Read no. 30

Greetings!

It’s like totally hard to believe (to use today’s vernacular) that this is the thirtieth issue of Women in Bluegrass—we are in the middle of our eighth year of publication! September 1994 seems like ages and ages ago. I hope you’ve enjoyed the issues you’ve received. I’ve sure enjoyed putting them together. Keep spreading the word!

What It Was Like 30 Years Ago

You know, sometimes I get to wondering if my memories of being one of the few women in bluegrass in the early ’70s are correct. Then I get my hands on something like a video copy of Bluegrass: Country Soul, the documentary made of Carlton Haney’s Seventh Annual Labor Day Weekend Festival, held in Camp Springs, N. C., Sept. 3-5, 1971. Now, 1971 was a couple of years before I got into bluegrass myself. But this show looked and felt a lot like the world of bluegrass I knew back then: men, men, and more men! According to the lineup in Muleskinner News (Vol. II, No. 4), on Friday there were no women on stage at any time. On Saturday, the Lewis Family and Gloria Belle (playing electric bass with Jimmy Martin) provided a small female presence. Sunday’s lineup included these two bands again, plus Joann and Larry, a group I’m not familiar with. The only woman on stage in the video was Gloria Belle. In the two enormous jam sessions that Carlton Haney put together on stage—one with all the fiddle players, one with all the banjo players—there was nary a woman to be seen. In the parking lot jams that were filmed I saw one woman, playing bass.

Looking back, it was hard to be an up-and-coming female banjo player in this environment, although, at the time, I was not always conscious of how difficult it was. I didn’t know it could have been any other way. And apparently, to folks like Carlton, women weren’t even on the horizon. When he was talking to the camera about the New Deal String Band (“a group of young boys”) and the Bluegrass Alliance breaking from tradition by taking rock songs and converting them to bluegrass, he said, “It’s a new thing that’s happening across the country. This has caused a lot of the younger boys to get into the music.” Little did he know that the younger women, too, were beginning to trickle into the music.

Rubye Davis Discography

As you will find out inside, Rubye Davis was the lead singer for Hubert Davis and the Season Travelers, a hardcore, hard-working, traditional bluegrass band who formed in the mid-’60s. This was a time when the few women who were playing bluegrass were primarily singing harmony or being featured on the occasional solo number. The Travelers recorded five albums between 1971 and 1980:

Down Home Bluegrass, Stoneway STY-115,1971, BU 3-72

It’s Bluegrass Time Again, STY-161, 1976, BU 1-77

Harvest, RHD 001, 1977, BU 5-78

Mixin’It Up, RHD 002, 1979, BU 1-81

Live At The Wind In The Willows, RHD 003,1980, BU 3-81

(The dates at the end of the lines indicate when the album was reviewed by Bluegrass Unlimited.)

Many of the songs on the two albums I have (Bluegrass Time Again and Harvest) are bluegrass standards that have been kicked up to women’s keys. Head Over Heels, Roll On Buddy, and Will The Circle Be Unbroken are all sung by Rubye in C; Why Did You Wander is in B. Other numbers, not so well known, are also in C and even D. Hubert, on banjo, almost always played out of G position, capoing all the way up to the seventh fret to play in D. Rubye's daughter Shelby Jean sang tenor above the lead and Hubert (or Gene Bush) sang baritone below, so the “traditional” sound was maintained, everything was just pitched high.

Reviews of the albums in Bluegrass Unlimited are mixed. The review of Down Home Bluegrass is inadvertently hilarious. The reviewer says, “There is respectable blend of the male and female parts which always lends an added demention to a bluegrass band.” I can only assume he meant dimension! The unconscious is amazing! In their second review, It’s Bluegrass Time Again, the reviewer calls Rubye and Shelby Jean “the best women singers of straight bluegrass. They aren’t folky, high lonesome, or old-time; instead they have a solid country-bluegrass style which is completely infectious.” But the reviewer clearly didn’t understand about their third album, Harvest. He objected to their recording Rocky Top, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and Orange Blossom Special. He said “the album merely chums out material done before.” What he didn’t realize is that the Travelers were selling boatloads of these albums to the college students who came to hear them four nights a week at the Bluegrass Inn in Nashville. Knowing this album was recorded the old-fashioned way—thirteen songs in one day, most of them first takes—makes me drop my jaw in awe at the tightness and energy of the band. Even if the songs are warhorses, the closeness the group achieved in the

studio, which came from working four nights a week for years, is remarkable. Today’s CDs sure don’t have that same feel. (Ooh, I sound old!)

In Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music, Bufwack and Oermann say, “Bluegrass music’s earliest women were relatives of its male stars...This heritage continued into the fifties and sixties with such talented wives as...Hubert Davis’s Ruby[e] working in their husbands shadows.” (Don’t you hate that phrase “Hubert Davis’s Ruby[e]?”) I hope the interview inside helps bring Rubye Davis out of the shadows. —Murphy Henry

RUBYE DAVIS: I DO HAVE A NAME AND I WAS PART OF THAT

BAND, TOO

By Murphy Henry

For most of her career it seems, Rubye Davis, the guitar player and lead singer for Hubert Davis and the Season Travelers, was known as Hubert Davis’s wife. Reflecting back on her musical life recently for Women in Bluegrass, Rubye, 65, can admit now that that hurt. A lot. After all, she says, “I was part of the band, too.” As was Shelby Jean, their daughter, who played bass and sang high harmony. The Season Travelers were a permanent fixture in Nashville from 1973 until 1993, holding forth four nights a week, Wednesday through Saturday, at the Bluegrass Inn or Wind in the Willows. They also took over the Martha White morning radio show on WSM when Lester Flatt died in 1979. For a number of years Rubye not only managed the Bluegrass Inn she also played in the band. Yet a Bluegrass Unlimited article about the closing of Nashville’s “original and oldest” bluegrass room (Sept. 1993) is titled “Hubert Davis and the Bluegrass Inn.” Even though, from the photo in the article, you can see clearly that the name of the club is the inclusive Davis’ Bluegrass Inn. No wonder Rubye said, “It’s like I was nobody.”

