Read no. 18

Greetings!

Well, we almost didn’t squeeze in an issue this winter! I’ve got a good excuse, though. I’ve just finished writing a 100-page paper for my Master’s degree. My subject was Sally Ann Forrester, the first woman in bluegrass, the original bluegrass girl! Sally Ann played accordion with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys from 1943-1946. And, as I found out, she also had a musical career well before the Blue Grass Boys and afterward, too. If my department decides I’ve dotted all my “i’s” and crossed my “t’s” correctly, by this time next month, I should be able to breathe easily again. I’m not sure where my paper is going to be published—it’s a little long for WIB—although I suppose I could do it in fifteen or twenty installments! I’ll keep you posted.

While I was writing about Sally Ann, I started wondering how long a woman could continue to play on stage back in the ’40s if she were pregnant. I also wondered how soon a woman could return to work and how she would take care of the child. But where do you find answers to questions like those? Fortunately my research had led me, for other reasons, to Everybody's Cousin, the autobiography of Cousin Wilbur, Bill Wesbrooks, who played bass with Bill Monroe in the early ’40s. Cousin Wilbur included some fascinating revelations about how he and his wife, Blondie (nee Leatherman), coped with their first child. Blondie was a musician when she married Wilbur—she played the piano and organ and was studying to be an opera singer. After their marriage in 1947, Blondie learned to play bass, and they went on the road as the Cousin Wilbur and Blondie Brooks Show.

Cousin Wilbur said, “We stopped touring when our first baby was going to be due in about three months.” They did not go back on the road until their son was six months old, possibly because he had to be “Cesarean birthed.” (I wonder what they did for money in the meantime?) But the fascinating part is how they took care of the baby while they were on the road.

“When we first started [back], we took care of him ourselves. By then we had a custom-made bus...Little Wilbur stayed behind the stage and slept. I remember one night Blondie didn’t think he was going to go to sleep in time for her to go on stage. But about three or four minutes before time for her to go on stage, he dropped off.” [Whew!]

“He slept in a big fine guitar case—a new guitar case that had velvet padding all inside it. We’d put a blanket in there and someone would look about him every few minutes. He’d be sleeping in the guitar case right behind the curtain from us. We propped the lid of the guitar case open so he couldn’t get hurt. But during every tune he would be looked after three times—during one tune. If Blondie was singing a solo, I’d just maybe walk around and look and see if he was alright. And so would the band in between each number. So he traveled with us for quite a while like that. We stayed in hotels and he went out on the road with us every night. When he got a little older, then we got a house trailer and had a girl to come along and take care of him full-time.” [From Everybody’s Cousin by Cousin Wilbur (Bill Wesbrooks) with Barbara M. McLean and Sandra S. Grafton. Manor Books, 1979.] I still don’t see how they did it. Taking our kids on the road with us (the few times we had to) was incredibly exhausting.

Inside, Betty Fisher speaks about her life in the music business, and Claire Levine has collected some thoughtful comments about women in bluegrass from the “other” sex: the men. As always, we welcome your input. That’s why email was invented! As Betty would say, “Don’t be a stranger!”

—Murphy Henry

Sally Ann Forrester

I thought you might like to see a picture of Sally Ann. This photo, c.1948, shows Sally Ann on the left and Ludie Harris, on the right, when they were both part of Georgia Slim’s Texas Roundup in Dallas. Sally Ann played accordion and Ludie played bass and guitar. Both of them sang. Photo courtesy of Bob Forrester, Sally Ann’s son.

Betty Fisher: The Leader of the Band

By Murphy Henry

Betty Fisher is often remembered as one of the first women in bluegrass to lead her own band. Katie Laur, who started fronting her own all-male band in 1975, said, in WIB16, that anytime she got to feeling “sentimental” about “perhaps being the first woman who fronted a non-gospel bluegrass group,” someone would shoot her down by mentioning Betty Fisher. Who actually was the first, if that matters, is a conversation for another time, but Patsy Stoneman and Gloria Belle are certainly contenders. The story of Betty Fisher is unique in many aspects. Born in 1935, she started learning to play at the age of four. By the time she was ten, she and her father, Buck, were playing in public as Betty and Buck. But get this: Betty was the one playing the lead guitar while Buck provided the rhythm. One of their long-standing gigs included the

Carolina Bam Dance in Spruce Pine, N.C. Here Betty became friends with many of the musicians who would later become bluegrass “stars.” These friendships would stand her in good stead down through the years. Betty and Buck played together until Betty graduated from high school. Then, in 1955, she got married and “laid down her old guitar” willingly to become a wife and mother. The story of how she got back into the music business is fascinating. How many women can claim Bill Monroe himself as a mentor and guide?

When Betty first got back into music, she was in her mid-thirties, a married woman with three children, leading a band of teenage boys. The mind boggles. In addition to her musical talents and her ability to choose musicians who would complement her playing, Betty had her husband J.T., who served as her manager, booking agent, cheerleader, and critic. As Betty put it, “That man, he knew nothing about the music business.” Yet he had that knack for promotion. I know because I was there. I became Betty’s bass player in 1972, the only woman to ever play in her band. After not seeing Betty for years, I visited her in her home near Walhalla, S.C., on March 9,1998, to conduct this interview. Due to length (Betty is a great storyteller), I will be running the interview in two parts. The first part covers Betty’s musical career with her dad and continues through the formation of the Dixie Bluegrass Band. Part two will tell the rest of the story and will include Betty’s thoughts about running a band and being a woman in the business. In this installment, tying in nicely with our ongoing discussion about women being in the business of bluegrass, are some of Mr. Monroe’s thoughts on women in bluegrass, particularly all-female bands, and Betty’s own candid remarks about how some musicians behave and how she had to consider this in starting her own band.

