ebony hillbillies and chocolate drops

8/4/2019 Ebony Hillbillies and Chocolate Drops

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- Ebony Hillbillies: About string band music and chocolatedrops

In my previous article, I had the occasion to highlight the genius of Dock Boggs, a.k.a. Moran Lee Boggs aninfluential old-time singer, songwriter and banjo player whose style of banjo playing, as well as his singing, is

considered as a unique combination of Appalachian folk music and African-American blues. His work lead tome formulate some reflections on the unique melting pot music that had emerged in the 19th centurySouthern States as a result of the profound social changes that took place and which created a marvellousstew of American music out of different ethnic traditions : African and European-British. I asserted also thatthere existed a complex two-way interaction between black and white music.

For what follows, take yourself some chocolate drops, a cup of coffee if you like, and take a comfortable seatwhile I will further guide you on my tour in the archaeology of roots music.

As a start, let me note that the roots music is much more alive than you might guess. Music with a directlineage of almost two centuries can be heard today when you go down in the New York City subway whereyou are likely to bump into the Ebony Hillbillies: a black string band whose objective is to ‘revive’ the sonic

landscape of the African-American tradition of the black string band of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Asone of its band members puts it: “At one time, there was a lot less difference between black and white culturein America. It was universally American. A lot of our leaders today are trying to separate people. I guess it’sgood that we’re around to show that we’re not that far apart, still.”

The Ebony Hillbillies are not alone. Lou Novacheck, a freelance writer for a.o. the Elmore Magazine andBlues Underground drew my attention recently to a similar band which witnesses a growing popularity, TheCarolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time string band with home basis in North Carolina. Their album, “GenuineNegro Jig” from 2010 has won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 53rd AnnualGrammy Awards.

Both the Ebony Hillbillies as the Caroline Chocolate Drops illustrate that we need to dissociate skin colour

from old-time string bands. When string bands come to our mind, we tend to think of white country music,bluegrass even, based on a combination of fiddle and banjo. Or, we are inclined to believe that the music of black string groups such as the Caroline Chocolate Drops build further on a tradition of exclusive whitecountry music. There is sufficient material that contradicts those spontaneous thoughts which stem in factfrom both a racial reading of history, as from the traces of the segregation rules that were set in theaftermath of the Civil War, and more particularly in the music industry from the early 20th century. There isindeed a relative scarcity of recorded old-time black string music, but the volume of this recording activitydoes not reflect what went on in the field. As a.o. Charles Wolfe has argued, the record companiessegregated music into separate series, one meant for whites, the other one for blacks. The white rural musicidiom included fiddle bands, banjo tunes, sentimental songs, and a few religious pieces. Black music serieswere supposed to be mainly country blues, gospel, and vaudeville blues numbers. A black band whichplayed something other than blues (accompanied by guitar) did not quite fit into either stereotype, as aconsequence of which only few of them were recorded.

Reality never fits stereotypes. Let me convince you.

In 2005, three young black musicians, Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson, travelled toMebane, North Caroline, to gather in the home of old-time fiddler Joe Thompson for musical jam sessionswhich would lead to foundation of the above mentioned Caroline Chocolate Drops. Joe Thompson, born in1918, was in his 80′s when he passed on his lessons to this new generation, just like he had learnt hislessons from his family. The very young Thompson when alone in his parent’s farmhouse when the adultswere occupied elsewhere, would make his way into his parents’ bedroom to get his six-year-old hands on hisdaddy’s fiddle (Linda Seida). He owned his own child-sized fiddle, thanks to a friendly neighbour who raisedmoney by selling seeds. The new fiddle lacked strings, but this didn’t stop him: he devised his own stringsout of a wire screen. As a small youngster of only 7 years old, he joined the locally popular duo of his father

and uncle, Walter and John Arch, who played for square dances. There the young Joe also joined John Arch’s son, Odell Thompson, who played the banjo and who later would turn to the blues guitar. JoeThompson continued to perform throughout the 30s at Southern dances.

After their ‘re-discovery’ in the early 70s by Kip Lornell (a researcher at the Smithsonian Institute), Joe andOdell Thompson restarted actively performing at quite a number of festivals (including Australia), thus

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sharing their knowledge of string band music with a younger generation of listeners and musicians.

In the same line, the fiddler and mandolin player, butabove all multi-instrumentalist (he played 22 instruments),

Armstrong Howard (1909-2003) was subject to a revivalthroughout the 1980′s. He had been playing with CarlMartin and (the much underrated, versatile purveyor of many styles) Ted Bogan for much of his career. Other chocolate drops come to us here: in the pre-war era

Howard, Bogan and Martin formed a string band known, ata particular moment, under the name of the TennesseeChocolate Drops (their name in fact inspired the CarolineChocolate Drops).

