Ted Olson Archives - Bluegrass Today

Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music podcast

The Great Smoky Mountain Association has announced the launch of a new podcast as a part of their Smoky Mountain Air audio options. Titled Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music, this six-part series chronicles the experience of freed and escaped African slaves and their descendants in the development of what we know today as Appalachian music.

Episodes will air every other month, with the first now available, featuring discussions with Dr. William Turner, retired Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Studies at Berea College, and Dr. Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian studies at East Tennessee State University. Both have written extensively on the culture of the southern Appalachian people, with Dr. Olson researching early music recordings in particular.

Interest in black contributions to American folk music has grown tremendously in recent years, both by scholars and researchers eager to fill in gaps in historical knowledge, and by black Americans wanting to understand more about the contributions of their ancestors to musical styles endemic to the American south. There was a time when educated African Americans eschewed any connection to mountain music with banjos and fiddles, seeing it as representing minstrelry and appropriation, but recent scholarship showing the inclusion of black Americans in the evolution of these folk arts has changed many a mind.

In the best spirit of inclusion, black and white music lovers can share in the pride of our joint investments in the creation of a musical form that is loved worldwide, and so clearly identified as American by nature of the blending of influences from peoples from all over the world who settled in the mountain ranges of the southern US.

Musical examples, both vintage and contemporary, will be a part of each episode, alongside the fascinating discussions between Drs. Turner and Olson.

You can check out the first episode now online, or subscribe to receive them all as they are released with any of the popular podcast aggregators.

We Shall All Be Reunited: Revisiting the Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928

Fans of the history of American folk and country music, the very sounds that led to the development of bluegrass, have another project to look forward to this month.

Bear Family Records is preparing to release We Shall All Be Reunited – Revisiting The Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928, on August 21. The album contains 26 recordings from the late ’20s Bristol sessions, all meticulously remastered by celebrated engineers Marcus Heumann and Christian Zwarg earlier this year. Included are tracks for Ernest V Stoneman & His Dixie Mountaineers, The Carter Family, Bull Mountain Moonshiners, Jimmie Rodgers, Smyth County Ramblers, Shortbuckle Roark & Family and several others.

Another important aspect of this project is the inclusion of extensive liner notes from producer Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian Studies at ETSU.

The 44-page booklet takes on some of the ‘myths’ which Olson feels were perpetuated by last year’s Ken Burns documentary series, Country Music.

As described by Bear Family…

To contextualize the 1927 Bristol sessions the liner notes for We Shall All Be Reunited explore ‘the rest of the story”—the related cultural occurrences all-too-often ignored or marginalized during mainstream public discussions about the Bristol sessions. In his liner notes, Ted Olson tells the real story of the Bristol sessions – a story that proves to be much more interesting than that told in the popular ‘Big Bang’/’Birthplace’ myth.

Several audio samples are available on the Bear Family web site.

90th anniversary of the Johnson City Sessions this weekend

This weekend, on October 19, Johnson City, TN will be celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Johnson City Sessions, among the first commercial recordings of traditional mountain music ever made, captured by the Columbia Records company in October of 1928. Just as Ralph Peer had done in Bristol the year before, Frank Buckley Walker posted an advertisement in the local paper, asking musicians and singers to visit him on specific dates for a recording audition, using his then state-of-the-art, direct to wax cylinder equipment.

And again, like Peer, Walker found a number of artists whose interpretations of mountain folk songs struck a nerve with the newly-established record buying public. Included in those sessions, and a follow-up visit to Johnson City a year later, were Clarence Ashley’s original recording of The Coo-Coo Bird, Charlie Bowman’s Roll On, Buddy, Byrd Moore and His Hot Shots’ Three Men Went A Hunting, Bill and Belle Reed’s Old Lady And The Devil, and the Bentley Boys’ Down On Penny’s Farm, which are now considered to be among the most significant early recordings of the 1920s.

Known then simply as hillbilly music, this raw, unfocused sound was quite popular in other regions of the US, where it was completely unfamiliar. Music historians now see it as pure examples of the old time music of its day, and can trace direct line between what Peer and Walker recorded to the country and bluegrass styles that developed over the next 30 years.

To help mark the 90th anniversary, Bear Family Records has released a CD with 26 tracks from these sessions, Tell It To Me: Revisiting the Johnson City Sessions, 1928-1929. The package also includes a 40 page booklet with track notes, artist information, and an essay by ETSU professor Ted Olson which details the importance of these recordings and how they were received at the time.