When Rubye Hill married banjo player Hubert Davis in 1955, she knew she was marrying a man who would be making his living playing music. But as she said, “I never dreamed of music being my career.” Hubert had been playing banjo pretty much all his life, and had played in a number of groups with his brother Pee Wee on fiddle. He also had recorded four songs with Bill Monroe in December 1954— Cheyenne, Roanoke, Wheel Hoss, and You’ll Find Her Name Written There—although he never went on the road as a Blue Grass boy. Rubye and Hubert’s only child, Shelby Jean, was born in 1956.

Rubye became a member of the Season Travelers by default. Their guitar player had quit and they needed another one. So, in 1965, Rubye took up the guitar, playing with a thumbpick and one fingerpick. She never looked back. Shelby Jean joined the band three years later at the age of thirteen. With Hubert and his powerful Scruggs-style picking at the helm, the Season Travelers played and recorded hardcore bluegrass. With a woman singing the lead. In keys that were comfortable for her. And usually with her daughter singing tenor. And Rubye, Hubert, and Shelby were doing this full-time. No day jobs.

After Hubert died of congestive heart failure (May 4, 1992) Rubye tried to keep the band together. But it was just too much. Shelby kept the Season Travelers going for two or three years, but then she, too, gave up music.

Lynn Hedgecoth, a fine singer and guitar player in her own right, and my aunt-in-law (if there is such a thing) was kind enough to set up this interview with Rubye. Lynn and her husband John moved to Nashville in 1974, and Lynn became a great admirer of Rubye’s playing and singing. Lynn and I joined Rubye and Johnny Rowe, her friend and partner in her housecleaning business, for lunch in Nashville on April 10 of this year. Rubye was then undergoing chemo for lung cancer and could barely talk. Her voice was low and raspy. Nevertheless, we had a delightful time and she gave us a wonderful, long interview. As we go to press, Rubye is not doing well. She is in the care of hospice and her daughter Shelby has come up from Florida to be with her. Please send some good thoughts for both of them.

Did you always play and sing?

No, I didn’t start till ’65. Because their guitar player met this girl and fell in love and stayed in Florida. And they asked me if I’d help them out till they found somebody and I told ’em yeah and they never did find anybody.

So you just learned to play the guitar?

No, Hubert taught me. He put a finger and a thumbpick on me and he said, “I don’t care if that finger sticks right straight out, don’t take it off.” And it did, it stuck right straight out. Then I finally got to learn how to use the finger and the thumb on my guitar. But it took a long time for me to get the courage up to know that I might could pass on guitar. I stood on stage in a church [at her first gig] and Walter Bailes, he stood on stage with me ’cause I was so nervous I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to stand there or not, and he stood there and give me backup because I was not that good a guitar player. I used to go on stage and I’d get up and I would sing Loretta Lynn songs or country songs.

Because then they had the guitar player. Because I never did consider myself a guitar player. I was just doing the best I could. They tried out guitar players and different lead singers, but nobody ever worked out. In a way I was glad. It got tiresome. But I was glad.

Who else was in the band at the time?

When we first started? That was Hubert and his brother, Pee Wee, and Avery Hester. He was playing guitar, too. There was two of us guitar players. Mike Deskin was playing Dobro. And bass, Shelby was thirteen when she started playing.

Lynn: She played a bass that nobody else could play.

Because the strings were so high. Same way with my guitar, because you know my guitar was set up like Hubert sets up his banjo. He set up the bass and set up my guitar. He set up everything. And the strings, the action, was higher on my guitar but that’s why that guitar had the sound that it had. And it’s the same way with Shelby’s bass. So when you started playing guitar, were you the lead singer? The tenor singer? Well at the time, I was just singing a little bit every now and then. And then after Avery left the band then I started doing most of the lead singing. And when Shelby joined the band at thirteen her voice was still changing. We were in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, [for Shelby’s first gig on bass] and she and Stevie Sutton would swap. Stevie was a banjo picker. Shelby would play bass for a while till her fingers would start bleeding and then Stevie would take over and play for a while. They would swap back and forth like that. But, yeah, I was the lead singer and then she started in with the tenor and it stayed like that even with all the other players that came in. I still did all the lead. Hubert sang baritone.

So did that mean you were singing songs in keys that were unusual for men to sing in? Well, yeah. Richard Hoffman played the fiddle with us and he used to get mad because he said, “All you women want to do is sing in B-flat.” And it’s hard for a fiddle player to play in

B-flat. So he’d want us to change our songs to fit his fiddling. We wouldn’t do that. We couldn’t do that and we wouldn’t do that. But ours was mostly done with females that were singing and playing in C and B-flat and B. In fact my guitar, you can tell where that capo has been in those chords [i.e. keys] more than anything. Shelby was singing tenor, or I would sing tenor and she would sing high baritone.

Were y’all doing this and working day jobs?

No, we was doing this full-time, no day jobs. We moved to Nashville July 4, 1972. I went to work at Geneseo and worked at Geneseo for a while and then we went to work down at the Bluegrass Inn because Hubert had met Earl Snead before and Earl owned it at the time. So we went down there and we started playing four nights a week and we was having a lot of problems because Shelby was still in school. So we’d have to go play and rush home because she’d have to get up early the next morning and go to school. But we did it four nights a week. We sure did. And we stayed there for a long time. And then I guess in the latter part of the ’70s we went over and opened the Wind in the Willows. [They worked there from May 1978 until May 1982.] And that’s when Shelby quit. [For a while.]

