they got a lot of publicity, a lot of notoriety. And it was the first time every place in America heard you know, traditional mountain music and it had a huge effect.
And finally, his thing just started to implode and he ended up you know—it’s a terrible story—but anyway, he just ended up dying basically and the thing folded up. But, then Wolfman Jack took over that station so a lot of people remember. Mia, do you remember Wolfman Jack broadcasting from there? And he broadcast blues and stuff but anyway, Brinkley was very important in spreading country music around the United States in the 30’s.

Partial Transcript: Well, Doc Watson used to sit in his little house up in Deep Gap when he was thirteen, listening XERA and he learned to play the Beaumont Rag because every evening on one of the shows, the Smith’s Garage Band would play the Beaumont Rag on the fiddle and he was this kid figuring it out on the guitar. You know, Chet Atkins listened to the Carter family and then started working with the Carter family after they came back from that trip.
And Johnny Cash fell in love with June Cash. He was like nine and she was ten and she would sing on the radio. And he fell in love with her voice and ended up marrying her, you know later in life. So, it had a huge effect—gigantic effect.

Partial Transcript: So, I mean you have fiddle tunes is the basis of this music. Fiddle tunes and ballads, I would say. But, there are thousands of fiddle tunes around here—in the southern mountains. Some of them from Europe, some of them written here but, there is still a culture of people that love to get together and play those fiddle tunes to this day—lots of them actually—and that’s still a really strong tradition.
There were also some songs, you know when the people came here from England, Scotland, and Ireland, they began to write their own songs like Mole in the Ground. That’s not an English song. That’s an American song and so, it was a creative versed when people came here and started writing their own music. So that all got involved in the mix too and then, the recording industry started in 1888 but, it didn’t have any effect up here.
By 1903, you could get those cylinders and hear them but, the records and radio came in about the same time, about 1922 or 1923 and that really upended everything because here people had been learning—you know living in the little hollers, playing what their granddaddy played and maybe something from a county over. That’s all they knew. But then when the records and radio came in, man—it was like—you know, you heard all this other stuff and it really—people started learning other music—other styles, adding it to theirs.
You know it was a huge influence and they became stars then like Roy Acuff and Jimmy Rogers first—I guess he would be the first father of country music kind of guy. And there were plenty of guys that were you know—Uncle Dave Macon who was a star of the Grand Ole Opry. That really changed things. I really made it a—there was media involved at that point and once you get media involved, things change but, to that point, there was really no media and so, by the mid 20’s, there was lots of it.
And it homogenized the music a little bit but, good God, it is so great that we have it. I mean the fact that I never got to meet Uncle Dave Macon and he was one of my heroes and I can listen to four hundred of his recordings that he did on 78—something like that—it’s incredible. It is just so great and I think all in all, it has been a wonderful thing.

Partial Transcript: A lot. I think you know there were a lot of groups like the Stoneman Family who heard these guys on the radio—who actually were pretty good but they didn’t think they were very good. They thought like Grace and Willie weren’t that good and if they could get on a record, well they can—then the Stoneman Family could have a record and they did and they got in there. It inspired them because they could see that they were at least just as good as these people that they were hearing on records and these people were selling recordings.
They were getting enough popularity that they could go to schools and do gigs in the evenings and so, it encouraged quite a few people to—well, lots of people—to get out there and make a living doing the music—guys like Wade Mainer. He had a brother who was older that had played on the Brinkley radio station. He was from out here in Weaverville and then he you know, decided he would make a living playing music himself and he was inspired by what he heard on the radio and anyway, he became the guy that kind of kept the banjo before the public in the 1930’s and he was one of our own from right out here.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. I mean it—it’s just—ballad singing is not for commercial consumption. None of this music really is that much. But, the ballads, particularly—they are unaccompanied most of them. They are slow. They are—the words can be kind of tedious. So it you know, put a dent in it and the people wanted to learn it and it’s amazing that here we are in 2017 and there are still young people that I knew when they were little babes running around on Dellie’s front porch that are now singing them. So, it’s still going on. It’s really remarkable that it exists at all.