Carl Martin (1906-1979), born in Virginia, and son of aslave who also played the fiddle (known as Fiddlin’ Martin),was a born entertainer and he is said to have been able toplay any instrument with strings. He played the blues, buthe also played hoedowns, polkas, old and new pop songs,and anything else that would entertain and please thecrowd. His life was a repository of a great deal of

America’s musical and social experience. In the 30′s heand his aforementioned musical partners Bogan and

Armstrong migrated via many stops to Chicago, where they continued to play, adding songs in German,French, Spanish, Polish, Yiddish, and even Chinese to appeal to people of all the different neighbourhoodswhere they would play. Carl Martin was part of a rich musical tradition in Appalachia – a tradition which mixedblues and ragtime with pop and the styles of white musicians from rural mountain communities.

This brings us to some questions: when did this string band music emerge? Were the bands black or white?When did the blacks start to play fiddle? When did the banjo and the fiddle meet? These are mostinteresting questions which touch the very essence of the emergence of the roots music, but to which to ahigh degree only provisional answers are available (for the moment) due to the lack of sufficientwritten/recorded material. This lack of material is probably due to the very fact that there has existed verylittle interest for these questions in the early days of the ethno-musicological explorations.

It may well be that the old-time string band music is the earliest form of musical collaboration between African American and European American (often Scottish-Irish) musicians. Recent studies by Epstein (2003) andConway (2005) have tried to shed some light on the matter.

When British colonists settled in the upper Southernstates – North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky,and West Virginia – they brought along the violin (fiddle)and many traditional fiddle tunes. African Americansintroduced the gourd banjo, together with their (syncopated) playing techniques, tunes, songs, and avariety of tuning methods. Conway documents how

musicians from these ethnic groups met in the UplandSouth states and combined the elements of old-timestring band, fiddle and banjo, together for the first time.The music that was played was suitable for both listeningand dancing.

Epstein doubts the idea that the banjo, an Africaninstrument, was infused in the musical tradition by (thesole) way of the minstrelsy shows. She argues that blackshave played an essential role in the creation of the stringband music. In fact, she traces the evolution of all genresof African American folk music back to the use of African

percussion instruments and the “banjar” which weremeant to encourage dancing as exercise to maintain the health of slaves on board of the slave ships (andthus maintain the value of the commodity). She also puts forward a number of reports of African Americansplaying percussion instruments and violins to entertain themselves and whites.



There are indeed indications of slaves who played the banjo and used percussion instruments in the American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. Slaves are supposed to have played the fiddle as early asthe late seventeenth century

Percussion instruments and ensembles are known to have been banned later on due to fears concerningtheir potential use as signals for slave insurrections (though in some regions they survived). It can becontented however that in the 18th century black fiddlers were as prevalent on the plantations as were banjoplayers. Slave fiddlers have played music for the plantation owners and also for their fellow slaves,combining polkas, marches, jigs and reels of the European tradition, but tuned according to syncopatedrhythms and tonalities derived from Africa. John Griffith (2010) asserts that this possibility to play music andto interact with fellow slaves during community events, gave the African Americans a sense of rarelyexperienced individualism and intimacy in a social context which otherwise completely dehumanized them.

The material on when violin and banjo were played together in anensemble is open for more discussion. Though there are someindications that already in 1774 these stringed instruments arebeing reported in proximity to each other, it is not clear whether they were played together. Epstein thinks that the banjo and thefiddle were probably indeed played together already then.Conway however disagrees and suggests that the combination of fiddle and banjo dates back to a few decades later, to the 1850′s.

The first definitive registered example of an instrumental groupingof banjo combined with fiddle is the white minstrel group, theVirginia Minstrels, a group which is said to have premiered to apaying audience probably on January 31, 1843. Unlike earlier blackface acts that featured solo singers or dancers, the VirginiaMinstrels appeared as a group in blackface who performed moreelaborate shows. However, there is a point to be made that,regardless of which race first played banjo and fiddle in harmony,

African Americans influenced the sound and the repertoire of those early antebellum blackface (white) minstrel groups. Theytaught the first generation of white banjoists how to play.

Whitlock, one of the founding members of the Virginia Minstrels, claimed to have met America’s pre-eminentbanjoist and early blackface minstrel performer, Joel Sweeney, and to have taken some banjo lessons fromhim. Joel Sweeney is the earliest known person to have played the banjo on stage. According to a 1969article in “The Iron Worker”, a trade publication of the Lynchburg Foundry Co. of Lynchburg, Joel Sweeneyhad learned to play a four-string gourd banjo at young age from the black men working on his father’splantation in Virginia. He also learned to play the fiddle, sing, dance, and imitate animal sounds. Until this



time, all performances on the banjo seem to have been from black players.

The success of the blackface minstrelsy was a vehicle which popularised the Southern old-time string bandmusic. Banjo and fiddle dominated the 19th century musical entertainment scene. Starting with the VirginiaMinstrels’ first public performance minstrelsy became hugely popular all over the country for the next fifty or more years. In this way, minstrelsy and old-time string band music became closely intertwined. As Conwayasserts early minstrels and string band musicians borrowed banjo techniques, tuning methods, some songsand tunes from the same source: namely, African American banjoists. From a comparison of methods of tuning the banjo among African American, minstrel, and white Appalachian musicians, Conway concludes

that blacks and white Appalachian musicians shared several tuning methods that the minstrels did not use.Following this, she is convinced that white Appalachian musicians learned these tunings directly from African Americans and not from minstrels.