BETTY AND BUCK: THE EARLY YEARS

Betty Buchanan was born in 1935 in the community of Crossnore in the mountains of western North Carolina, near Spruce Pine. She was the oldest of what eventually turned out to be four children—two brothers and a sister. Her dad, Buck, was a sawmill man and superintendent of a woodworking plant. He was also a guitar player. “He picked with a thumb pick and two finger picks. And he really didn’t pick out— what we call picking out—he was more of a rhythm player.” In addition, he served as song leader in the Missionary Baptist Church. “We all sang. Mother sang soprano, I sang alto, and Daddy sang lead.”

Buck and Betty’s mother, Pauline, who had both graduated from high school, were one of the few educated couples in their small community and one of the few couples that had an automobile. As leaders in their community, they frequently invited folks over to their house to play music. Some of Betty’s earliest memories are of listening to the music when she was too young to play. “Always on Saturday and Sunday there was a

gathering at our house. The ones that didn’t make music, they played ball. And the ladies visited. I was always in there with the music. All these guys played guitars. Being just a small kid, loving the music, they would take time with me to let me sing with them, hum, dance, whatever. It was just something I had a feeling for.” When Betty was four or five, her dad decided, since she was so small, to get her a mandolin. One of the men showed her where to put her fingers. “So that’s how I learned to keep the rhythm was with the mandolin.”

When Betty was just five or six, she learned to pick out melodies on the guitar. Her mother, who did not play, nevertheless showed Betty “how to catch a G on a guitar” with her thumb on the sixth string and her forefinger on the first. Betty would sit in the middle of the bed with her dad’s guitar and play along with the old 78 rpm records. But because her hands were too little to go around the neck of the big Gibson 3-50, she learned to “pick out the notes in the song on the first three strings. I had an ear for music enough to know when it sounded right and when it didn’t.” In this way, Betty developed her unique style of playing lead guitar. By the time she was eight, she could both play and sing.

She did not like the mandolin, though. “Every time somebody would set a guitar down, I would want to play it. So Dad finally went and bought me a small Gibson guitar. The body of it was smaller. I don’t know if the neck was smaller or not. What little bit I had learned on the guitar, I had done on that big Gibson guitar of his. Sol didn’t feel as comfortable with that little one as I did the big one. I couldn’t play it as well.” When Betty was ten, her family moved a few miles west to Cane Creek, near Bakersville, where the music continued. “Our house, thank goodness, was one of those that had a radio, so we all listened to the Grand Ole Opry.” They would have thirty or forty people in their house on Saturday night to play music and listen to the Opry. “Mom made cakes and pies and cookies and popcorn. But I was always in the gang playing music. I do not remember another girl at all.”

The first time Betty remembers going outside her home or church to play with Buck was for an election when she was about ten or twelve. The man who was running for sheriff wanted some entertainment to draw people in to listen to his speech. “Daddy had a reel-to-reel tape player and one microphone—it looked like a suitcase. And he used those two speakers and that microphone for he and I to sing and pick. But I was picking out—I was doing lead. And he was doing rhythm.” Buck sang lead, and Betty sang harmony or an occasional solo.

Betty and Buck began to be invited to play at different functions in the county, particularly political gatherings, where they were sometimes paid for their performances. At a Farmers Federation picnic in Spruce Pine they shared the bill with Panhandle Pete and Steve Ledford, both professional entertainers. Pete and Steve were also doing some shows at schoolhouses. “And they invited Dad and I to come along and be a part of their show. So that was a big step up. But we didn’t like doing a half-hour show. We would only do three or four songs. Just enough to be a little bit entertaining but not bore anybody.” The schoolhouses they performed in had “no electricity, just oil-burning lamps. So we did our thing with no mike. But the crowds were not big, we’re talking about fifty people, maybe. And in that size room, you don’t need amplification. You can be heard just fine. But then we only worked with one mike, anyhow. And there was no such thing as raising the mike up and down, you just lifted the guitar up there and did your picking.”

Betty and Buck did shows with Steve and Pete for two or three years. “We didn’t go to far-off places, it was schoolhouses. I think Virginia was the fartherest we ever traveled. Daddy had this thing that he had to be back in Saturday night because he had to be at church on Sunday morning. He was doing what he wanted to do, and I did it because I loved it, but I didn’t have ambitions of going to the Grand Ole Opry or being a recording star.”

When Betty was about twelve, O.D. “Cal” Calhoun, who had a theater in Spruce Pine, invited Betty and Buck to be a part of the original group on the Carolina Barn Dance. “It was going to be on the radio, the Mutual Network had picked it up. And every Friday night he would have someone from the Grand Ole Opry as a special guest. Then he had six or eight different local groups. Some just singles. I don’t remember a band, per se, but there was always a group of people picking. So that’s where I got to meet most all of the Grand Ole Opry guys. And it just being a small town— we’re talking about the late ’40s—the theater was full every Friday night. It was standing room only. People on the outside. It was really a big thing. And the most exciting thing to me was to go into his office, and he had these little pigeonholes for our mail, and we’d get mail from everywhere. Daddy and I, we did two songs a week. [One song on the first show, and one song on the second show.] And he let Daddy and I do the gospel song every Friday night. That drew more mail than anything else did. And being young, being a guitar player, that kind of gave me the edge. And that’s where I met Bill Monroe and Jim and Jesse.”

After the first show, the theater would show a movie, and after the movie, there would be a second show. “But we very seldom ever got to see the movie. That’s the time that you visited. There was a cafe about a block or so up the street from the theater.” One

night Buck asked Hank Snow if he would like to walk up and get a bite to eat. “Hank said he would love to. And Hank had heard Daddy and I do our song on the first part of the show.” Hank was looking for an act to go on the road with his show and wanted to know if Buck would be interested. “Daddy told him no, that he was a sawmill man and he had a family, and that we were just doing this for the fun of it. But we were quite honored to receive an invitation like that.