Ted shared this video so that readers could trace the connection to contemporary bluegrass in this first recording of the classic song, Roll On Buddy, by Charlie Bowman & His Brothers in 1928.

Tell It To Me is available now directly from Bear Family, and from other online record sellers.

Johnson City invites everyone to join them on Saturday for the 90th anniversary celebration. There will be live music downtown on Main Street from 11:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m., with square dancing, children’s activities, and a panel discussion about the recordings on site. And it’s all free and open to the public.

ETSU faculty responds to No Depression article

One of the longstanding traditions of artistic and literary publications is friendly – and at times, not-so-friendly – debates about matters that concern practitioners and connoisseurs of the arts. In the hey day of British literary magazines, it was quite common to see published poets and authors arguing with one another in letters to the editor, or with the editors and publishers themselves. Some devolved into acrimony and ill will, but they never made for dull reading.

We see less of this sort of reasoned debate in a modern culture consumed with name calling and virtue signalling, but here is an example occurring within our bluegrass community that should be of interest to anyone who cares about the future of the music.

Earlier this week, No Depression ran an opinion column by Ted Lehmann entitled Bluegrass Goes To College, But Should It? Ted is a well-known person in the bluegrass world, blogging for some time about the music on his own web site, and sharing photos and videos from festivals all over the country. He and his wife, Irene, are staples at bluegrass events, including the annual World Of Bluegrass convention in Raleigh, and have dedicated their lives in retirement to helping promote the music.

Lehmann’s column asks a number of questions, ones that seem to challenge the notion that studying bluegrass in college is an effective way to learn the music, or prepare for a potential career in the field. In some ways, his questions mirror a culture-wide re-examination of the need for all graduating high schoolers to attend university, an interesting twist as Ted’s pre-bluegrass career was teaching literature at the college level.

Here’s a representative passage from his recurring column…

Do the available opportunities represent real choices for students, or are they more effective marketing as colleges seek to recruit adolescents burning with a fever to succeed in music? Does a college degree function to offer more choices or narrow opportunities? Are young people interested in becoming touring musicians better served by going on the road after high school rather than investing huge amounts of capital and/or assuming massive debt for a highly competitive profession with relatively few high earners? Should those wishing to attend college see these music programs as minors or electives more suited for future avocation and semi-professional performance while they pursue majors in other departments more likely to provide skills that open more, and possibly more lucrative, career options? Are the students being fooled into thinking that a degree in bluegrass or traditional music can provide a satisfactory living for most, or even many, of its graduates? These are a few of the questions student musicians planning to major in music performance and production should be asking themselves.

As you might imagine, Ted’s column has raised the ire of a number of bluegrass educators, including the staff at the largest and most comprehensive bluegrass program, the Bluegrass, Old Time and Country Music Studies department at East Tennessee State University. Rather than respond in writing, they created this video as a rebuttal in the form of a discussion among Program Director Dan Boner, Assistant Professor Nate Olson, and Emeritus Professor Jack Tottle, who founded the program at ETSU in 1982.

They have asked us to share their perspective, in which they both defend their program, which they says is the first to offer a four year bachelors degree in bluegrass performance, and the concept of bluegrass in college more generally.

You might be advised to read Ted’s brief essay before watching the response.

Many valuable points raised on all sides. As always, your comments are welcome.

Tennessee Senate honors On Top Of Old Smoky

The State Senate of Tennessee has been plenty busy this month sharing congratulations with bluegrass and old time music artists. In addition to this morning’s proclamation honoring The Farm Hands, they issued a resolution earlier in April celebrating the award won by the Great Smoky Mountains Association from the Public Lands Alliance for their album, On Top Of Old Smoky.

The CD is a contemporary recreation of field recordings captured by Joseph S. Hall in the Smoky Mountain region during the mid-20th century. In many ways, Hall was the progenitor for the field of Appalachian Studies, now a hot topic in higher education. He got to know hundreds of natives of this region by living among them, and documenting many aspects of the culture, including the folk music that had been sung in the Smoky Mountains for generations.

Hall also recorded lengthy interviews with the people he visited, capturing their native dialects and mannerisms of speech in addition to the songs and tunes they played. He returned to the area from the early 1940s through the mid-’70s, collecting notes and information. In academic circles, he was in large part responsible for turning the stereotype of ignorant hillbillies on its head, as he demonstrated the wisdom and intellect of the many people he met. A trained linguist, Hall showed the distinctive patterns of these regional dialects and helped preserve them for posterity.