Did she just get tired?

Well, she thought she was in love. So she left. She moved to Georgia. Gene Bush was with us then. Gene had been with us for a while, just about as soon as we went to Nashville. Playing the Dobro. He played with us for seven years. And there’s been a lot of guys that’s famous now that’s been with us. Jimmy Stewart, he’s with Brooks and Dunn now. Ward Stout is with Aaron Tippin now, I think. Ward played with us. Jimmy Buchanan is with George Jones. He was with us for years. And Shawn Camp. Shawn was with us for a long time. So when Jimmy [Stewart] started with us, he was on Dobro. And I made the remark to him one day I wanted him on fiddle, we needed him on fiddle. And he didn’t want to play the fiddle, he wanted to stay on the Dobro, but I didn’t need a Dobro player. And I saw him here a while back and I said, “Now Jimmy aren’t you glad I made you start playing fiddle?” “Yes, I am. I thank you everyday for making me go to the fiddle.”

Did you do the emceeing?

No, Hubert did the emceeing. He didn’t start with it, it was always somebody else that would do the emcee work because he couldn’t. And we used to kid him all the time about he wouldn’t talk. And it’s just like with me, I can stand up in front of a microphone all night long and sing but don’t put me up there to talk. Because I couldn't talk. But anyway, when it came down to it, he had to do the emcee work. And it turned out wonderful. We used to tell everybody you used to couldn’t get him to talk, now you can’t hush him up. But he started doing the emcee work and the rest of its history when it comes to emcee work because he was just so good at it.

Before you lived in Nashville, where were you living?

We were living in a little place called Brookhaven, Mississippi.

Is that where you’re from?

No, Hubert’s from Shelby, North Carolina, and I’m from Dawson, Georgia, a small town. When you say Dawson, lots of people thinks of Dalton. It’s not Dalton, it’s Dawson. It’s close to Albany, Georgia. It’s south.

How did you and Hubert meet?

Well, they was in Albany, him and a band that he had at the time. [Carl and Hubert and the Dixie Mountain Boys.] And I was working at the drugstore there. I had just turned 18, and we had a room upstairs and they had a room downstairs. And we just all got to talking one day. That’s how it all started. And I didn’t know anything. First date I ever had with him, we had a wreck and he about like to have killed me.

What happened?

Had a blow out on the front of the car and the car flipped five times. And I got out all right and the guy that was driving, Carl, he got out all right but Hubert was pinned in. And he got hurt pretty bad.

In spite of that rough beginning you stayed together.

Yep, 37 years.

Did you know when you were dating him that he planned to be a musician his whole life?

Yeah, because he had played with Bill [Monroe], Before I met him, he’d been with Bill and recorded Cheyenne and Roanoke and things like that with Monroe. Of course, at the time I was just 18. I didn’t know that there was a difference in bluegrass and country music. To me, country music was country music. And bluegrass was country music. And to me, they should have never changed and separated it. That’s the reason bluegrass is having such a hard time now. Because bluegrass is the backbone of country music. And now they’ve got it separated. Now bluegrass is not commercial enough to be played on radio unless they want to sell something. If they want to sell a product, the first thing you

hear is a banjo and a fiddle. Yet it’s not commercial enough to be played on country radio stations.

When you and Shelby were playing, there really weren’t many other women playing were there?

No, not when we first started. [There were] the McLains. Now when we moved to Nashville, we moved because of Bill Monroe. We had played Bean Blossom, Indiana, a festival up there, and he told Hubert, “I can help you book a lot of shows but you need to be in Nashville.” So we moved to Nashville. Just like that, we up and moved to Nashville. And Bill had a booking agency at the time, and he started booking us at festivals. And we had met the Whites, they were playing the festivals, too, Cheryl, and Buck, and Sharon. And Shelby became real good friends with them. Then after we went to work at the Bluegrass Inn and they moved to Nashville, when we would be out of town we would get the Whites to come down there and play in our place. And different people would come and play in our place but Cheryl said, when we did the benefit [for Hubert] that if it hadn’t been for Hubert Davis that they probably would have starved to death when they first came to Nashville.

Because there really wasn’t that much going around. Once the Picking Parlor closed, I think the Bluegrass Inn was the only bluegrass at the time before the Station Inn opened up [in 1974]. And the Bluegrass Inn was just a little ole bitty small place. And the first time we went in down there, a student who Hubert was teaching the banjo, he said, “I’ve got somewhere I want y’all to go.” We walked in that little ole dinky place, it’s so much smoke you couldn’t see, and I mean it was packed.

Was it close to Vanderbilt? So a lot of students came?

Oh, it was so many students you couldn’t move. Then later on as we started playing, it started getting bigger and bigger and I’ll tell you what, if it hadn’t of been for the Vanderbilt students, we’d have never made it. We had tourists come in but those students is what did it. And if it’d be Parents’ Weekend at Vanderbilt, you couldn’t get ’em in that place. [Shelby said that after they had been playing there only two or three months, they had to knock out a wall to make more room for the crowd. Later, they had to knock out more walls until the place had expanded as much as it could.] How many sets a night were you doing? Four?

Oh, Lord, I don’t know. We’d play about 45 minutes, then we’s to have 15 [for a break].

From what, nine till one?

Nine till one sometimes, then later on it got later. Till two. I don’t think we worked past two o’clock.

That is hard work.

And people used to come up and say, “You mean to tell me you call this work?” They just don’t realize. You’re enjoying it, but it’s work. And no matter how bad you feel, you’ve got to smile and go on. Yeah, it’s work.