“We played at the Barn Dance until it closed. I don’t remember how many years it was on there, but I grew up with it. Frank Buchanan—he played with Bill Monroe—he met Bill at the Barn Dance. But he was one of the few people from the Bam Dance that actually went on [to play music professionally]. Because most of them were doing just like Daddy was doing. They were just doing it because it was local, it was fun to do, but they didn't have big, high aspirations. If they got paid, it wasn’t much.” And what did the guys think about this young female lead guitar player?

“They all gave me special attention. I did not know at the time how special it was. I just accepted it. It was just something I loved to do. I loved to watch guitar players. And I really never tried to outdo myself. I was content with my little picking out. If I had it to do again, I would learn a lot more than what I did.”

And you taught yourself all that?

“Right. Well, different people would show you different things, and so you’d try to incorporate that into what you were doing. But for what Daddy and I were doing, I think we complemented each other. It wasn’t like I stood out beyond him. We were a team. His singing was very good, very clear. And I just loved harmonizing with him. I very seldom would sing a solo. And most of the time if I did, it was something that I had written. But we didn’t do songs that you heard every day on the radio. We did not follow any particular style. It was some of the older stuff. The Delmore Brothers—I particularly liked what they did. I loved the Louvin Brothers. The Jim and Jesse harmony, I loved that.” One of their most requested songs was There's A Hole In The Bottom Of The Sea. [When Betty had Buck as a guest on her program at the Lavonia, Ga., bluegrass festival in the early ’70s, they sang Hole In The Bottom Of The Sea, which they ended at breakneck speed, to large applause.] “But Daddy, when he was listening, it was Bill Monroe, it was Charlie Monroe. And we met the Stanley Brothers the same way as we did everybody else. And Daddy and Carter just instantly became buddies. But we still did not do their things.” Betty listened to an entirely different type of music. “Now Eddie Arnold, I have been in love with that guy since the first recording. And George Morgan. But Jim Reeves will always be my number-one favorite. So our music tastes were

different, yet when we sang and played together, we kinda had our own thing. And that’s what the other people liked about us. We were different from anybody else. But I didn’t have any aspirations of wanting to be other than just picking with Daddy.” Were there ever any other women who played instruments at the Carolina Barn Dance? “There was a bass player that was with Bill Monroe. It was Bessie [Lee Mauldin]. She was the only one that I remember coming with the groups. Women just didn’t do that.” Were you ever consciously aware that you were the only female?

“Now, I wasn’t the only girl at the Barn Dance. They had two other girls, sisters, that sang. Now they did not pick. They did not have an instrument at all. I was not the only girl, but I was the only girl that was playing an instrument. And that’s what I ran into in later years. If a girl was playing, it was usually bass. Or they would just strum the guitar—it’d just be a rhythm guitar player.”

Like many women in early country music and early bluegrass, Betty did not have any female role models. “I cannot say that I was influenced by any woman at all. Bill Monroe was talking one time, somebody had introduced me as being the first lady in bluegrass, and Bill says, ‘I’m not taking anything away from you, now, but you’re not the first.’ And he brought Molly O’Day’s name up and also Wilma Lee. But then, him and his little grin, he’d say, ‘But I can say one thing, she’s one of the finest ladies.’ That always made me feel real good. I think I was one of the first women fronting a band, but we’re talking about the ’70s.”

Betty and Buck also made several guest appearances on the Midday Merry-Go-Round in Knoxville when Archie Campbell was the emcee. “And that’s where I met Carl Smith, Carl and Pearl Butler, Joe Stuart, and Red Rector. And Joe Stuart, he showed me a lot on the guitar. Of course, I was bigger then, and my hands would half-way reach around the guitar. So he helped me quite a bit, and he was one of my best critics when I actually got the Dixie Bluegrass Band together.”

Eventually, Archie Campbell invited Betty and Buck to go to Nashville with his show. But again Buck said no. Betty quickly affirms that this was okay with her. “I did not have a desire to do any more than we were doing. I was satisfied doing what he wanted to do. It was satisfying to me to be able to play to a small group of people in a little schoolhouse. We were not stars, in no way, shape, or form, but the people kinda held you above just the ordinary person walking down the street because you performed.

And it was just a thing that everybody enjoyed—the listeners enjoyed what we were doing, we enjoyed what we were doing, so it was just a good time.”

Betty says that, back then, if a national touring act were going to play in a small town, often someone would write to the group and invite them to their house to eat. Since Buck had gotten to know many of the country music acts at the Carolina Bam Dance, bands would sometimes came over for a home-cooked meal and some picking. “It was just one of those things where it was kinda like one big family.” Many of the groups that worked out of Bristol would play in Bakersville, which was fairly close. “That’s when we met Lester and Earl. And Mac Wiseman. They would come over to the courthouse, and we would meet them there.”

Betty was also writing songs: “I had a notebook full of them.” Jimmie Skinner, who also played the Carolina Bam Dance, was one of the visitors in Betty’s home. They all did some picking and singing together at the house, and Betty sang him some of her songs. “Jimmy said, ‘These have got to be published. ’ So he made a call to a friend of his in Nashville, and he came with his tape recorder, and took ten songs back with him. He took them to Acuff-Rose, and they published all ten of them. So I was real excited about that. Preston Ward recorded Women Beware. He was out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Jimmie sent me the record. And there it was, this big record, Women Beware, [by] Betty Buchanan and Jimmie Skinner. Because he made some changes in it. So that was a real big thrill, and about a year or so later, I got a check in the mail. It was less than a hundred dollars, still it was a biggie.”

Buck’s work eventually took the family to Charlotte, N.C., where Betty finished high school. Betty and her dad did some work on television and also played at the Queen City Barn Dance in downtown Charlotte. Here she met her future husband, J. T. Fisher. By then, Betty felt that she had had enough of the music.