Partial Transcript: Of antiquation and poverty, yeah. I bet that’s right. Yeah. Who said that?
Interviewer
I think Joe Penland.
David
Yeah, that sounds probably right.
Interviewer
He was kind of pointing out you know, you were a hick in the country and—
David
Because there is no way to take that. If you were a singer and a player, you could take that and play for people in Asheville or whatever but, the ballads—that wasn’t going to happen. It was very personal as ballads were.
Interviewer [00:36:42]
What—how did that ballad tradition though influence the folks who were coming up and starting to play all this music they were hearing on the radio? Was there some kind of cross current connection that you could point to?
David
I don’t know. I don’t know. I would say they were—the ballads and the fiddle tunes were a foundation. So this is the foundation that the whole house is built on and those two things weaving together makes all the songs we’ve got and all the—you know the type of songs, the type of stories that are told. I think it set the pace but, I don’t know that it—I think that’s what I could just say. It’s the foundation and still is.
Interviewer [00:37:28]
And the African Americans—
David
I mean you are asking about it. You are still asking about it—about the ballads and so, there is still some interest. It’s not an extravagant thing. It’s not a thing that’s going to have a lot of show in its effect. It’s a ballad—the old ballad singers sang without any emotion, and they just sort of like told the story in a very low key way really.
Interviewer
When you see the old John Collin films, you can see that they are very stayed and—
David
Yeah. Yeah. They all were. Not showing emotion was part of the deal I think.
 
Interviewer
I wondered how much of that was just having a camera in their face too because that—
David
Oh, no. No. No. That’s the way it was. Yeah. Very, kind of matter of—I mean it was soulful singing. Go listen to Dellie and it’s just you know, scratchy voice and like I said, upturns at the end of each line and it’s powerful but, it wasn’t showing.

Partial Transcript: You know when I started the Appalachian Musical Program and Warren Wilson College, one of the first things I did was have a ballad concert and that was so unusual in those days that we would pack the place every year we would do that. But, at that time, there were all these old timers that were alive. Like you knew you were seeing something you weren’t going to see forever again, you know—these old folks that sang that music, and then over time, when those people passed away, it just—it was something so authentic about those guys that you—there is no way to recoup that. That’s gone.

Partial Transcript: I think there is. I think there always is. You’ve got to be—I mean I consider this a living music. Not a museum piece and I play it as a living music and I think most of the people I know do. So it has a certain power that you know, that carries it forward and I think people are always looking back to their roots, trying to find—well, not everybody but, certain people do. I certainly have—trying to find out where the heart of the thing was—where the power of the thing was—trying to latch into that.
But, one thing I might say is that you know, one of the questions was why did the music disappear? It never disappeared. It just—it’s never been—I mean the most popular time that it was, was in the 1960’s with the Kingston Trio and all that and that was really—most people who play this kind of music, don’t really admire that period. I mean we are a little bit prejudice on that but, that was just—it got so schmaltzy.
That’s what it was. It was just—you know. When you see those songs on Lawrence Welk, you know you are in trouble. And it has more gravitas than that and so, I don’t think any of us long for that to be, everybody play mountain music. If everybody plays mountain music, there is going to be a lot of crappy music. So it needs to be the people who really care and are willing to spend the time on something that is not going to pay off probably except to your own life—just I love playing the banjo. I am going to do it—I don’t care if I never get another job.
I will be playing the banjo every day and I think that’s the most people feel that play this music. They have really given their time to—when I think of guys like John Hermann and the old-time music crowd out here—Sheila or anybody like that, they know that it’s not going to be mainstream, nor should it be. You know, if Beyoncé started doing this stuff, it would like oh, God. Please go back to the good Beyoncé stuff. (Laughs) It doesn’t need to be. That isn’t required.
It is just—all that is required is it stays alive and there is enough people that really appreciate it and learn it to their max—to their max level and so, I feel really good about the music right now. I feel like you know, as we’ve talked before, it’s always changed. There’s always been new influences and there always will be. It’s never a static thing. It is not just like just this one thing.
It’s always going to change and have new additions but, as long as there is young people playing it, and old people playing it, and you know I always say that the way you can tell if it is healthy is if there’s professional people out in front playing it, really good pickers that are home pickers—they don’t want to go out on the road but they are really great. We’ve got plenty of those around here. The fair to middlen pickers who just like to get together and socialize and do it. If you have got all three of those things really strong, you’re set, man. The music is in good shape and I think it is in good shape.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, just in my time. Well, there was a time when Asheville Mountain Dance and Song Festival was an incredible jam session. It was incredible. That’s why I moved here really. We would play backstage at the Civic Center. This is at the—what’s now called the Thomas Wolf Auditorium. It would be full—twenty-five hundred people. There would be all these musicians on the back porch and people sitting on the stage actually.
Baskin would walk around and if you were playing some really hot—like one time my friend, Steve Keith and I were playing Jessie James and you know, Steve was really getting into it, and he just grabbed us like this, and just pulled us out and said, “You’re next.” “What?” Yeah, and he just put you out there because he could see that you had the energy at that moment. So it kept the show really exciting.
And then after the show, thousands of people would go down to the Westgate parking lot and it would last all night long—picking and—God, it was incredible. I loved it. There was that. That was huge because it was really something everybody looked forward to and then there was the Shindig on the Green which continues to be good.
And there is a fellow named, Chub Parham who used to have a place out in Lester and he would—his wife would put out a big spread of food and all the people from around here who had been here a long time like the main village with Tommy Bell and John Reimer and Rusty Hall. These kinds of guys would be there and they would—it was a room about as big as this room right here.
And they would sit in the corner and everybody else—you know you would bring your instrument and play—the main guys that were really leading the thing, were in here in the middle and then everybody would sit around. It was just a very warm open kind of thing. And then the Hyatt’s place up by where I used to live on Stardust Road, that was another really good one. And then just a lot of little ones, just guys getting together and they get together once a week or so. Those are the main ones I am thinking of. I am sure there were twenty more but—

