Clarence "Tom" Ashley (September 29, 1895 – June 2, 1967) was an American musician and singer, who played the
clawhammer banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...
and the guitar. He began performing at
medicine shows in the
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 bands. After his "rediscovery" during the
folk revival of the 1960s, Ashley spent the last years of his life playing at folk music concerts, including appearances at
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...
in New York and at the
Newport Folk Festival in
Rhode Island
Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...
.
[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 variously as a "one-eyed fiddler, hell-raiser, and big talker."
[Joe Wilson, "Tom Ashley". In ''Greenback Dollar: The Music of Clarence "Tom" Ashley'' ]D liner notes
D, or d, is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''dee'' (pronounced ), plural ''dees''.
History
The ...
County Records, 2001. Shortly before Clarence was born, Rose-Belle's father, Enoch Ashley, discovered that his son-in-law George was an adulterer. George was forced to leave town. Rose-Belle moved back in with her father, and around 1900, the family relocated to Shouns, Tennessee, a crossroads just south of
Mountain City, where Enoch ran a boarding house. When Clarence was very young, he was
nickname
A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...
d "Tommy Tiddy Waddy" (after a nursery rhyme) by his grandfather Enoch, and thus became known to friends and acquaintances as 'Tom'. As he was raised by the parents of his mother, the name "McCurry" was dropped in favor of "Ashley".
[Minnie Miller, Scott Moore (ed.)]
Clarence Tom Ashley Biography (2007)
, clarenceashley.com; accessed October 16, 2014.
Originally published by Minnie Miller as ''Tom Clarence Ashley: An Appalachian Folk Musician'' (Masters Thesis, East Tennessee State University, 1973); retrieved December 19, 2008.From infancy, Tom was acquainted with musicians. His grandfather bought him a banjo when he was eight years old, and his mother and aunts taught him to play
traditional Appalachian folk songs and ballads. He learned a number of songs and techniques from itinerant lumberjacks and railroad workers lodging at his grandfather's boarding house. In 1911, Tom joined a medicine show that happened to be passing through Mountain City. He played banjo and guitar, and performed
blackface comedy.
[Dave Samuelson, "Clarence 'Tom' Ashley", ''The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 18.] Tom would play with medicine shows every summer until the early 1940s. During winters, he organized local concerts at rural schools. He would also play for money at coal camps and rayon mills, often accompanied by influential
Johnson County fiddler
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 a ...
.
[
]
Recording career and the Great Depression
Tom made his first recordings for Gennett Records
Gennett (pronounced "jennett") was an American record company and label in Richmond, Indiana, United States, which flourished in the 1920s. Gennett produced some of the earliest recordings by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, and H ...
during February 1928 with the Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers, which then consisted of Ashley on banjo or guitar, Garley Foster on harmonica, and Clarence Horton Greene
Clarence Horton Greene (June 26, 1894 – October 22, 1961) was an American musician and recording artist, noted for his fiddle and guitar work, and a pioneer in country music of the 1920s.
Biography
Greene was born in Cranberry Gap, North Car ...
on fiddle.[ Later that year, with the help of Victor producer Ralph Peer, Ashley made several recordings with ]The Carolina Tar Heels
The Carolina Tar Heels was an American old time string band. It originally consisted of Dock Walsh (July 23, 1901 – May 28, 1967) on banjo and Gwen Foster on harmonica. Later Clarence Ashley (September 29, 1895 – June 2, 1967) joi ...
, which consisted of Tom on guitar and vocals, his friend Dock Walsh on banjo, and Gwen or Garley Foster on harmonica. In 1929, Frank Walker of Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
auditioned Ashley to make his first solo recordings, as well as to record with a trio called "Byrd Moore and His Hot Shots" at the Johnson City Sessions. During the early 1930s, Ashley again recorded with the Blue Ridge Entertainers, this time for the American Record Corporation
American Record Corporation (ARC), also referred to as American Record Company, American Recording Corporation, or ARC Records, was an American record company.
Overview
ARC was created in January 1929 by Louis G. Sylvester, president of Scran ...
. The final recordings from his early era were a series of duets with harmonica player Gwen Foster in 1933.[
The effects of the ]Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
made money scarce throughout the early 1930s. Not only was Ashley no longer recruited to make records, it was virtually impossible to earn money playing at coal camps or on street corners. The Depression (along with government regulations) also greatly reduced the crowds that attended medicine shows. Ashley worked briefly as a coal miner in 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 Bur ...
, and did odd jobs back in Shouns to support his wife, Hettie, and their two children. In 1937, he established a trucking business in Mountain City that hauled furniture and crops to various cities around the region. Throughout the following decade, Ashley performed as a comedian with the Stanley Brothers. He formed a local string band, the Tennessee Merrymakers.[
]
Rediscovery
During the folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, urban ethnomusicologist
Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...
s rediscovered Ashley's music. By this time, Ashley was well known among folk music enthusiasts due in large part to Harry Smith's ''Anthology of American Folk Music
''Anthology of American Folk Music'' is a three-album compilation, released in 1952 by Folkways Records, of eighty-four recordings of American folk, blues and country music made and issued from 1926 to 1933 by a variety of performers. The album wa ...