“When I met J.T., I had finished high school and was working in an office job. Dad wanted me to keep on with the music, but we really wasn’t doing that much with it. And I was kinda tired of it. The songwriting wasn’t that important to me, nothing had really taken off. My life was just kinda going in another direction. I felt like, ‘I’ve enjoyed this, but it’s time to move on and do something else.’ ”

"I DID NOT MISS THE MUSIC AT ALL."

“When I met J.T., I got totally out of the music business. When I got married in 1955 and left home, I left my guitar. And the first year that J.T. and I were married, Cindy came along. And then the next year, Brenda came along. And then we had a space in there,

and then Tommy came along. But I was perfectly happy being a mother and housewife.

I did not miss the music at all.”

When J.T. and Betty moved to Walhalla, S.C., about 1962, they became interested in horses and started going to rodeos. One of the friends she met at a rodeo owned a western-style saloon, which featured entertainment, in Seneca, S.C.

When Betty and J.T. dropped by, J.T. wasted no time in telling their friend that Betty played guitar. “So he says, ‘She’s gotta play,’ and I said, ‘I don’t even have my guitar.’ He says, ‘That's no excuse.’ So the song that I sang that night was Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On. And I never went back there that I didn’t have to sing it. But I only sang just that one song. But we had so much fun. I came back home and told J.T., ‘The next time I go home, I’m gonna bring my guitar back.’ I went home, and that was like moving another child out of Mama’s and Daddy’s house when I took that guitar.” Betty played almost every weekend in Seneca. She also began playing her guitar in a band at church, then she became part of the lady’s trio, then the quartet. The music just gradually crept back in.

"I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT BLUEGRASS WAS."

With her three children now in school, Betty took a job to add to the family income. “I was working in the office with a girl who was telling me about the bluegrass festival that they were having at Lavonia [Ga.]. And she wanted to go. Would I go with her? I said sure. So we left out early that Saturday morning. This was about 1969. So we buy our tickets and go get us a seat in front of the stage there at Lavonia. And the Country Gentlemen were on stage, and I had never seen them before. I was absolutely in seventh heaven. I had never in my life seen anything as entertaining as what that was. The music was absolutely wonderful. So I just sat there with my mouth dropped open.” But while she was sitting there, Betty kept seeing musicians walking to the backstage area. Betty said to her friend, “I know him! I’ve seen him!” She had seen her old friends Don Reno and Bill Monroe.

So you didn't have any idea when you came to this park that these people were gonna be there?

“I didn’t know what bluegrass was. I had been out of music. When I had actually got started being interested in music again, I was into the Western thing. Then I went to the church thing. I had not thought in my mind of who was gonna be there. We did not have a program or anything. We just bought a ticket and went to the show.” When Betty had been playing with her dad, there was no such thing as “bluegrass” music. As Betty says,

“It was hillbilly music. They didn’t say country, they didn’t say bluegrass. It was just music.”

Betty watched as her friends took the stage to perform. “So Bill Monroe comes on, and Joe Stuart was playing with Bill Monroe. He was playing guitar. When they came off the stage, I told Sharon I’m going back there and speak to them. Well, I started around the end, and Joe was standing in the door, and he turned around and looked, and I said, ‘Joe Stuart,’ and he says, ‘G—d—, Betty.’ And he hugged me, liked to have squeezed the life out of me. ‘Hey, you remember Betty and Buck? This is Betty. ’ Well, Bill, he was off signing autographs. But Don Reno, he and Mac Wiseman, particularly, asked, ‘Where’s your dad?’ and ‘What have you been doing? We need you.’ I was absolutely put up on a pedestal that day. So I came back home that night and told J.T. what a wonderful time I had. And Bill [Monroe], that particular day, he told me, ‘You and your dad were just too good for you not to be doing anything at all.’ And of course it had been years since I had picked at all.”

Betty started thinking about getting back into the music. But, as she was surprised to find out, “The country and the bluegrass were separated. I started doing some asking around, trying to find out what all was going on, and it was just a terrific division then.” The month after the Lavonia festival, Bill Monroe was playing at the University of Georgia in Athens, so Betty and J.T. went over to see the show. As they sat on Bill’s bus, Bill said, “Joe hasn’t stopped talking about you and your dad.” Betty told Bill about her idea of starting a band. She had noticed that the only women she had seen on stage at Lavonia had been with the Lewis Family. Betty was savvy enough to know that if she were going to reenter the music business, she would need an act that was different. And there were other considerations.

“I told Bill, if I did something, I’d like to have an all-girl bluegrass group. And J.T. had said the same thing. I had been exposed enough to the musician’s life that I knew that that was not for me. I did not want to marry a musician. Although some of the guys were married, they didn’t always act like they were married. So, I knew that me being married and having a family, that it wasn’t going to work out to have married men in the group. Because there would just be too many problems. Not that there were problems with J.T. and I, but then there’s this other couple to think about. And everybody was not as broad-minded as what J.T. was. So I asked Bill if he would help me locate some girls. “Well, the next summer, I saw Bill at Lavonia and he says, ‘Betty, I’ve been thinking about this thing. You don’t want an all-girl bluegrass group.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And he said, ‘Because the kind of girls that you would want are the kind that would leave home, and you just don’t need that.’ And he said, ‘You don’t need somebody that has

learned to pick with somebody else. You’d have to break their habits. You need to go out here in this parking lot and listen in on some of these jam sessions and pick ’em out. Pick you out somebody that’s never picked with anybody else. Train ’em the way you want ’em then.’ So Joe [Stuart] walked with me out in the parking lot and pointed out different things for me to listen to. So that gave me an idea.

“So I had gone over to Lanierland Park [in Gainesville, Ga.], and Jerry Lee Lewis was on the show that night. And I was to do a couple of songs before Jerry Lee Lewis came on and just do it with the house band.”

How did you get that job? Something J.T. turned up?