Can you think of any other women who were playing at the time? Lynn was. And Marty and Charmaine [Lanham] got here about the same time. And Ingrid Fowler. Remember Ingrid played fiddle with us for a long time. And she and Bob came in and Bob played with us, too.

Lynn: They came before we did. And Red and Birdie [Smith].

Well, it was Red and Birdie and Charmaine and Marty and who else was it opened the Station Inn?

Lynn: Bob and Ingrid. And Jim and Wilma Bornstein.

[At this point, our food arrived and we took a break to eat.]

When y’all were playing at the Bluegrass Inn, did Earl Snead own it the whole time? No, Earl owned it for just a couple of years and then two attorneys and some more people bought it. Then in 1983 we bought it from the attorneys, Hubert and I and my sister Myrl.

Was that a big decision?

No, because I had been running it, and managing it and everything else. So it’s like, I’d always done all the work anyway.

So when did you start running the place? Just as soon as you started playing there?

Well, no, as long as Earl was there, nobody runs it but Earl. But after the attorneys bought it, they didn’t have time for that so I started. We were managing it then. So you were in complete charge, you were the manager, and had to play, too. Yeah, see that was one reason I think that I probably had to close. In ’93. [After Hubert died in 1992.] It was too much for me. It was hard to keep anybody together. It was hard to get a band together that sounded [like the Season Travelers]. And once Shelby and Ronnie, her husband at the time, decided to leave, then I never could get the sound. I had a lot of good musicians with me, but it was not the Season Traveler sound. And so I thought, between this and trying to make all the decisions by myself about running the place and keeping a band straight and keeping a band together, it’s more than one person can do. It’s too much on a person. Before, if something come up I always had somebody I could go to and say, “Do you think we should do this or what should we do?” But when you’re by yourself, you’ve got to make the decision and hope that you’re gonna make the right decision, you know, as far as the music. I feel like I had some good sounds sometimes but it still was not the Season Traveler sound.

Lynn: That’s when you had it up on Second Avenue.

But that is the biggest reason for closing. And then I’d get to thinking, Rubye, you’ve messed up everything that you worked so hard for. And then about two or three years ago, this guy came to me and said something about the Bluegrass Inn. He says, “Rubye, I got some clippings here about the Bluegrass Inn. Are you fixing to open the Bluegrass Inn back up?” When we bought the Bluegrass Inn, we bought it from attorneys. But we thought we bought the name, too. That’s when this [place] opens up on Broadway. The Bluegrass Inn. Well, it was never registered that we had bought the Bluegrass Inn. I might could do something about it but I’ve done got to the age and point I don’t feel like fighting. And you would think when you bought a place and it belonging to attorneys, that you’re buying the name, too, and you’re not just buying the bar. And how this guy got [the name] and opened that stuff down there on Broadway, I’ll never know.

And I went in there one night. There’s no bluegrass music. It is a disgrace, and I’ll tell the guy that, to even call it the Bluegrass Inn because the Bluegrass Inn had a good name. And Hubert Davis and the Season Travelers did that. And at one time I was going to get in touch with Robert Oermann, because Robert was a friend of ours, and I was gonna see if I could get him to do a write-up in the paper and let everybody know the Bluegrass Inn down there had nothing to do with Hubert Davis and the Season Travelers. Because there’s people that had called me or had seen me and said, “Oh,

you’ve opened it back up.” And I want everybody to know that I’ve got no part, and none of us has had any part of that Bluegrass Inn downtown since it’s opened up. What year did Hubert die?

May ’92. And I closed the club in June of ’93. I tried to keep it going and it was just more than I could do. And I had a lot of musicians during the time, but really my heart and soul was never in it anymore. And then after Shelby left and Ronnie, that was really our harmony, me, and Shelby and Ronnie. After Hubert passed away, it was us three mostly. And Mike Richardson, too, but after they left, it was hard trying to get anybody. You couldn’t get anybody to replace a family like that. Because that family harmony, you know that is what bluegrass is all about. And like I said, I had some good musicians and I had some good singers, but it was just not the Season Travelers anymore. And never will be anymore.

When you were working four nights at the Bluegrass Inn, were you able to travel much and do many festivals?

To start with, when we first moved to town, Bill [Monroe] was booking us through his agency. So we did quite a bit at the time, traveling different places. And we played all of his festivals. We played in Texas and different places. Us and Bill and our band, James Monroe and his band, and Bobby Smith and the Boys From Shiloh. And different ones like that. And we were with the Whites a lot. And when we were gone, then we’d always get somebody to fill in down at the Bluegrass Inn. [Later] we didn’t travel as much, and really didn’t want to travel that much. Playing these festivals you know it’s “hurry up and wait.” Always has been. And we used to could say, “Well, we’re gonna take a week off, we’re going to Bean Blossom. We’re only booked for two days, so we’re gonna enjoy the other days.” But it was always somebody didn’t show up. Then it was, “Hubert, could you get your band together and y’all play tonight?” So you really don’t get any rest. Or get to sit there and enjoy it.

Plus that, when you’ve got a steady paying job, it’s not like you’re gonna go out to the festivals and make a big bunch of money.

No, groups like ours, well, really, back then, none of the bluegrass acts was making much, not even Bill [Monroe] I don’t imagine was making much. Bluegrass musicians has it hard. And that’s what I’ve tried to tell people. We struggle. We really struggle, trying to make it. There’s been some good times, but there’s been a lot of hard times, too, to go along with it. And we were lucky because we was in with a big man down at the Opryland Hotel. And we played a lot of dates out there. Because we could go out

there and play two or three hours and make more than you could anywhere else in three or four weeks because they paid good money. And all these conventions. And there were certain people that wanted our band. Which was good.

