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G. B. Grayson
Gilliam Banmon Grayson (November 11, 1887 – August 16, 1930) was an American Old-time fiddle player and singer. Mostly blind from infancy, Grayson is chiefly remembered for a series of sides recorded with guitarist Henry Whitter between 1927 and 1930 that would later influence numerous country, bluegrass, and rock musicians. Grayson wrote much of his own material, but was also instrumental in adapting several traditional Appalachian ballads to fiddle and guitar formats. His music has been recorded or performed by musicians such as Bob Dylan, Doc Watson, Mick Jagger, the Kingston Trio, and dozens of bluegrass artists, including the Stanley Brothers and Mac Wiseman.Barry McCloud (ed.), ''Definitive Country: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Country Music and its Performers'' (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1995), pp. 340-341. Biography G.B. Grayson was born in rural Ashe County, North Carolina in 1887 to Benjamin Carrol and Martha Jane Roark Grayson. According to his sister, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ashe County, North Carolina
Ashe County is a county located in the United States state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 26,577. Its county seat is Jefferson. History Historical evidence shows that Ashe County was inhabited by Native Americans, which included the Cherokee, Creek, and Shawnee tribes. Pieces of broken pottery, arrowheads, and other Native American artifacts have been found, indicating their presence. Most of these artifacts have been found in the Old Fields area of Ashe County. The earliest Europeans to explore Ashe County were Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg – head of the Moravian Church in America – and his associates, Timothy Horsefield, Joseph Mueller, Henry Antes, Johan Merck, and Herman Loesch. Bishop Spangenberg wrote about his journey in Ashe in a diary that has been preserved by the Moravian church. He was given in Virginia as a place for his fellow Moravians to settle. The only one of Spangenberg's group to return and permanently sett ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mac Wiseman
Malcolm Bell Wiseman (May 23, 1925 – February 24, 2019) was an American bluegrass and country singer. Early life He was born on May 23, 1925, in Crimora, Virginia. He attended school in New Hope, Virginia, and graduated from high school there in 1943. He had polio from the age of six months; due to his disabilities, he could not do field work and spent his time in childhood listening to old records. He studied at the Shenandoah Conservatory in Dayton, Virginia, before it moved to Winchester, Virginia, in 1960 and started his career as a disc jockey at WSVA-AM in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Music career His musical career began as upright bass player in the Cumberland Mountain Folks, the band of country singer Molly O'Day. When Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs left Bill Monroe's band, Wiseman became the guitarist for their new band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. Later he played with Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. In 1951, his first solo single, "'Tis Sweet to Be Remembered", was rele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frankie And Johnny (song)
"Frankie and Johnny" (sometimes spelled "Frankie and Johnnie"; also known as "Frankie and Albert", "Frankie's Man", "Johnny", or just "Frankie") is a traditional American popular song. It tells the story of a woman, Frankie, who finds her man Johnny making love to another woman and shoots him dead. Frankie is then arrested; in some versions of the song she is also executed. History The song was inspired by one or more actual murders. One of these took place in an apartment building located at 212 Targee Street in St. Louis, Missouri, at 2:00 on the morning of October 15, 1899. Frankie Baker (18761952), a 22-year-old woman, shot her 17-year-old lover Allen (also known as "Albert") Britt in the abdomen. Britt had just returned from a cakewalk at a local dance hall, where he and another woman, Nelly Bly (also known as "Alice Pryor" and no relation to the pioneering reporter who adopted the pseudonym Nellie Bly or Stephen Foster's Nelly Bly), had won a prize in a slow-dancing contest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee
Laurel Bloomery is an unincorporated community in Johnson County, Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ..., United States. Settled in the early 19th century, the community's first bloomery forge mill was built and began operation in 1810. The mill was closed in 1870, but portions are still standing today. The area is known for its beautiful mountains and secluded valleys. Laurel Bloomery is the northeasternmost community in the state of Tennessee. Old Time Fiddler's Convention The Old Time Fiddler's Convention is held the Saturday before Labor Day weekend at the Old Mill Music Park. Local musicians travel far and wide to attend this festival, marked with old time folk and bluegrass music. It marks the annual anniversary of the Mountain City Fiddlers Con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mountain City, Tennessee