“J.T., I reckon. [Laughs.] I honestly do not know how all these things came about. But Shorty, the guy who ran the park, says, ‘Betty, what you gonna do tonight? We need something to rev ’em up. ’ And Rocky Top was pretty hot then, you know. And I said, ‘Well, if I had a banjo player, I’d do Rocky Top. And Charlie Jackson was standing in the dressing room, and he said, ‘My son plays banjo and he does a good job on it, too.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ And so he goes to get Tommy, and Shorty tells me, ‘That man’s up here every week trying to get that boy on stage. You don't have to do that. ’ And I said, ‘Well, if he can pick Rocky Top, it would be to my advantage because the song needs a banjo in it.’

“So Tommy came in, and he started picking Rocky Top. Well, I was absolutely blown away with his banjo playing. So we went on stage, we did Rocky Top, and the roof just lifted. Well, while Tommy and I were on stage, Charlie and J.T. were off stage talking about us getting together.” So Betty, now in her mid-thirties and living near Athens, Ga., got together with Charles and Walter Absher, who were students at the university, and high-schoolers Tommy Jackson and David Blackmon, from Athens, on fiddle. Betty was thrilled with their sound. They decided to enter a band contest that Roy Martin was sponsoring in Charlotte, N.C. Betty and J.T. told the boys they would cover all expenses, including meals and hotel rooms in Charlotte. “So I get everybody’s size and go to town and buy them all a pair of pants and a shirt to match.”

But when they got to Charlotte, and J.T. went to sign the band up for the contest, they didn’t have a name. Bill Price, an old friend that they ran into up there, said to J.T., “This is your wife that you’re promoting. Her band, right? Her name needs to be out front, then have another name for the band.” Since one of the songs they were performing was Dear Old Dixie, the band became Betty Fisher and the Dixie Bluegrass Boys, a name that also harked back to Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. They won the contest. Roy Martin then invited them to enter the band contest at Myrtle Beach, which

they also won. So Roy gave them a spot on the show. Roy Martin liked Betty’s band a lot, and in those early years often booked them on his numerous festivals in the Southeast, paying them expense money. It was great exposure for the band, but, as Betty remembers, “We went through quite a bit of money there for a couple of years.” But the Abshers, who had their own band, elected not to continue on with Betty, as did David Blackmon who also played in a family band. So Betty advertised for bluegrass musicians in the newspaper. I was one of two people who answered the ad. (I had also answered her earlier ad for an all girl band. But that was before Bill Monroe put the quietus on that!) Since Betty already played guitar, I became the bass player. I had never played bass before, but I learned. Tommy Jackson remained on banjo, with Betty playing lead and rhythm guitar. Also joining the band were Danny Smith from Marietta on mandolin and Richard Hollis, an excellent Josh Graves-style Dobro player from Chester, S.C. At age twenty, I was the oldest of the side musicians.

In the next issue: the rest of the story.

Women in Bluegrass: The Men Respond

By Claire Levine

A few months ago, we talked to a number of women who shared their views and experiences about the opportunities for women in bluegrass and the barriers to their becoming side musicians. As we expected, we heard a range of opinions from “There are no doors closed to women bluegrass musicians” to “I was told I couldn’t get in the band because I’m a woman.” So it’s not surprising that we encountered an equally broad range of perspectives when we asked some men many of these same questions. The men we talked to were delightfully candid, often deliberately provocative, and generally sympathetic to the cause. [We are very aware of the limitations of our survey—our sample is small and women-friendly. But would a man who had

reservations about women playing bluegrass speak freely to a publication called Women in Bluegrass? Would we want to print what he said?] We asked a series of questions that included: “Do you think there are barriers to women becoming bluegrass side musicians?” “Does it bother you to hear a woman in a traditional bluegrass vocal trio?” “Do you know of cases when competent women weren’t able to get jobs with professional bands?” and “Does it make any sense to explore this issue?” (One man’s response was, “What earthly good is all of this talk going to do?”) The answers were so thoughtful and so interesting, we’ve decided to let the men speak for themselves. So take a look at what some of today’s male musicians think about the potential for women

to become side musicians in bluegrass bands. (We’ll also throw in some loosely related statements that aren’t directly on topic but are worth repeating for sheer cantankerous fun).

Eldred Hill is lead singer and mandolin player with West Virginia’s Patent Pending. This band, whose most recent CD, A Child of God, is on the Copper Creek label, has almost always had a female bass player. We asked Eldred why he thought that while there are an increasing number of women bandleaders— often both singers and excellent instrumentalists—there aren’t many women playing in other peoples’ bands. Here’s what he said:

“I do not believe that this phenomenon occurs only in bluegrass music. One would be hard-pressed to find many women sidepersons in rock and roll, country, or jazz bands. The reason for this, in my view, has as much to do with society and the evolving roles of men and women as it does with any bias against women in bluegrass. George Gilder wrote some essays in the 1980s about the ‘domestication’ of men by women through the ages. He gives the example of men’s roles in primitive tribes, where they would be the hunters and would go off in groups for periods of days or weeks to hunt, leaving the domestic responsibilities to the women. He makes the point that traveling musical bands (of any genre) are one of the few surviving examples of this way of life. This suggests that making the commitment to this type of life as a sideperson, or member of the hunt, may have something to do with a primal male urge. There are also theories I’ve heard that suggest that men are more affected by the beat of music on first listening, while women seem to hear the lyrics and understand the ‘meaning’ of a song on first listening. This may explain why we find more women as singers/stars/songwriters rather than sidepersons.”

When asked if he knew of instances of women being kept out of bands because of gender, Eldred said, “While I don’t doubt this may have happened, I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of this. I believe that all-female bands are just as guilty of a reverse discrimination, and I don’t believe in putting together a band based on gender.” Dalton Brill, banjo player and owner of the barber shop and music store where Murphy teaches, has performed bluegrass and country music for many years. Dalton’s bands have included women as bass players and singers. His latest CD features Red, Murphy, Casey and Chris Henry, as well as David McLaughlin, Marshall Wilborn, and Ron Stewart. Dalton shared views based on his history of friendships, performances, and informal jamming in the heart of the bluegrass belt. He talked to us of practical issues and the realities of male-female relationships.

