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Back in Raleigh during IBMA week, we had a nice chat with Feller & Hill. They caught us up with their comings and goings, a Boys From Indiana tribute album they have coming up, and how they found themselves working as full time artists sooner than they had planned.
Gospel and sacred music has been an integral part of bluegrass music’s repertoire for as long as the music has been played and as new bands were introduced each has added to an increasingly wonderful catalogue. It remains as popular now as it ever has been.
For Memories of That Old Country Church Rebel Records has searched its rich archives and assembled 16 tracks with contributions from 12 bands.
From the very early days are two songs, Little Community Church and I’ll Meet You in Church Sunday Morning, written by Bill Monroe. In this instance the recordings are by The Boys from Indiana and Larry Richardson respectively.
Among the three contributions from Ralph Stanley is the mournful The Little Old Church by the Road, the opening track Old Country Church and the a cappella Turn Back, Turn Back.
Other veterans among the assembled are Mac Wiseman (with Little White Church), Jim & Jesse McReynolds (You Go to Your Church), The Lilly Brothers & Don Stover (In a Little Village Churchyard), Jim Eanes (Little House of Prayer) and Larry Sparks (The Old Church Yard).
Among the more recent recordings are two songs from Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers, one showcasing the voice of Rhonda Vincent (with We Missed You In Church Last Sunday) and the other featuring Larry Sparks (That Little Old Country Church House).
These days there doesn’t seem to be a new release without a song from Tom T. and/or Dixie Hall. The former provided the wonderful They Called it a Church, as performed beautifully by Rock County, a group that included Don Rigsby, Glen Duncan and Scott Vestal, and There’s Always a Light in the Church, sung and played by Paul Williams & The Victory Trio—one of the most popular of today’s Gospel groups.
The package is, as it were, complete with the classic The Model Church from J.D. Crowe and The Kentucky Mountain Boys.
The full track listing is as follows …………
Her sons Aubrey, Jerry, and Tom Holt formed one of the most influential bluegrass bands of the 1970s, The Boys From Indiana. Her grandsons are also making their presence known in bluegrass. Tony Holt has done well with his Wildwood Valley Boys, Tom Feller with Feller & Hill, Jeff and Greg Holt with Born Again, and Lonnie Feller with Crimson Hill.
Known to family and friends as Maggie, her bluegrass roots go back further than her progeny. Her brother Harley Gabbard was a successful resonator guitarist and recording artist, and performed with Aubrey Holt before The Boys From Indiana were formed in the 1960s. Maggie’s and Harley’s mother, Ida, also played the banjo.
Holt was a bluegrass and old time musician herself, playing both clawhammer banjo and Carter style guitar since she was a girl. She and her husband, Tony, played music when the children were young, inspiring their love of banjo, fiddle and guitar music.
Tom Feller shared this brief remembrance of his grandmother.
“She was a wonderful lady who made a lasting impression on everyone she ever met. She had a deep-rooted love for old-time and bluegrass music, which had been passed down to her through generations. In turn, she passed the music down to her kids and grandkids. I think she leaves behind a great musical legacy. She will be dearly missed by anyone who was fortunate enough to know her.”
Feller also recalls both his grandparents teaching him how to get started playing music as a boy, as they did for his many cousins.
He also shared a few family photos.
At the time of her passing, Maggie could boast of 17 grandchildren, 30 great grandchildren, and 10 great-great grandchildren. Sounds like a life well lived.
Funeral services will be held on Friday (9/13) at Hope Baptist Church in Dillsboro, IN at 11:00 a.m. Visitation is scheduled for Thursday (9/12) from 5:00-8:00 p.m. at the church. Mrs. Holt will be buried in the New Craven Cemetery in nearby Milan, IN.
R.I.P Maggie Holt. The bluegrass world is in your debt.
This week we are going to once again remember the life and times of America’s Blue Yodeler, the Singing Brakeman, and the Father of Country Music: the late, great Jimmie Rodgers. On Saturday, May 26, 2013, Jimmie Rodgers will have been gone 80 years.