Partial Transcript: Yeah. So Bascom Lunsford was a—he became a lawyer and a guy from around here, South Turkey Creek—played the banjo and collected songs from the time he was young. Had it in his family—you know, passed down in the family and just I guess realized that he wanted to present that music in a much more less hillbilly way. He wanted it not to be hillbilly. He wanted it to be uptown and so, he would perform in a tuxedo and he would go out and collect tunes. He did a lot of this.
I heard that he became a tree salesman because it was much easier to go to a house and say, you know, I am selling trees. Can I come in? And they would talk about the trees and then ask them about the music. Much easier than saying I am lawyer. Can we talk about your songs? (Laughs) So I think the tree salesman part was a little way to make money but, also just a good introduction to people. So he would go way back in the mountains and learn songs and then, perform them.
He’d perform you know, for the Queen and Roosevelt and all kind of folks and was just a guy who loved the music and loved the performers. He was kind of a character I think. He had some enemies there but, all in all, he did such a great thing by starting the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival and the Shindig on the Green in 1928, you know started that. As part of the Rhododendron Festival, he had music and that just kept going and it goes to this day. So, we owe him a lot. And that was one of the big reasons I came here because he was still alive at that time and he was 93 but he was alive and still running the festival.

Partial Transcript: I think so, just enthusiasts. I mean a lot of people don’t--you don’t hear that many people doing a lot of his songs but, absolutely. Just having a guy that’s that interested and you know, that he performed them. I think that’s really important.
Interviewer [00:49:24]
Are there other song collectors that you can speak about?
Mike Seeger has done a great job. You know John Cohen came down and did that stuff he did. Who else? Well, of course, Cecil Sharp came in 1960 and found all the ballads going—still current and being sung. Wrote them down. He didn’t have a recording device but, he wrote them down. Those are the main ones that come to mind right now. I mean Peter Gott learned a lot when he got here. You know, he was living like an old-timer, living in a cabin he built and all that but, he did learn a lot of the music too.
Interviewer 2
Was Sandburg part of the ballad collection or was that other types of music?
He definitely was. Yeah, we should mention Carl Sandburg. Lived out here in Flat Rock and loved folk music. I don’t think he was involved that much with the local musicians because he was big-time and you know, dealing with JFK and people like that. But, yeah, he had—his American Song Bag book is an incredible collection of American folk songs. Yeah. He was definitely an important one.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. I think that’s true. You know there was a time when the music was pretty much passed down by your local little community. You learned it from us. I mean I’ve built little communities and learned it that way. But a lot of that is gone because those old timers that it was all focused around are gone and everybody else is too dang busy now. So a lot of the way the people learn now is through the camps—videos, DVD’s and camps.
It’s just one of those changes, like the minstrel shows or anything else. It is just one of the things that has affected the music and will affect the music. You know it encourages really good musicianship and there has been a lot of people that have taken a lot from it—learned a lot from it and like you said, it gives a sense of community. It’s fun. It’s fun to spend a week with people who give a hoot about the music and are really trying to learn—you know, really spending their time practicing and—most of them are.
And I think it gives people a sense of place maybe more than ever in some ways because a lot of the—like when I first got here in the 60’s, there was no difference between bluegrass and old-time. People didn’t even talk about that or the ballads. It was all mountain music. It was called mountain music and you could hear Ralph Stanley on the radio and then they might have a country act on the radio—Conway Twitty or something, then Ralph Stanley and that wasn’t even odd.
Well then, it got so segmented that ‘I hate that bluegrass’ or they said—might say ‘I hate that old-time music.’ It got very clickish really. And so, that still continues to this day but those camps kind of break that up. Those camps don’t encourage that at all.