“It’s awfully hard for a male band to hire a woman, no matter how good she is. It’s the musicians’ wives and girlfriends. They get jealous. If a woman is traveling with four or five men, the wives are going to be suspicious. In other businesses, everybody goes home at the end of the day. But in music, it creates a problem, even if there’s nothing in the world going on. The questions would be the same if a man was touring with a female band.”

Dalton said there may be other issues aside from jealousy. “If they want to be gentlemen around their women band members, they can’t do and say what they want. That sort of puts a damper on the whole thing. They’d probably go for a male band member who isn’t as good. If she were married and had kids, what husband is going to put up with his wife going on the road and bringing back so little money? If the money were okay, maybe the husbands would feel differently.”

We asked Dalton if he thought the problem was that there simply weren’t enough good women pickers. “I don’t agree with that. Way back in the ’60s, our band had a bass player who could play as well as anybody. But there’s no change in the attitude of wives. That’s the hardest thing for musicians to overcome.” Having heard that some promoters are reluctant to book women at festivals, we asked Dalton for his comments. “For a crowd pleaser, it doesn’t have to be all men. Getting more women to play at festivals would improve crowds tremendously. Festival promoters are missing the boat by not trying to get more women playing. If you had more women on stage, more women might want to attend with their husbands, and more younger guys would want to go. I think they’d draw a bigger crowd and a better clientele. Most men musicians are tickled to see a woman who is a good fiddle player or a good banjo player. Why would they want to take that away from her?” In summary, Dalton said, “I don’t understand why bluegrass has to be for men. Women were singing bluegrass years ago along with men.” David McLaughlin is one-half of Crowe and McLaughlin and is also the mandolin player for the Johnson Mountain Boys. David sees no reason why women should be excluded from any aspect of bluegrass. On the other hand, he thinks it reasonable that a band might create a one-gender image— much as the Johnson Mountain Boys did. “I think gender has nothing to do with whether harmonies or bands work or not. But I also believe that if women want to get together and have a no-male clause in their by-laws, they should have the right to do that. Same thing with men. And if some guys want to get together and call themselves the Red-Haired Boys, and they have a rule that you have to be a boy with red hair to be in the band, that should be okay, too. I would guess that some all-male bands wouldn’t have a woman in the band because they’re either thinking that a woman couldn’t be as good, or they’re maybe afraid of the difficulties that traveling on the road together might present.”

We asked David if he thought the reason for the small number of women in current bands was that there weren’t enough women who had attained a professional level of playing. “No. You could say the same thing about men. How do you explain all these men who can’t play or sing? They’re in bands. If anybody says, ‘There aren’t enough women who are good enough,’ I won’t buy that as a valid reason for excluding them from bands, because, if you go to any festival, you’ll hear a bunch of really bad men on the stage. Why are they in bands?”

David speculated about other reasons some bands may exclude women and talked about the way the Johnson Mountain Boys operated. “Some men in bluegrass are definitely sexist. And maybe some of those guys are afraid of being outdone by a woman. But there are other reasons to be a one-gender band. The choice to remain all male definitely applied to the Johnson Mountain Boys. We all wanted to have similar physical characteristics. Haircuts were an issue. Matching outfits were an issue. The all-male appearance was an issue. The Johnson Mountain Boys were trying to create that image—just like the Spice Girls all have to be hot-looking babes in tight clothes. Should a man have a right to be a Spice Girl? Murphy’s band, the Valley Dolls, was all female, too. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s also nothing wrong with the Mamas and the Papas. It’s whatever the group wants.”

Russell Johnson, lead singer and organizer of New Vintage, hired both Julie Elkins and Gina Britt as banjo players and singers at different times during the band’s history. We asked him about his experiences as a bandleader and if he saw the potential for more women to perform as side musicians.

“More men play music at this time, but this is changing, at least here in the Triangle area of North Carolina. I have gone to two jam sessions recently and noted the breakdown of the pickers. It’s about 85 percent male around here, but with women becoming more involved all the time.” Russell responded to an objection sometimes stated by musicians or fans that it’s not appropriate to have women singing high tenor or baritone. “I personally liked our harmonies with a female tenor. I could pitch songs to get the most out of my voice, and then the female tenor could get the part over me. Good harmony is good harmony, no matter how it’s stacked.” Is jealousy a problem? “As far as shenanigans, we’re probably the squarest band in bluegrass. We’ve never had a problem with jealous wives, and motel rooms have not been an issue.”

What’s the future for women breaking into bluegrass, as side musicians or bandleaders? Will we see a dwindling of those fans who expect the music to look the way it did when Bill, Lester, and Earl were playing together? “I think there are great

female musicians out there. We have been fortunate to have two of the best banjo players and singers in the country, and it turns out they were females. New Vintage would hire a space alien if it could cut its part on the instrument and get the vocals right. I have never had anyone tell me they didn’t book us because we had a female, but I have had people say they enjoyed our band because we had a great female vocalist. I don’t think it offends the traditional audience, and I know for a fact that it helped us to have a female in exposing new people to the music in North Carolina. It adds so much more texture, it helps to break up a show. It gives the audience something else to listen to, a change, so that they don’t bog down on one vocalist. For me, it is worthwhile to talk about. From day one, we had a female in the band, and we owe a lot of our success to that. Women can pick. You may see more all-girl bands until integration comes easier for some of the male-oriented bands.”

Red Henry, mandolin player with Red and Murphy, clearly has spent a long time thinking about this subject. The following are his remarks on a range of questions—from the reasons why there are so few women in bluegrass to suggestions for women who are serious about becoming professional instrumentalists.