Arguably the most significant man in American music, he has heavily influenced country, blues, folk, jazz, Hawaiian, rock, pop, Americana, western swing, jazz, and bluegrass music. As I did last year, I will be highlighting a Rodgers’ song each day and showcasing popular bluegrass versions of each song, to celebrate the career of Jimmie Rodgers.
All around the water tank, waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman just to give him a line of talk
He said “If you got money, boy, I’ll see that you don’t walk.”
I haven’t got a nickel, not a penny can I show
“Get off, get off, you railroad bum” and slammed the boxcar door
He put me off in Texas, a state I dearly love
The wide open spaces all around me, the moon and the stars up above
Nobody seems to want me, or lend me a helping hand
I’m on my way from Frisco, going back to Dixieland
My pocket book is empty and my heart is full of pain
I’m a thousand miles away from home just waiting for a train
Although a mere two verses without a chorus, most of us are familiar with Waiting For A Train, one of the most famous songs from Rodgers’ pen. The timeless story of the hobo being thrown from the train has resonated with listeners for generations.
Jimmie’s performance of Waiting For A Train is one of his best, and one of the most revered in country music history. Luckily, the song is one of only three which are captured on video (Waiting For A Train, Daddy And Home, T For Texas).
Jimmie is able to authentically deliver this song with ease, because he has played both of the main characters: the hobo and the brakeman.
One of Jimmie’s monikers is “The Singing Brakeman,” because of his work on the trains. In his time, railroad work was not viewed as nostalgically as it is today, but was rather a glorious and coveted profession. Being able to travel across the country and meet different people… to the average working American, this was a dream.
In contrast, Jimmie had also been a hobo. The term did not carry the same negative connotation that it does today. In the 1920s, hobos were migrant workers who would bum rides off trains to get the next job. Ironically, Jimmie was a hobo, and would jump trains to get to different railroad jobs across the country.
What made Jimmie so appealing was his authenticity, and the honesty with which he performed his music. The brakeman and the hobo are complete opposites, much like a prisoner and a warden, or a cat and mouse. However, Jimmie was able to record songs from both perspectives, without losing any credibility.
“Playing – and embodying for audiences – both the brakeman and the hobo at the same time, Jimmie Rodgers manages to have things both ways, to switch between personalities but leave the listener recalling only the positive aspects of each,” says Barry Mazor, author of Meeting Jimmie Rodgers. Only Jimmie Rodgers could record Brakeman’s Blues and portray “The Singing Brakeman,” and still release Hobo’s Meditation and Hobo Bill’s Last Ride.
Waiting For A Train has become a country standard since its 1929 release, having been recorded by Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Merle Haggard, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, Charlie Louvin, and more.
The Boys From Indiana completely transform the song into a high-powered bluegrass number. Paul Mullins and Noah Crase’s powerful old school fiddle and banjo playing really grass this tune up. Although they stray from Jimmie’s original interpretation, they still pay homage to The Singing Brakeman by adding some yodels reminiscent of Muleskinner Blues. Harley Gabbard’s dobro licks are Rodgers-esque as well, because Jimmie included dobro in many of his songs.
There is also a live version of The Boys From Indiana version on Ralph Stanley & Friends Live At The Old Home Place. Unfortunately, both versions are currently out of print. I do encourage you to dig through your old record collections and find one of these old vinyls and give them a spin. You won’t be disappointed.
Come back tomorrow for Rodgers Remembrance Vol VIII: My Rough And Rowdy Ways.
If you enjoy the Rodgers Remembrances this week, feel free to tune in to my radio program, Bending The Strings, this Saturday afternoon on Classic Country Radio from 3:00-5:00 p.m. (EDT). In honor of the life of Jimmie Rodgers, I will be producing a very special tribute show including many of the songs discussed in the Rodgers Remembrances this week. You won’t want to miss it!
The song Atlanta Is Burning is based in part on an event during the American Civil War. It was written by Aubrey Holt of the Boys from Indiana, a band that Holt along with his uncle, Harley Gabbard formed in 1973.
“I wrote (the song) in 1974 after watching the movie Gone With The Wind for the first time. I had heard so much about the movie and it certainly lived up to everything I had heard about it. It hit me really hard and the next morning I wrote Atlanta Is Burning. I was not particularly into Civil War things…I guess the movie just inspired me to write. That’s the way most of my songs come…I have to be inspired by something. Atlanta became our most requested song as we toured the festival circuit for 20 some years.”
