Take the Crooked Road straight to music heaven
From Cash to Cobain, Blue Ridge Mountains are huge influence for musicians
BRISTOL, VA.— You may not expect to hear Kurt Cobain in the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, a little town that straddles the Virginia-Tennessee border, but here he is with that blond hair and fuzzy sweater in a clip from MTV Unplugged singing “In the Pines.”
Cobain and others have attributed the tune to bluesman Lead Belly. But the song was first recorded in 1927 a stone’s throw from here by four white guys at the Bristol Sessions, the “Big Bang” of country music. The Tenneva Ramblers were among the performers that recorded 76 songs (with the newly invented microphone) for the Victor Talking Machine Co. At the museum’s display, you can compare the original version to renditions by Lead Belly, Nirvana and others.
“Musicians are getting material from other musicians all of the time. That’s just part of the process,” says folklorist Jessica Turner, the director of the museum. “It’s not taking, it’s sharing.”
And for decades, countless musicians have been taking from the wellspring of traditional music found among the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.
“This is where the African banjo and the European fiddle met,” says Jack Hinshelwood, director of the Crooked Road, a 530-kilometre driving trail linking highways, towns and music venues large and small, in the lush countryside of southwest Virginia, where people have been making and passing on their music for hundreds of years.
The Crooked Road describes the “twists and turns of the mountain roads,” but the name is also rooted in the music.
“Some of the old instrumental tunes that are played are called crooked tunes because they have little extra beats in them,” says Hinshelwood as a trio of teens take the stage at Heartwood, an arts centre in Abingdon, 20 minutes from Bristol.
Back in 1927, the Bristol Sessions paid $50 (U.S.) for each song recorded, good money for the 19 performers, including AP Carter, his wife, Sara, and her cousin, Maybelle. The Bristol Sessions made the Carter Family country music superstars.
“The ladies didn’t want to go. Sara was eight months pregnant,” says Rita Forrester, granddaughter of AP and Sara Carter. “Aunt Maybelle asked ‘Should I bring my guitar?’ ”
She did, and decades later Rolling Stone wrote a piece about her style of playing.
Over the years, a long procession of musicians — including Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones — has made the pilgrimage to the Carter Family Fold, a small performing venue and museum in Hiltons, Va., to join the Saturday night jam and pay their respects to the “First Family of Country Music.”
Johnny Cash, husband of June Carter Cash, was one of the few musicians allowed to plug in a guitar at the Fold and it’s where he played his last few shows, surrounded by Carter family photos and memorabilia.
While everyone up and down the Crooked Road respects those who have made it big — we hear not one but two schoolgirls belt out Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” — that’s not what motivates musicians here.
“It’s just part of who they are,” Hinshelwood says.
“That’s why people are here making music, not to become rich and fa- mous, but they do it because they love it.”
Like Steve Kilby. As he starts strumming the Carter Family’s “Wildwood Flower” at the Blue Ridge Music Center, he tells the audience he grew up playing the song in his grampa’s barbershop for “a five-cent cola and a bag of peanuts.”
At Barr’s Fiddle Shop on Main St. in Galax, Va., you can see old black and white photos of the Hill Billies, guys who used to jam here in the 1920s when it was a barbershop. They re- corded some songs in New York City a few years before the Bristol Sessions, which is why people in town like to say: “Country Music was conceived in Galax, born in Bristol and died in Nashville.” The Old Fiddler’s Convention has been going strong in Galax for 82 years and, more recently, crowds come to the annual HoustonFest to sit in the sun and listen to music.
There’s not much sitting being done at the Floyd Country Store Friday Night Jamboree in the one-light town of Floyd.
“You just shuffle your feet,” a man instructs the crowded dance floor. “The taps are just for noise,” he says pointing to the silver on the bottom of his shoes.
You can get popcorn and ice cream but no booze as you watch three or four generations dance the night away.
“I call it Hillbilly aerobics,” a man in (at least) XXL overalls tells me. Others call it clogging or flatfoot dancing.
People dance to Old Time music but bluegrass is for listening, this altrock fan learns on the Crooked Road.
Whatever you call it and whatever you’re listening to on Spotify: “It’s all connected,” says Forrester, whose grandparents had three flat tires on the way to the Bristol Sessions 90 years ago.
“They helped lay the groundwork for American music,” she says. “They didn’t know they were doing it, but they did.” Jennifer Allford travelled as a guest of Virginia Tourism Corporation and its partners. None reviewed or approved the story.