Jim Smoak (born July 7, 1934Country Music Hall of Fame Oral History Collection
/ref>) is an American bluegrass and

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

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 ...

player from

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. Smoak may be the first bluegrass banjoist to have come from that state.Chadbourne. Smoak was born and raised on a farm in

Round O, South Carolina Round O (formerly also called Round) is an unincorporated community in Colleton County, South Carolina, United States. The population of Round O is 2,136 people. Its elevation is 36 feet (11 m). It is located near the intersection of Co ...

and learned banjo playing from his parents.Jim Smoak's website.
/ref> He performed on

WROL WROL is a radio station in the Boston, Massachusetts radio market. The station is owned by Salem Media Group and is located on 950 kHz on the AM dial. Most of WROL's programming is religious including local ministers as well as national radio ...

radio when he was eighteen years old. Smoak had a difficult time establishing an audience in his home state, so he moved north in the 1950s. Through 1953, he played occasionally with Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys; the following year, he became a permanent member of the band. Smoak joined

Hylo Brown Hylo Brown (April 20, 1922 – January 17, 2003) was an American bluegrass and country music singer, guitarist and bass player. Biography Frank "Hylo" Brown, Jr. was born in River, Johnson County, Kentucky, United States, and began his caree ...

& the Timberliners in 1958, and later began to perform with Arthur Smith and the Cracker Jacks on radio stations

WAFB WAFB (channel 9) is a television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio ...

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties i ...

and WBT in

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

. In 1961 he recorded with ''The Louisiana Honeydrippers'' the album ''Bayou Bluegrass'' on

Arhoolie Records Arhoolie Records is an American small independent record label run by Chris Strachwitz and is based in El Cerrito, California, United States (it is actually located in Richmond Annex but has an El Cerrito postal address.) The label was founded b ...

. That same year he went solo, recording for the tiny Folk Lyric label. Smoak played both bluegrass and country music in the 1960s, and in the 1970s, he published three praised banjo instruction books, some of the first to include standard

musical notation Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...

and

tablature Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches. Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...

. Smoak recorded ''

Moonshine Sonata Moonshine is high-proof liquor that is usually produced illegally. The name was derived from a tradition of creating the alcohol during the nighttime, thereby avoiding detection. In the first decades of the 21st century, commercial dis ...

'', a solo album with

Blue River Records Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ob ...

, in 1979.

Notes

References

*Chadbourne, Eugene. "Jim Smoak.
Allmusic
Accessed 2 November 2006. American country banjoists American bluegrass musicians 1934 births Living people Country musicians from Louisiana {{US-country-musician-stub