Mountain City is a town in and the county seat of Johnson County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 2,383 at the 2000 census and 2,531 at the 2010 census. It is the northeasternmost county seat in Tennessee. In addition, at an elevation of , it has the distinction of being the highest incorporated city in the state. History When the first Euro-American explorers arrived in what is now the Mountain City area in the late 17th century, well-worn Native American trails passed through the area. In 1949, workers at the Maymead quarry (just south of Mountain City) discovered a cave with several early Mississippian-era (ca. 1000 A.D.) burials inside. The Needham and Arthur expedition of 1673 is believed to have passed through the area, making use of the gap at Trade to the south. Explorer Daniel Boone made use of the same gap on an expedition to what is now Kentucky in 1769, and today part of the Daniel Boone Heritage Trail— which follows Boone's route— passes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies the state as a part of the Mid-Atlantic regionMid-Atlantic Home : Mid-Atlantic Information Office: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics" www.bls.gov. Archived. It is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north and east, Maryland to the east and northeast, Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest. West Virginia is the 10th-smallest state by area and ranks as the 12th-least populous state, with a population of 1,793,716 residents. The capital and largest city is Charleston. West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, and was a key border state during the American Civil War. It was the only state to form by separating from a Confederate state, the second to sepa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clarence Ashley
Clarence "Tom" Ashley (September 29, 1895 – June 2, 1967) was an American musician and singer, who played the clawhammer banjo and the guitar. He began performing at medicine shows in the Appalachia, Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911, and gained initial fame during the late 1920s as both a solo recording artist and as a member of various String band (American music), string bands. After his "rediscovery" during the American folk music revival, folk revival of the 1960s, Ashley spent the last years of his life playing at folk music concerts, including appearances at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.Colin Larkin (ed.), "Clarence Tom Ashley", ''The Encyclopedia of Popular Music'', Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 272, Biography Early life Ashley was born Clarence Earl McCurry in Bristol, Tennessee in 1895, the only child of George McCurry and Rose-Belle Ashley. Those who knew George McCurry described him var ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Dooley (song)
"Tom Dooley" is a traditional North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina by Tom Dula (whose name in the local dialect was pronounced "Dooley"). One of the more famous murder ballads, a popular hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio, which reached No. 1 in ''Billboard'' Hot 100 singles chart, and also was top 10 on the ''Billboard'' R&B chart, and appeared in the '' Cashbox'' Country Music Top 20. The song was selected as one of the American Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scholastic Inc. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time. "Tom Dooley" fits within the wider genre of Appalachian "sweetheart murder ballads". A local poet named Thomas Land wrote a song about the tragedy, titled "Tom Dooley", shortly after Dula was hanged. In the documentary ''Appalachia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Dula
Thomas C. Dula (June 23‚ 1844 – May 1, 1868) was a former Confederate soldier who was convicted of murdering Laura Foster. National publicity from newspapers such as ''The New York Times'' turned Dula's story into a folk legend. Although Laura was murdered in Wilkes County, North Carolina, Dula was tried, convicted, and hanged in Statesville. Considerable controversy surrounded the case. In subsequent years, a folk song was written (entitled " Tom Dooley", based on the pronunciation in the local dialect), and many oral traditions were passed down, regarding the sensational occurrences surrounding Laura Foster's murder and Dula's subsequent execution. The Kingston Trio recorded a hit version of the murder ballad in 1958. Early life Tom Dula was born to a poor Appalachian hill-country family in Wilkes County, North Carolina, most likely the youngest of three brothers, with one younger sister, Eliza. Dula grew up, attended school, and "probably played with the female Fosters" â ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carter County, Tennessee
Carter County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 census, the population was 57,424. Its county seat is Elizabethton. The county is named in honor of Landon Carter (1760-1800), an early settler active in the "Lost State of Franklin" 1784-1788 secession from the State of North Carolina. Carter County is part of the Johnson City, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is a component of the Johnson City– Kingsport–Bristol, TN- VA Combined Statistical Area, located in northeastern Tennessee. History The area was originally claimed by Britain as part of the Clarendon settlements of the Province of Carolina, although actually populated at the time by the Cherokee. The area was part of (though seldom actually administered by) the following jurisdictions in its early history: * New Hanover Precinct (1729-1734) * Bladen County (1734-1749) * Anson County (1749-1753) * Rowan County (1753-1775) Watauga Association The county is named for Gen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