Partial Transcript: Probably. But, you know we’ve lost a lot in terms of soulfulness. Yeah, I’m sure we have. I’m sure it was a deeper understanding because you are getting something from those people that you are not getting off the video. But, it’s you know, it is just the way it is and there’s—like I was looking the other day at some old Pete Seeger footage. I was like, ‘Wow!’ I mean I knew Pete for many, many years but I didn’t realize he was that good of a banjo player when he was that young. I mean there is some stuff from him, he is just getting on it and it’s fast and it’s accurate and it’s really good.
So I mean I’m—love to see that. It’s the same as like when the records came in, the radio came in. It’s just more of the same. But, again, as long as it’s being played and people are finding joy in it, it’s doing its purpose. It’s serving its purpose and I always say—now this is really way out there—but, I feel like the music is like an infection that takes care of itself.
It’s okay, we’re going to have get some more people involved in this thing and somehow, it infects somebody like you and now here you are doing this and spreading it out further. It kind of has a way of just making sure that it survives. I mean that’s insane but, it’s a feeling that I have about the music.

Partial Transcript: I really love that aspect and you know something I found out years ago, was that people like to think as much as they like to laugh or hum along or anything. They like to think and that’s entertaining for people as long as you don’t have to think too hard and too long. (Laughs) But, it’s entertaining and so, I have never had a—I always try to mix in the humor with you know, some interesting history and make that little bit of history interesting because it’s usually a story in there.

Partial Transcript: David
Now you are just talking about a guy who wants to play or a guy who wants to make a living playing?
Interviewer
A guy who wants to understand where the heck it comes from—or gal. And why—what’s important about the traditions that go back to the Dellie Nortons of the world, back to the African fiddle players and all of that? Why is that inextricable link from the past to today? Why is it important to understand that there is a link where we came from--where all that music came from, where the heritage came from, where that you know?
When I have an oral history, I feel so blessed when I am sitting face to face with somebody is feeling how rich this person is, how life connected to land to the life connected to the community, to their faith and you know, I have stuff. I have devices. I have some land. I have a nice family. But, the richness that they weave in their stories, I don’t—I feel like something is missing in my life and so, my quest is always how do I fill that hole? How do I find those connections? How do I live that life myself? And so, that’s what I’d like to hear from you on.
David
Wow. Well, that would be each person, you know? Because some people are willing to go back and live that old-timey way. I have got friends that do and play music as well. I guess that would be the most fully engaging but, I guess for me is I’ve wanted—I can only answer for me I think.
Interviewer
Yeah, that’s what I am asking.
David
I wanted to play the music. I loved the sound of the music and I know I didn’t want to do anything else. I didn’t want to do it on the side kind of. I wanted to try to get as good as I could and so just figuring how to present the music respectfully and play it as good as I can do it at that time and entertain an audience with it so that people—some people will go away saying, you know I’d like to do that. Most people are just going to be entertained and that’s dandy because you need an audience too.
But I guess that’s been my goal to try to—my goal has been to—actually, you know what it is? It’s to try to bring forth in my concerts, the spirits of those old mountain people. I can’t do it. I mean I bring those pictures. I have lots of photographs that I show because that gives a context but, I just—I think every time when I am doing one of those concerts, when I am putting out those pictures, I am thinking about each person and I want to just whatever little bit of them I can share with that audience, that’s what I want to do.
And for me, that’s always engaging and really rewarding for me personally and I think the audiences like it too. So, that’s kind of the way I’ve done it.
Interviewer
Yeah, that context is so valuable I think.
David
Yeah.
Interviewer
You know, you can’t have the person there again. You can’t have this holographic image of him but, it’s close.
David
And you have so much to learn nowadays—so many books and stuff. It’s just great, you know? If you care about history and that way of approaching things, man—it’s fascinating.