“The basic factor (and most obvious and most important) is that there simply are not nearly as many female instrumentalists as there are males. If 95 percent or more of the bluegrass musicians are males, there will be a much smaller pool of women to draw from. Another factor is logistical and economic. Band organization becomes more complicated and band expenses go up when you have a mixed group, especially if there is only one woman in the band and she is unattached to any of the male members. Most bands on the road are in a tight financial situation (no matter how glamorous their lives seem on stage), and even a modest permanent increase in expenses can run them out of business. The ‘extra motel room’ objection may seem petty, but it is a big financial factor; and in some bands, the resentment about having to provide a special room for one band member may be even larger than the real monetary factor.

“Spouse jealousy works against both men and women on the road. I have seen cases, fortunately not in our band, in which suspicious attitudes held by victimized wives (and husbands) left at home were quite justified by their band member spouses’ behavior. Some bands just wouldn’t consider hiring a woman (in fact, there are plenty of Neanderthal types who wouldn’t conceive of the idea of considering it!). This barrier may actually be lower at the national level than in the local bluegrass scenes. Often among bluegrass musicians, this resistance is a cultural factor resulting from the intensely provincial character of the musicians involved. But in one case I know of, it was a conscious band-image decision taken by a younger and more sophisticated

band. For nearly my entire life as a part-time and full-time bluegrass musician, I have been in a band with female pickers, and I’ve never hesitated to associate myself with them. During the 1970s and ’80s, our predominantly-female Red and Murphy & Co. band did face some disregard, and even resistance, from promoters and audiences in the Florida-Georgia bluegrass scene. But we found more consistent acceptance from the audiences in the Northeast.

“I would not give anyone any advice (being too old for that), but I would say to anybody that first of all, you really have to be able to play. If you are an excellent picker, then you have a chance of finding a job. And at least, if you are a real good picker, you will be respected and treated better by the Neanderthal bluegrass types you run into sometimes. Another thing you have to do is to get out and play—the job won’t come to you. This may involve playing in a regional band (or forming your own) for a while, so that you can get out and make music where the professional bands can hear you. You can consider starting your own band—all-woman or not—so that you will be the boss and make your own opportunities, as much as possible. This does not require a prior career as a sideperson. It does require a lot of determination, responsibility, and work. Playing music for a living is not as simple and easy as it looks.

“The chicken-and-egg business, by which many girls will be attracted to bluegrass and want to learn to play only if they see women participating, is not limited to sidemen roles. I think that since the female bandleaders are much more visible than the sidemen, they will attract more girls’ initial attention to the music than even a larger number of female supporting musicians would.

“Children-vs.-bluegrass. This dilemma has kept some exceptional female pickers from pursuing on-the-road careers (either permanently or off-and-on), and has forced several who stayed on the road to make hard decisions, either in not having children or in sending them to be raised by relatives for extended periods. Very few can arrange their lives as Murphy and I did, so that we could play music together and raise the children, too. As society exists today, there is no easy solution. For any picker’s career, in the long run, this would be the hardest, and most important, problem to face. “At all times in your career, from start to finish, maintain your musical and professional and business standards so that fellow musicians, promoters, and everyone else will know that they can depend on you to be there and do your job. There are plenty of brilliant (and unemployed) male pickers around who have neglected this aspect of the music.”

Walt Saunders, Bluegrass Unlimited columnist and bluegrass stalwart, knows bluegrass music from the inside out. He believes that things will change in time when men and women are ready for that change. He’s also a man of strong tastes who is committed to the traditional sounds and styles of bluegrass. For him, women in bluegrass are great—-as long as they don’t change or dilute the essence of the music that means so much to him. Walt sees that the issue may really be sex, not gender:

“Everything is different now from what it was years ago, not only with the public, but with the bands, especially younger bands. I don’t think there is the stigma attached to women touring with men that there was years ago. Human nature hasn’t changed, however, and a woman touring with a band can still cause trouble—with the wives of married band members, for instance. A woman can also stir up jealousy among the band members. This can bust a band up as quick as anything. I am not making a judgement—I’m just stating the facts as I have witnessed them. I have no reason to believe this will change. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other, but, in my opinion, that would be the main reason that some of the older bands might hesitate to hire a woman.”

Walt has his doubts about the value of pursuing this issue, and wonders what the real agenda is behind this discussion. He, like David, emphasizes the right of every bandleader to choose personnel based on any criteria. “Bandleaders should be free to choose whomever they please from the pool of pickers looking to be hired. If they decide they don’t want a woman in their band, for whatever reason, that’s tough, but that’s show biz.”

Walt thinks that some women’s voices fit beautifully with the traditional bluegrass sound. “Vallie Cain sang tenor to her husband Benny in their band for more than thirty years, and they were traditional, in the classic bluegrass sense. Her tenor fit perfectly with Benny’s lead, and I might add, her guitar playing was superb. I’ve heard other women sing harmony, and if they know how to sing, their harmony enhances the vocals. If they are one of those ‘wiggly-voiced’ female singers, it is not going to fit the classic bluegrass sound, in my opinion.”

Is the problem that there just aren’t enough good female pickers? “I have jammed with dozens of women pickers who I would not hesitate to play in a band with.” Walt is a traditionalist, so his criteria about musical quality are based on how the musicians fit with the traditional sounds he expects from professional performers. In the past, many women have measured up to his standards. “In spite of the fact that women did not have it easy being accepted in country music, Patsy Montana, Sara and Maybelle Carter, the original Coon Creek Girls, Molly O’Day, Wilma Lee Cooper, and Rose

Maddox, among others, all had varying degrees of success. Why? One reason is because they sang like men! They really reared back and let it fly, from their toes on up. In fact, if you listen to Sara Carter and Lily May Ledford, of the Coon Creek Girls, they actually sounded like men—lots of people mistake their singing for a man’s voice. Women who warble (tremolo or vibrato) or have sweet, lovely, or soft voices are never gonna make it in my world of bluegrass. I’m not going to accept them, no matter if they are the greatest instrumentalists of all time.”