What about your recordings? You did quite a number of albums, didn’t you? We had five albums—four single albums and one double album. And two videos. We always found our albums sales really helped a lot trying to make ends meet. I would imagine yours were the same.

Yeah, and we sold a lot at the Bluegrass Inn and Wind in the Willows. We sold a lot of albums, and T-shirts, and hats and just anything we could think of. Because like I said, bluegrass musicians don’t make that much money. If we didn’t love it so well...Of course, we were lucky, we were really lucky. I feel like God blessed us because not many people could play in the same club [for years]. There was times when we didn’t have that many people and it was rough. But the good times outweighed the bad. And we stuck in there. Lot of the musicians would make the remark, “I don’t see how you stand there and do that Rocky Top.” And if you started to leave the club, they’re the first ones right there at your back to try to get the job. And that’s the way it’s always been. And we did not go to the Martha White people. The Martha White people came to us, after Lester Flatt passed away [and said], “Could you take over the Martha White show on WSM?”

Is that right?

Yes. We did that. Okay, they came to us, we didn’t go to them. And there was one musician in town that made the remark that Lester Flatt would turn over in his grave if he knew that Hubert Davis got the Martha White Show. But there was a lot of musicians standing right there, trying to get it. But they chose us, we didn’t choose them. And how long did you do the Martha White Show?

We did it, Lord, I don’t even know, I can’t remember how long we did it. We did it for quite a while. We didn’t do it live. Us and Grant Turner, Hairl Hensley. When we did the live album, Grant Turner and all of ’em was down [at Wind in the Willows], But let me tell you, one night I was backstage at the Opry. Shelby was there and Shelby brought Vince [Gill] over there and said, “Vince, I want you to meet my mama.” He said, “Shelby, I’ve been knowing your mama a long time. I used to come out to the Bluegrass Inn and sit there and watch her sing.” This was before Vince Gill was anybody.

When you’re in the music business, we used to go around to places and just about everywhere we’d go, somebody would recognize me. We’s in business a long time. And you see a lot of people. And I remember a lot of faces, I don’t remember names. But just about everywhere we went we’d see people who’d say, “I know you.” And it was always, “You’re Hubert Davis’s wife.” And I got to one day when I said, “I’m Rubye. I’m Rubye Davis.” I know how a lot of these stars feel now. They get married and you’re so-and-so’s wife or you’re so-and-so’s husband. I know I was never the star, Hubert was, and I never will be. But I do have a name. And I was a part of that band too. Lynn: I know. For years I was John’s wife. But you know what I don’t remember is, was there a cover charge for the Bluegrass Inn?

When we first started at the Bluegrass Inn, they was passing the hat. They would get up there and play Orange Blossom Special while Shelby, bless her heart, got out there in the audience and passed the hat. And we’d have to go over the Orange Blossom Special till your hand got worn out [laughs a little], trying to play till she got through passing the hat. Then we started charging fifty cents at the door. And then it started getting higher and higher. But you’d be surprised, passing the hat how much [you’d make]. We did pretty good.

Did you just pass it one time a night?

No, we passed it every set. [Everybody laughs.] Because you got different people coming in.

Did you have a tip jar too?

Yep. We got tips, too. Sure did. But we made a living at it. We didn’t get rich, it was a long ways from getting rich but we made a living, we sure did. And like I said, I was working for Geneseo in Gallatin when we first moved here and I didn’t work long because I couldn’t work and stay up all night, too. So I finally just quit the job. And when we moved to Nashville, we had played the first five Jazz Festivals in New Orleans. And after we moved to Nashville, we had already booked the show at the Jazz Festival in New Orleans, so we drove all the way to New Orleans and played the Jazz Festival and then after the fifth one, that was it. But after we started the Bluegrass Inn, it was really a full-time job. Then after you get to running the place, I had a lot of responsibility on me. People don’t realize that you have a lot of responsibility. Because even though Hubert was the leader of the band, I had to take care of the club and take care of everything that was going on down there and it was hard. It was a job.

When you were manager, before you owned the club, did you get paid to manage? Yeah, yeah. The attorneys paid me. I had some good people who owned it.

Lynn: Y’all cleaned the place up at night, too?

Yes, we did it all. It’s a lot of work. And I’d have to get in there, too, even though we had the waitresses. Buddy, I stood on that stage and I didn’t want to see no customer having to get up and go to no bar and wait on themselves. I was paying my waitresses to keep those customers satisfied. And they did. And I had plenty of waitresses that could clean and everything, but I ended up always having to help ’em when I got through. So when you get through playing, your job is not over. There’s still a lot more to do. When did you have to be there when you were manager?

We never did get over there before six or seven o’clock. Now after we opened the one down on Second Avenue, we started opening at different times and we started having different groups to come in the afternoon and have ’em sit in there and play because everybody kept talking about what a good location, what a good location. But really it was not, because where we were at on Second Avenue, when people got to Mere Bui les [a restaurant], [our spot] looked like everything else on down Second Avenue, that there was nothing else there. But there we were right on the corner.

Of course, Hubert started getting sick before we opened up downtown. And for the last two years of his life, he was never on the stage of the new club downtown, the new Bluegrass Inn. And it’s bad to say, but people would come to the door, and if they didn’t see him on stage, they wouldn’t even come in. And sometimes they would come in and he would be sitting in the office because he’d got on oxygen there at the end and that’s where the oxygen was. Well, if he just walked out and they’d see him, that’s all it took. They just went wild. That’s all they wanted. [Shelby says the same: As long as they could see him, they were satisfied, even if he was just sitting on the stage, not playing.] So he got up there one day and he just told ’em on the mike. He said, “I appreciate everything that y’all have ever done, but now is the time I need you.” Because they thought, “If he’s not on stage, we’re not going in.” Well, that was really hurting him as well as the band, because you have to have people to pay the band. I had to have money to pay the band so we’d have a band.

