https://youtube/watch?v=OM8NqHzQ6i0 Featured artist of the week: Dock Boggs. Moran Lee Dock Boggs, was an influential old-time singer, songwriter and banjo player. His style of banjo playing, as well as his singing, is considered a unique combination of Appalachian folk music and African-American blues. Contemporary folk musicians and performers consider him a seminal figure on Harry Smiths 1951 Anthology of American Folk Music collection. Boggs was initially recorded in 1927 and again in 1929, although he worked primarily as a coal miner for most of his life. Boggs was born in West Norton, Virginia in 1898, the youngest of ten children. In the late 1890s, the arrival of railroads in Central Appalachia brought large-scale coal mining to the region, and by the time Dock was born, the Boggs family had made the transition from a susbsistence farming family to a wage-earning family living in mining towns. Docks father, who worked as a carpenter and blacksmith, loved singing and could read sheet music. He taught his children to sing, and several of Docks siblings had learned to play banjo. In an interview with folk musician Mike Seeger in the 1960s, Dock recalled how, as a young child, he would follow an African-American guitarist named Go Lightning up and down the railroad tracks between Norton and Dorchester, hoping the guitarist would stop at street corners to play for change. Docks version of the ballad John Henry was based in part on the version he learned from Go Lightning during this period. Dock also recalled sneaking over to the African-American camps in Dorchester at night, where he first observed string bands playing at dances and parties. Dock was enamoured with the bands banjo players preference for picking, having previously been exposed only to the frailing style of his siblings. Around the time he began working in coal mines, Dock began playing music more often and more seriously. He learned much of his technique during this period from his brother Roscoe and an itinerant musician named Homer Crawford, both of whom shared Docks preference for picking. Crawford taught Dock Hustlin Gambler, which was most likely the basis for Docks Country Blues. Dock also picked up several songs from a local African-American musician named Jim White. Dock probably began playing at parties around 1918. While Dock Boggs was familiar with the clawhammer, or frailing style, he typically played in a style known as up-picking, which involves picking upwards on the first two strings and playing one of the other three strings with the thumb. He played many songs in a lower D-modal tuning. Docks technique, which Seeger considered a style possessed by no other recorded player, was adapted to fit previously unaccompanied mountain ballads. Dock learned a number of traditional mountain songs from his siblings, namely Sugar Baby, which he learned from his brother John, Danville Girl, which he learned from his brother Roscoe, and Little Omie Wise, which he learned from his sisters. Lee Hansucker, Docks brother-in-law, taught him various religious songs, including Oh, Death, Little Black Train, Prodigal Son, and Calvary. Along with Turkey in the Straw and John Henry, Dock learned songs such as Banjo Clog and Down South Blues from African-American blues musicians. The song Wise County Jail— written by Dock in 1928— was inspired by an incident in which Dock had to flee to Kentucky after attacking a lawman who tried to break up a party at which Dock was playing.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 14:10:16 +0000