Partial Transcript: Well, I think the over-arching thing of that is just finding something that you really love to do. If you can find something that you are really passionate about and you really give yourself to, then you can spread that passion to other people to some degree, you know? No, I think you might as well start polishing up your hand basket because as a society, I think we’re in big trouble.
But, this is a very positive thing and like I said in the beginning of this, there is a power in the music itself that we have no way to express except in the music. There is no way to talk about it, really and you know hopefully that—you know it just makes life that much richer and being alive that much richer and I don’t know—it’s grounding to me. Just like, okay this is something that is really real and that can never hurt.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer 2
My Last Meal.
David
Oh, how great.
Interviewer 2
That makes me feel so good. I mean if I am feeling down—and that’s the thing you are talking about—I mean honestly. It is medicine.
David
Yeah. I wonder why that song. It’s about a guy on death row.
Interviewer 2
Yeah? But, just the music, you know—the playing. I know it’s about death row but—
David
But it’s funny about death row because we all are on death row. Yeah, yeah. I love that song too. Well, I’ve got songs like that, that I can just go play. That Ducks on the Pond song is like if I am feeling bummed out, I just play that and that will bring me back.

Partial Transcript: I was once with Pete Seeger and we were tuning for this tune. This is called the Sawmill Tune here, Mountain Miner and he just, ‘Ain’t that beautiful? See how beautiful that is.” And he is just playing the chord, you know? And I said, “Yeah. It really is.” And so, this is the tune I was saying that if I am feeling down, I can just play it because you know this is coming from another time. This is not something somebody wrote yesterday and I am going to guess it comes from a long time ago.
Interviewer
Who taught you that?
David
I don’t know. It was one of those in the 70’s that we all learned. It’s from the Hammonds family. Maybe Alan Jabbour, possibly. I can’t remember.

Partial Transcript: Well about the music—first of all, I would like to be remembered as a good person and a good father and husband but, for the music I would like for people to just appreciate that I really—my goal was to just sort of open the door for people to come in and see. People who might not have thought of this music before or thought less of it—just to realize what an incredibly rich thing that it is—this treasure that we have. It’s intangible.
You can’t really package it or sell it or—you can put it on records and stuff but, the whole thing is just this incredibly beautiful, really spiritual kind of thing and I would just like to be a guy who helped people see that and came in and held the door open and let them come and look.

Partial Transcript: I think we have it. It’s in the music. It is the music and so, you have got to—you know, you have got to give a lot of time to learn to play the music—to play it well. It takes a lot of time but, if you learn to love to practice, and learn to realize like a tune like that is, it’s affecting your body in some way—in a positive way. Then, it’s worth it.

Partial Transcript: True and often they weren’t sung at the same time or you know but, I probably—any time you would be up at Dellie’s, and there would be people sitting around playing, it’s going to end with everybody singing gospel tunes at the end of the evening. I mean just as people start—have gone through all the fiddle tunes and the ballads and everything, people are going to sing the gospel tunes because they can all sing together and its just a—you know there is not many music like that where it’s made to sing together.
A lot of them are simple melodies with words, simple words that you can—everybody can just join right in. It’s powerful. It fit—I mean it all fits together. Definitely fits together. It is just another little—it’s like the fiddle tunes, the gospel tunes, or the ballads. They are all part of it.