But it was never the same once we moved down there. I always felt like the building was too big. But again, they approached us. It came out in the paper that Hubert Davis

was looking for a new home for the Bluegrass Inn. [Because they were going to lose the lease on the other place.] But then people started calling, “I got a place I want to rent you.” So when they called about this place on Second Avenue, [some people] wanted us to try it there. And we went from about a 150-seater at the old Bluegrass Inn. The new one was like 600. And at times, that was not even enough room to seat people. We had a benefit for Hubert and there was no way you could get the people in. He never really got to enjoy that place, because he was so sick.

So you had to have banjo players fill in for Hubert down there. Who mostly did that? Richard [Bailey] played with us a little bit, Vic Jordan played with us some, Greg Davis. We had different ones. And Hubert would be sitting in the office. And Shelby started doing the emcee. [Shelby found out she was going to be doing the emceeing right before playing a gig at Vanderbilt. At the last minute, Hubert told her he wasn’t going to be playing, that there was another banjo player filling in for him. That was a big shock to Shelby. It was then that Hubert told her he didn’t want anybody else doing the emceeing but her.] And, of course, she tried to be Daddy. She’d say the exact same words that Hubert had just said. And him, he could say “hello” and they’d go crazy. And Shelby’d get out there and work herself to death trying to get the same response and people just ignored her. It was hard. It was a big shoe to fill, though. And then when she left in October, we did the Midnight Jamboree, Ernest Tubb Record Shop, and that’s when they left. And that’s when I really started having a hard time. I held on till about June and then I just called the group together one night and said, “I can’t do it anymore.” I had some good musicians with me, but I could not get the people in there. And I tried everything but lot of the times when we was at the old place, we’s right there at Vanderbilt, the students could come over there and no matter how drunk they got, they could crawl to school. But downtown, they couldn’t do it and they was scared to come downtown, so that’s really what hurt us. Because, like I said [at the old Bluegrass Inn] we had tourists, but if it hadn’t been for Vanderbilt, there’s no way we would have survived.

How did you feel after you quit playing?

Upset, for a long time. And still, I try not to think about it. That’s the reason I don’t listen to it. I’ve probably been to the Station Inn maybe three times [since then]. There was years and years, I wouldn’t listen or look at our videos. I still do not play our tapes. I do not listen to much bluegrass at all. ’Cause I’d go down to the Station Inn, [and if there’s] somebody that I know that I can talk to. I’m fine. But if I have to sit there and listen to some of the bands that’s up there, it brings back so many memories, I can’t stand it. So instead of getting myself all worked up, I just don’t go. And Larry Sparks, to me, is the

greatest that there are in bluegrass music. When it comes to the high, lonesome sound, Larry Sparks has got it. And they used to let me know all the time when he was gonna be down there, ’cause I’d always wannago. But I can’t hardly do that. I just can’t listen to bluegrass music.

Lynn: Do you not play guitar anymore at all?

[Emphatically] NO. And if I was still playing, I’d be in a mess because of this. [Her raspy voice.] See, I’ve had this five times, and I still can’t talk. They found polyps on my vocal chords. Well, the first surgery paralyzed the right side and I couldn’t even talk at all. But if I was still in [bluegrass], I’d be in a mess. I want to sing so bad sometimes I can’t hardly stand it. And I try to sing, and I can’t. I can’t get anything to come out. You asked me if I regretted it. Yeah, I regret that I didn’t stay in it longer than I did, even though I wouldn’t have got to stay in it long anyway because of my voice. But I miss it sometimes so bad I can’t hardly stand it.

What were some of the songs you were most well known for singing when y’all were together? What were your favorites?

Well, they’re not my favorites, but Fox On The Run and Rocky Top was the most requested and the Martha White Theme and things like that. But they were not my favorites.

What were your favorites?

I don’t even know if I had any. Next Sunday Darling Is My Birthday. I always had to do that a lot.

And what kind of guitar did you have?

A D-35 [Martin]. Still got it.

What year?

’65.

Did Hubert buy that for you? Or did you have it when you started playing guitar? No, he bought it for me. He had one of these really big Martins. And so my hand was kinda small, so he went and bought me, when Grammer guitars first came out, if y’all

remember the necks was real narrow on the Grammers. Okay, he bought me a Grammer. Because the neck was so narrow. But, of course, it didn’t have the sound like the Martin. So when he got the Martin, that’s the reason I had wedges cut in my hand that you would not believe. Because my guitar was hard to play. And it still is. When he got the Martin, it was new, because it was real white, and now it’s real dark. ’Course they always said the darker they get, the better the sound. Because they’re older. They’re like wine, they’re better with age.

Since you were one of the few women who were playing, did that ever make you feel funny? Or did you feel discriminated against in any way? Or did you feel it was harder because you were a woman?

No. No, I didn’t. I’ll tell you what, before I started playing, I was one of the world’s worst. I always felt like people looked down on me. And when I first started just a little bit of playing, then I don’t know, I can’t describe the feeling that I had. I always felt like I was not good enough or there was people above me. It took me a long time to get out of that. Then I got thinking, their paychecks might be bigger than mine but they put their pants on the same way I do. And it took me a long time to get out of that, that I felt people were looking down. Because we were musicians.

Lynn: Not because you were a woman playing...

No! Being a woman playing, naw, that never bothered me. I first started playing in ’65 and Shelby probably started a little bit playing the bass in ’69 or ’70. But there for a long time, I was a woman on stage, with all the guys. But we played a lot of churches with the Sullivan Family back in those days, and of course, there was Margie on stage. I guess I just didn’t pay any attention to being a woman playing music. But it never bothered me.