The Great Smoky Mountains Association commissioned a number of popular singers and musicians to perform the songs Hall had collected in 1939 to share with the listening public – and raise the profile of the Association in their minds. They were able to enlist top artists like Dolly Parton, Norman Blake, Tony Trischka, David Holt, Jody Stetcher, and Alice Gerrard to re-record songs from that era, including now familiar numbers like Groundhog, Lost Indian, Man Of Constant Sorrow, Bonaparte’s Retreat, Muleskinner Blues, Black-Eyed Susie, and, of course, On Top Of Old Smoky.

Produced by Ted Olson, a Professor in the Appalachian Studies Department at East Tennessee State University, the the album had previously won Best Tribute Album at the 15th Annual Independent Music Awards in 2017, and was named as one of three recipients of the Innovative Product Award from the Public Lands Alliance.

The full resolution, dated April 3, 2017, can be read by clicking the images below.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Tennessee State Senators Steve Southerland and Doug Overby, and Representatives Tilman Goins, Dale Carr, Bob Ramsey, Art Swann, and David Hawk. It was also signed by Speaker of the Senate, Randy McNally, Speaker of the House of Represetatives, Beth Harwell, and Governor Bill Haslam.

Copies of the CDs can be ordered online.

Blind Alfred Reed: Appalachian Visionary

Ted Olson, a professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, has become known as a go-to person for information on the early recorded music of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia. Some music fans may recognize his name as the Grammy-nominated writer of meticulously researched and skillfully written liner notes for such projects as the Bear Family Records box sets of the Bristol Sessions and the Johnson City Sessions – seminal recording sessions that set the tone for early country music. His latest work is a collaboration with Dust-to-Digital Records focusing on Blind Alfred Reed, a Floyd County, Virginia native who was one of only three Bristol Sessions artists to be signed to a long-term recording contract by Victor Records A&R man Ralph Peer – the other two being the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.

Blind Alfred Reed: Appalachian Visionary includes twenty-two tracks originally recorded in 1927 and 1929. All of the songs were written by Reed; several have a social aspect to them that bring to mind the protest song era of folk music. Money Cravin’ Folks is a warning against thieves and money-grubbers, while How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live grieves the hard times of the Great Depression and has been recorded by artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Ry Cooder. A few of the songs ponder on the results of vice (The Prayer of the Drunkard’s Little Girl, a pitiful tale sung from a young girl’s point of view), while others are thoughtful Gospel pieces (There’ll Be No Distinction There and I Mean to Live for Jesus, among others).

The songs here are thoughtful and well-written, demonstrating Reed’s keen sense of then-current social situations and a way with words that makes many of the numbers still ring true today. Even Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls, a lament of flapper style that compels young women to leave their hair long for the glory of God, is an interesting reminder that there has always been a gap between generations. Most of the songs have sparse arrangements, usually with Reed accompanying himself on fiddle and occasionally with rhythm guitar and harmony vocalists. The recording quality of the songs is excellent, especially given the time period, thanks to modern equipment used at the Bristol Sessions and a careful restoration by Dust-to-Digital.

Reed is an interesting figure in the history of traditional American music, although his life and his work have largely been left in the shadows of more prolific acts from the same time period. Blind from birth (although given the moniker “Blind Alfred Reed” as somewhat of a marketing ploy by Ralph Peer), Reed nonetheless made much of his living from music. His wife Nettie would read songbooks and hymnbooks to him to help him learn new songs, and when he could not find a song to express what he was feeling, he wrote his own. He performed at dances and other gatherings, as well as on the streets of towns near his home, gave music lessons, and even sold printed copies of his original lyrics. The songs on this album reveal him to be a strong singer with a steady, rich voice and a competent and clear fiddler.

For many folks, the highlight of this album will be the hardcover book that accompanies it. Olson has compiled eighty-plus pages discussing Reed’s life, stories behind his songs, and his enduring legacy that has led numerous folk, rock, and Americana artists to cover his songs. Photos and historical documents such as session sheets from Reed’s Bristol Sessions experience and lyrics sheets typed by his wife enhance the text, and will likely make these expansive liner notes a treat for music history buffs.

In the book, Olson writes that “Alfred’s songs should live on in the repertoires of musicians who value songs with a conscience.” It’s easy to envision this collection as a new jumping-off point for old-time and bluegrass musicians looking for historical songs to reinvigorate or reinvent.

For more information on Blind Alfred Reed: Appalachian Visionary, visit Dust-to-Digital’s website.