Both the minstrelsy bands and the early string bands wereinspired by tunes in the Scottish and Irish repertoires, just aswhite and black old-time string bands listened carefully to thetunes played by the minstrels. Epstein contends that separatingauthentic African American folk music from songs written for or adapted from European sources for the minstrel stage is“particularly difficult because slaves quickly took up [minstrel]songs and sang what they learned was expected of them.”When, after the Civil War, African Americans painted their faceblack to join professional singers and to perform as minstrels(the shows were however ‘owned’ by the white) they became theexpert in the slaves’ and plantation music. Some of those new

African American minstrels borrowed traditional material, butsome also added material of their own, as for instance JamesBland did : he wrote over 700 songs, including “Carry Me Backto Old Virginny”, published in 1878, which, in a slightly differentversion, was the official State Song of Virginia from 1940-1997.He was often called “The World’s Greatest Minstrel Man” andtoured the United States, as well as Europe.

Minstrelsy declined in popularity in the late 1890s, and was

gradually replaced by other forms of popular entertainment such as musical theatre or vaudeville. Minstrelsygroups could continue to perform as travelling entertainment, but for primarily black audiences. Thisevolution went together with the beginning of the recording industry during which many of the earliest African

American recording artists were building up their repertoire. In the wake of W.C. Handy’s meeting with thelegendary guitar player in the train station of Tutweiler in 1903, the 1910′s witnessed a huge popularity of vaudeville blues (performed by white) which became popular on stage also in the Northern States. Thisvaudeville blues was followed by the first wave of recorded blues by blacks after 1920 which was in the firstpart of the twenties female and vocal.

As we know, the record companies largely (though not completely) ignored the wealth of the existing African American string bands The ‘race records’ were associated first with female vocal artists and in a further stage with the male, country blues artist (playing his guitar). The musical wealth of the black string bands did

not fit in the marketing strategies of the new music business. This music was considered as outdated and therecord companies didn’t want to take any financial risk to issue this genre that was considered to beunsuitable for the market. The names of genius performers as Joe Thompson, Ted Bogan, Carl Martin and

Armstrong Howard would remain in the shadow of icons as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton andRobert Johnson. The string band genre underwent however the impact of the new technology: existing stringbands started to adapt their repertoire to enable the connection with the market. Some artists were active onboth the string band scene as the guitar blues stage (see for instance ‘Peg Leg’ Howell).

In any case, many a blues artist who made fame in the twenties or thirties had his roots in the old string bandtradition and the minstrelsy, and had played the banjo and/or fiddle in their early career (Lonnie Johnson is aclear example of this). The guitar however, sometimes combined with the mouth harmonica, had become themain instrument of the sonic landscape, pushing to the background the banjo and fiddle, which had been at

the core of the complex music evolution that predated and partially paralleled the blues.

Bands such as the Ebony Hillbillies and the Caroline Chocolate Drops fortunately help us to remind thatblues, jazz, ragtime and other genres have their roots in a rich and deep interplay of warm and vital blackand white string music which is the basis for the very particular fabric of American and modern popular music. As a band member of the Chocolate Drops has formulated it : “(This music) means taking the past



into the present into the future, (like) a bird flying forward but touching its wings to its back — in other words,taking the past into the future with it.”

If you haven’t finished your chocolate drops yet reading this article, you can have a further taste of theCarolina Chocolate Drops on this video on their website.

Sources: ________

- http://www.thegrio.com/entertainment/ebony-hillbillies-bring-down-home-sound-to-streets-stage.php

- http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/the-ebony-hillbillies-go-underground-with-their-old-timey-ams/Content?oid=2027656

- Charles Wolfe, “Rural Black String Band Music,” BlackMusic Research Journal 10, no. 1 (1990): 33.

- http://www.thefreelibrary.com/African+American+old-time+string+band+music%3A+a+selective+discography.-a0179615963

- http://www.allmusic.com/artist/joe-thompson-p131609/biography

- http://www.bluesmandolin.de/page11.html

- Dena J. Epstein : Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Music in American Life),2003

- Cecilia Conway : African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions (Publications of The American Folklore Society), 1995

- http://www.cgim.org/sweeneyclan/misc/musical.html

- http://www.pbs.org/americanrootsmusic/pbs_arm_ii_fiddle.html

- John Griffith, Sports in Shackles: The athletic and recreational habits of slaves on Southern Plantations,2010 (Voces Novae : Chapman University Historical Review, vol. 2, n° 1)

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Minstrels

- http://gotriad.news-record.com/content/2010/01/13/article/old_time_string_music_comes_alive_again

- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/02/arts/howard-armstrong-94-string-band-fiddler-and-mandolinist.html

http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/video

ebony hillbillies and chocolate drops

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