Lynn: But it was a different circumstance for you, probably, because you started with Hubert and you stayed with Hubert, and you weren’t looking for a job as a woman... As a woman guitar player and singer, I probably could not have worked with anybody or for anybody. See, I started out with Hubert and after he passed away, then I tried to carry on the best way I could, but as far as working with anybody, no. There’s no way I could. You know when Bill [Monroe] used to come down to the club, or Jimmy Martin. Jimmy Martin is one person who can intimidate me. He could walk in that door and I’d go all to pieces. And I’ll never know why. I think one thing was that he wanted Hubert to work with him so bad and he held me responsible because Hubert wouldn’t do it. And he thought it was my doings and I did not care. I never told Hubert who to work with and

who not to work with. But Jimmy always thought that I was the reason Hubert wouldn’t go to work with him. But Bill would come in, and if they was anybody in the audience like Wayne Lewis or anybody like that that played a guitar, when Bill got up there to sing, I’d ask some of them to come up there. Because I did not want to stand on stage and play guitar behind Bill Monroe. Or Jimmy Martin.

So you never played guitar behind Bill?

Yeah, yeah.

You did some?

Yeah, when he’d come and get on our stage I would, but not because I wanted to. It was because, and that’s not being mean in saying that, it’s just the way I felt. But I never played behind Jimmy Martin. I flat refused to play behind Jimmy Martin. If there was anybody in the audience. I’d always call them up there. If I could get out of it, I would get out of it. But every once in a while, I’d like to go out there and sit down and listen. And I didn’t get to do that very much.

How did Shelby get interested in playing? Just because y’all were playing? Or did you need a bass player?

We needed a bass player and she walked up to her daddy and she says, “Daddy, I want to start playing the bass.” She was thirteen years old. And he says, “Now, Shelby, you know that if you start you can’t play today and not play tomorrow. If you start, you’ve got to do it.” And she said, “Well, I want it.” And she got it. And she was young and she was little and we didn’t figure she’d stick with it, but she did. And our first album, she sang one song on it. ’Cause see, her voice had not changed. It was a long time before she ever started singing with us. But she hung in there, but Shelby was never really into it like most.

Was it just a job to her?

Yeah. Now she loves bluegrass music and she loves music, but she’d rather go and listen. Then after she and Ronnie got married, I think it was like somebody that was being pushed into something. Because Ronnie thought every time there was bluegrass anywhere, they had to be there. They had to take the instruments, just in case. And Shelby was not like that. Ever once in a while, we used to go out to the Station Inn. We’d want to go down there and sit and listen and it would make you feel good because whoever the band is would want you to get up and sing. And when you said no that

didn’t mean you were being mean or cruel, but you go to listen. And I know there’s been times I’d go down there, and they’d want me to get up and sing, and sometimes I’d do it, and sometimes I wouldn’t. But I was going to listen. And we tried to respect anybody that came in our club the same way, such as Bill or any of them like that. If they came in, we would wait and ask ’em if they wanted to get up. We wouldn’t just holler and say, “We’ve got Bill Monroe. Would you come on up here?” and not even wait to find out if he wanted to do it.

Did Shelby ever play anything besides bass? Did she play guitar?

Not much, but she could have been one of the best banjo pickers in the world because she had that three-finger style. She had it down pat. Like I said, she was just not that interested in it. She never would experiment with anything. And I used to work and work and want to do this and want to do that and I’d think, “Why work so hard?” Because Hubert said he always did what he wanted to do: he played the Grand Ole Opry, he did the Martha White Show, and the things that he wanted to do in his life, he accomplished. He always wanted to have his own band, his own place, and he did. Me, I always wanted to accomplish more.

What did you want to do?

There were so many things that I wanted to do. I always felt like I wanted to travel a lot more. We had chances to go overseas. We had chances to go everywhere. But Hubert would not fly. So there was so many things that we lost out on, because he didn’t want to fly and he didn’t care about it. Me, I did. But I never got to do it. There’s a lot of things, like I said, that I wanted to do, that I never got to do.

Lynn: Was there any other kind of career you might have been interested in? No, no. And, see, at the time, I never dreamed of music being my career. Because the only job I had ever worked, I used to work at the credit bureau when Shelby was young. And I never even dreamed about playing music. I’d sit around the house and sing and they’d come over to the house, a bunch of ’em, and they’d be playing and I’d get the guitar and they’d start playing Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and I’d play a little bit and my hand would get tired. My hand would quit! And I’d lay the guitar down and just walk out. And so I was worried about, “Are you gonna stick with it?” Shelby stuck with it, but are you gonna be able to stick with it? But I did. And once I got started, I wouldn’t have traded it for nothing. Really. But as far as it being a career, I really never even thought, never dreamed about anything like that. It just happened.

Lynn: You, to me, you are one of my heroines.

Well, I appreciate that.

Lynn: I always loved your singing and playing. I think you were so important. But, it’s like I said, you know. It was like, it kindly hurts in a way, you know, but it was like I was nobody, you know. After Hubert, and it’s bad to say it, because God knows I’m proud that people loved him and cared that much for him, but I was a part of that [band] too. But I never felt recognized. He didn’t make me feel that way, but a lot of the people did. It’s like I said, you know, as hard as I was standing on that stage trying, but they’d walk up there and turn around and walk off, and that’s not good. And, yeah, it hurt. It hurt bad.

Lynn: I think you were appreciated a lot more than you realize by a lot more people than you realize.