From the band’s inception, the Boys from Indiana was one of the most original bluegrass bands on the festival circuit. The core of the band was comprised of the three Holt brothers; Aubry (guitar, bass and vocals), Jerry (bass and vocals), and Tom (bass, guitar mandolin and vocalist). They were joined by Dobro®-playing uncle Harley Gabbard.
The original line-up also included fiddler Paul “Moon” Mullins, and Noah Crase on banjo.
Aubrey Holt’s songs, whether they be sacred or secular, were a very important feature of the band’s repertoire right from the start. Holt’s writing was so prolific that, by the late 1970s, he had contributed half of the songs on their first five albums.
Additionally, their tight vocal harmonies made the Boys from Indiana very popular with audiences.
Holt’s songs depict the country people who moved from rural areas to urban cities to make a living in the Midwest, while still holding dear the music and memories of home.
The battle for Atlanta, the Gate City of the South, came at the end of a series of brutal battles on the western front of the Civil War.
From Chattanooga, Tennessee, to the banks of the Chattahoochee River, General William Tecumseh Sherman’s federal forces battled with the Confederate army, commanded by General Joseph Johnson, to take every bloody mile in the sweep towards Atlanta, which by 1864 was second only to the capital Richmond in importance to the ailing Jefferson Davis-led government.
Utilizing various strategies Sherman outwitted the defensive Johnson, gaining ground first by swinging to the enemy’s left, then after a feint to the left, went right to find a relatively undefended stretch of river and crossed just eight miles from Atlanta against very little resistance.
Before long, Davis became so disenchanted by Johnson’s retreat – this time to Peachtree Creek, just five miles from the city – that he replaced him with the more aggressive General John Bell Hood. If Atlanta was going to fall to the Yankees, it would only do so after a good fight.
In the first part of August each of the forces tried futile attacks on the other’s rear, and the Union infantry probed unsuccessfully toward the railroad south of Atlanta. Then on August 26 the blue corps suddenly disappeared, thought by Hood to have retreated when in fact they had marched south to cut across both roads and rail beyond the Confederate defenses.
When realization hit Hood he launched an assault but the Yankees were too strong and the rebels were repulsed with heavy losses. The following day, Sherman counter-attacked, mauling the rebels.
On September 1 Hood evacuated Atlanta torching everything in the city that was of military significance, and was government sensitive.
On September 2 Sherman’s army entered Atlanta. In less than four months and at the cost of 31,000 casualties the heart of the South had been taken.
On November 15, 1864, General Sherman gave orders to burn all public buildings, machine shops, depots, and arsenals in Atlanta. While setting out for Savannah that same day Sherman stated, “Behind us lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in the air and hanging like a pall over the ruined city.”
Gone With The Wind was a 1939 epic block-buster adapted from the book of the same name written in 1936 by Margaret Mitchell. It starred heart-throbs of the day Clarke Gable (playing the part of Rhett Butler) and Vivien Leigh (Scarlett O’Hara).
Atlanta Is Burning
© Aubrey Lee Holt
(Lemco Music Publishing Co., BMI)
Two years we’ve been fighting though it seems like a hundred
Away to the south there’s a home I once knew
Where my loved ones are waiting for a word from the Captain
That the battle has ended for the gray and the blue
I left dear old Georgia on the first day of April
The grass in the valley was just turning green
I married my Sally just a week before leaving
We now have a baby that I’ve never seen
She wrote me a letter that told of our baby
He’s just like his daddy is the words that it said
But that’s been so long now that it seems like forever
And Lord I’m so homesick I wish I were dead
Atlanta is burning the horizon is flaming
The thunder of cannons in the distance I hear
I think of my Sally and the son that she gave me
If I could just see her and the baby so dear
A bullet has found me and the darkness is falling
The pain is unreal and my body so weak
The Captain is calling but I cannot answer
My thoughts wander southward as I go to sleep
My thoughts wander southward as I go to sleep
Copyright reserved.
In this video clip Aubrey Holt explains how he “dug up” Atlanta Is Burning ……