[In spite of all his bluster, Walt also actually likes a number of the current female singers: Delia Belle, Gloria Belle, the often-overlooked Emma Smith, Hazel Dickens, Ginny Hawker, Kay Justice, Kate Brislin, Eloise Schwarz, and Alice Gerrard.]

Is there hope for women in bluegrass? “I think a lot of the older bands or bandleaders would never hire a woman. I can see that changing now. Some of the younger bands are hiring women, and I expect more will in the future. I think that it is a natural progression, and I think it should be left alone to progress naturally. You asked if I thought that most men would be fine hiring a woman if she could cut it musically. Right now, I don’t see that happening, but I believe it’s coming.”

In summary: “Bluegrass is macho music. It was conceived by men, played (in the beginning) exclusively by men, and to a large degree directed at a male audience (although there were always some women fans). Some may not like to hear this, but I was there, and I still remember how it was. In my personal world of bluegrass, if women want to be accepted, first they have to be excellent pickers. In this area, there are many women who have long since arrived. Then, they are gonna have to sing like men.” Bill Evans, former member of Dry Branch Fire Squad, IBMA board member, and banjo instructor, is an ethnomusicologist, so his job is to think about music and culture. He is skeptical of excuses about why there aren’t more women performing. He would like to see the industry take a frank look at some of the barriers—no matter how “legitimate” they are—and consider ways they can be resolved. “Sometimes I think this rationale that ‘if you’re good enough then everything will work out fine’ doesn’t cut it. The analogy that keeps getting presented to me is if you view the bluegrass world as a house, what typically gets said is, ‘Well, if you’re good enough, then we’ll let you in the house.’ In my idea, let’s change the way that the house looks. Let’s put a porch on the house, let’s put some more windows in it. Let’s put a few more back doors in. Let’s paint the house a different color. That sort of thing. I personally get really troubled by the statements like, ‘If women just become good enough as side musicians then they’ll somehow make their way into the professional level.’ I think that’s a smoke screen that we can easily hide

behind. A better way to go about it would be to say, ‘Yes, there are these limitations. Let’s change some of our ideas so that more women can enter as side musicians.’ “I tend to think that things are moving in a good direction when I walk around the halls at the IBMA Trade Show in Louisville, for instance, and see the younger musicians. There seem to be a lot of women participating. I hear people say that there are a lot of little Alison Krausses coming up. And that’s really a good thing. There have been thousands of Earl Scruggses. If youngsters have a role model in Alison, that’s fine, that’s still offering a way to get in. And now there are increasingly younger women in regional bands who obviously at some point had Alison as a role model. But they eventually will grow into their own, just as anyone who gets into the music as an instrumentalist may get attracted by the sound of Earl Scruggs or Ralph Stanley or J.D. Crowe. But if you continue to dig deep into the history of the music and you learn more about it, then usually your knowledge and your taste may expand. And one would hope that would happen with any youngster, whether their role model is someone like Chris Thile or Alison Krauss.

“When we look back on it, women bandleaders will be the real thing that will cause the change that will allow more women side musicians to have a presence. But, in talking to Missy Raines about these issues, for instance, she told me she couldn’t be in be some bands because she was a woman and because of spousal issues. Of course, housing is always an issue, and there are other economic concerns.

“But don’t you think that if our mindsets were different and our attitudes were different we would find ways around all those things? This is kind of a smoke screen, too. Ultimately, if people were open to having women in bands as side musicians, they would find ways to deal with all these other issues. Certainly Larry Stephenson has, much to his credit. Basically, as you get higher and higher up the ladder in terms of income, all of these issues that have already been discussed get more and more difficult, and it gets harder and harder for women to be at those levels. That’s why having Kristin Scott as a part of Larry’s band is a really meaningful thing. She’s a hard-driving banjo player, and her role is opening the way for women, and for men, to see that women can fit into a band, in addition to being bandleaders.

“As leaders, I would say that we need to be more proactive than we have been, and I personally applaud what Murphy says. And I do think, with Murphy having foregrounded these issues and having been so bold in terms of talking with IBMA leadership about this, that we’re already seeing some results, at least in terms of the awards show. Sometimes for every step forward we take 1.95 steps backward. So the progress is really slow.

“In the last ten years, the fact that we’ve only had really one or two women side musicians become prominent says that there’s more to it than, ‘If you’re good enough then we’ll let you in.’”

Many thanks to Eldred Hill, Dalton Brill, David McLaughlin, Russell Johnson, Red Henry, Walt Saunders, and Bill Evans for going on record with their thoughts concerning women in bluegrass. If any of you—men or women—have anything to add to this conversation, please write to us! Email welcome: [email protected].

WIB—LITE

You folks didn’t write any letters for me to publish, so I will regale you with something else I discovered while doing research for my paper on Sally Ann Forrester. The most excellent book Women in Music, edited by Carol Neuls-Bates, includes a hilarious excerpt from the great English composer, Ethel Smyth (1858-1944). On her 75th birthday, she wrote an essay analyzing the “difficulties confronting the female composer of her time.” She begins her serious essay with a bit of humor, and talks about a “hitherto unedited legend”:

“The legend relates that one afternoon while Adam was asleep, Eve, anticipating the Great God Pan, bored some holes in a hollow reed and began to do what is called ‘pick out a tune.’ Thereupon Adam awoke; ‘ Stop that horrible noise,' he roared, adding, after a pause, ‘besides which, if anyone’s going to make it, it’s not you but me.’ “

Our regular columnists Nancy Pate and Casey Henry were pretty snowed under (pun intended) this quarter. They should be back with us in the spring issue. But it just didn’t feel right to go to press without the rat, so here she is!