'' (1952), which included some of Ashley's early recordings. In 1960, Ralph Rinzler
Ralph Rinzler (July 20, 1934 – July 2, 1994) was an American mandolin player, folksinger, and the co-founder of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall every summer in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a curator for American a ...
met Ashley at the Old Time Fiddler's Convention in Union Grove, North Carolina
Union Grove Township is a rural, non-functioning county subdivision established in 1868 in Iredell County, North Carolina, United States. Two towns have existed in Union Grove township: 1) the unincorporated community Union Grove, established in ...
. He eventually persuaded him to start playing banjo again and to record his repertoire of songs. Over the next few years Ashley and his friends Doc Watson, Clint Howard, and Fred Price played at numerous urban folk festivals, including the Chicago Folk Festival in 1962 and the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.[
Ashley continued touring the folk circuit throughout the mid-1960s.
He appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York and played at dozens of venues in California. In 1966, Ashley and ]Reidsville, North Carolina
Reidsville is a city in Rockingham County in the U.S. state of North Carolina. At the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 14,580. Reidsville is included in the Greensboro–High Point Metropolitan Statistical Area of the Piedmont T ...
guitarist Tex Isley toured England. A second tour of England was planned for 1967, but Ashley grew ill and discovered he had cancer before he departed.[ He died in 1967 at Baptist Hospital in ]Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Winston-Salem is a city and the county seat of Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States. In the 2020 census, the population was 249,545, making it the second-largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region, the 5th most populous city in N ...
.
In March 2013, the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
announced that the album, ''Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's'', would be added to the National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservati ...
. The album consists of a series of early-1960s recordings by Ralph Rinzler of folk songs performed by Ashley and bandmates Doc Watson, Clint Howard, Fred Price, Gaither Carlton and Tommy Moore.The National Recording Registry 2012
National Recording Preservation Board, March 21, 2013; retrieved October 16, 2014.
Repertoire and influence
Ashley learned much of his repertoire from his grandfather and aunts and itinerant musicians lodging at his grandfather's boarding house in the early 1900s.[ His unusual G-modal banjo tuning style, which he called "sawmill" (gDGCD from fifth string to the first), was likely taught to him by family members.][ He recorded several songs derived from English or Irish ballads that were passed down through generations in Appalachia, the best-known of which included " Coo Coo Bird" (which he learned from his mother), " House Carpenter", and " Rude and Rambling Man".][ Other recordings included the murder ballads "]Naomi Wise
Omie Wise or Naomi Wise (1789–1808) was an American murder victim, who is remembered by a popular murder ballad about her death.
Song
Omie Wise's death became the subject of a traditional American ballad. (Roud 447) One version opens:
In acco ...
", "Little Sadie
"Little Sadie" is a 20th-century American folk ballad written in Dorian mode. It is also known variously as "Bad Lee Brown", "Cocaine Blues", "Transfusion Blues", "East St. Louis Blues", "Late One Night", "Penitentiary Blues" and other titles. It ...
", and " John Hardy", and the folk songs "Frankie Silvers" and "Greenback Dollar". An African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
influence can be heard on Ashley's renderings of "Dark Holler", "Haunted Road Blues", and " Corrina, Corrina". In 1933, Ashley made the first known recording of " The House of the Rising Sun", which he claimed he learned from his maternal grandfather. During the folk revival years of the 1960s, Ashley and his band helped to popularize the 18th century English, Southern hymn, " Amazing Grace."[
Several notable musicians cite Ashley as an important influence. ]Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the "King of Country Music", Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown ...
once worked medicine shows with Ashley, and Ashley probably taught him "House of the Rising Sun" (which Acuff recorded during 1938) and "Greenback Dollar."[ Folk musician Doc Watson began his recording career with Ashley in 1960 and played in Ashley's band throughout much of the decade. ]Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...
frontman Jerry Garcia
Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician best known for being the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and a vocalist with the rock band Grateful Dead, which he co-founded and which came to prominence ...
once said in an interview that he learned clawhammer picking from "listening to Clarence Ashley". Other folk musicians influenced by Ashley include Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...
, Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning seven decades. An Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her ec ...
, and Jean Ritchie.[
]
References
External links
*
Juneberry78s.com Sampler
— mp3s of "Coo Coo Bird" and "John Hardy"
*
Clarence Ashley performs "The Cuckoo" (YouTube)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashley, Clarence
1895 births
1967 deaths
People from Bristol, Tennessee
American banjoists
Old-time musicians
People from Johnson County, Tennessee
Music of East Tennessee
Music of Johnson County, Tennessee
Musicians from Tennessee
Gennett Records artists
Musicians from Appalachia
20th-century American musicians
Folkways Records artists