Yeah, but just like you asked me the other day, if I cared for you giving people my address so they could send me cards. No, I’ve got a stack already and that just thrills me to death. Even after he passed away, a lot of people said, “Rubye, you don’t know how much you’re loved.” And I probably did, but it makes you feel good to hear it.WIB

UNCLE EARL

By Casey Henry

It has been said, if not in these very pages then certainly by the readers of this publication, that the era of the all-girl bluegrass band is over. Nowadays enough bands are co-ed that we don’t need all-girl bands in order for women to have the opportunity to get out there and pick. In general I agree with this position, in large part because I think that if we still needed exclusively estrogen bands they wouldn’t have all broken up. But all-girl bands have not disappeared completely. There is a new band here in Nashville making a big splash—Heartstrings—and I happen to be a member of another female aggregation, Uncle Earl (don’t ask where the name came from), which is trying to find some work on the folk and Americana scene. Today all-female bands are encountering a somewhat different atmosphere. Women who can pick are no longer a novelty and are not viewed as such. People today choose to listen to all-girl bands because they like the way they sound rather than to gawk at them because they’ve never seen one before. (I admit I have no research to back that claim up, I simply drew the conclusion from casual personal observations.)

Uncle Earl plays old-timey, folky-flavored music rather than bluegrass per se. I play Scruggs-style banjo with the group, which is the most bluegrassy thing about us. We have two great songwriters—K.C. Groves and Jo Serraper—so we have a well of good material containing many more songs than we could ever work up. The other members include Tahmineh Gueremy on fiddle and Amanda Kowalski (winner of the 2001 Sally Ann Forrester Scholarship) on bass. We all sing, and, if I do say so myself, our vocal harmonies are truly a strong point. We live scattered out across the country: Amanda and I in Nashville, Tenn.; K.C. in Lyons, Colo.; Tahmineh near Lansing, Mich.; and Jo in Dearborn, Mich., near Detroit. To accommodate our disparate localities we try to book gigs two or three at a time in and around Michigan so that we all won’t go too far in the hole trying to get there. I have come out tolerably well so far, but I’m sure K.C. is a few thousand dollars in the red, what with her plane tickets from Colorado. In short: don’t look for us to be coming to your local performing arts center.

For me one of the most fascinating things about playing with different bands is the band dynamics. Every band does things a little differently, from how early they arrive at gigs, to what, how, and when they eat on the road. I’ve discovered a few things about myself on recent road trips including: I like to arrive at gigs at least an hour before we’re scheduled to play; I like to have directions to where we are going; I don’t like to start a band practice at ten p.m. Perhaps an examination of our most recent Uncle Earl “tour” will aid in illustrating these points.

We had two gigs booked over a long weekend (Sat.-Tues.). Amanda and I drove nine hours to Lansing on Saturday, leaving at seven a.m. We took my truck, which means I have to drive the entire way because 1.) Amanda can’t drive a manual transmission and 2.) Amanda falls asleep as soon as she gets into the car. I always stock up on books-on-tape to keep me entertained when she’s shot gunning. K.C. had told us to arrive at Tahmineh’s house by four p.m. to practice. We missed it by about half an hour, but still beat K.C. and Jo, who had a shorter drive by at least seven hours. We had a limited window of practice time because Tam had to leave for another gig at 6:30. Between the time we actually got tuned up and the time Tam started running around getting ready for her gig, we probably got in a fragmented 45 minutes of practice. Luckily, none of us are bothered by playing without practice. For our first Uncle Earl gig I was introduced to the rest of the band a mere hour before show time.

After Tam left, we picked a few more tunes and then got ready to go ourselves. Tam had given us directions. They read like this:

—Turn right out of the driveway

—Go past where you get on the interstate and turn right

—Right

—Right

What?!!? We unsuccessfully attempted to follow them before falling back on Jo’s slower but surer route. Uncle Earl’s gig for the night was at a bar called Dagwood’s in Lansing. Tam originally said we were to start playing at ten, and the sound guy wanted us there at nine to do a sound check. Okay. We arrived in downtown Lansing at 8:15 to watch Tam’s other band and get something to eat. I pointed out to my compadres, “You know we’re supposed to be at Dagwood’s in forty-five minutes?” They seemed unconcerned. We went to a sit-down Mexican restaurant and ordered. Granted the food was really, really good, but my enjoyment was somewhat marred by the time factor. When we left there (at 9:15) we had to get directions to Dagwood’s from Tam’s boyfriend. Then we struck out for the bar, Amanda and I following K.C. and Jo. Apparently the directions were not all they were cracked up to be. Half an hour later we were still wandering around in Lansing when K.C. stopped to ask directions from a rather scary motorcycle dude in a grocery store parking lot, then at a gas station down the road. Now on the right track, we arrived at Dagwood’s at 10:03—yes, that’s right—after we were supposed to start playing.

As it turned out, it was fine because the sound guy was just setting up, and it was a bar so it really didn’t matter what time we started. At 11:50 we cranked it up, played two sets with a break, and ended after 1:30 a.m. Having driven from Nashville earlier that day, I was more tired than I’ve ever been. When all was said and done, it was nearly three a.m. before I got to bed. The next day we had a couple of parties to go to, one being the Elderly Instruments company picnic, but no gig, so I looked forward to sleeping in. About eleven I crawled out of bed, showered and made my way upstairs for coffee around noon. Tam and Jo were up and chatting. Tam informed me that we were supposed to play at the Elderly picnic at 12:30. What? Uh-huh. We had completely missed another starting time and again no one was concerned. We arrived at the party at two, ate our fill of hot dogs and ice cream and got inserted into the lineup at a later time, putting the music completely behind schedule. I felt bad about that, but there was nothing I could do. So I kept telling myself, “It’s not my band, I’m just a side musician. It’s not my band, I’m just a side musician.” That worked surprisingly well. After the picnic we drove to Ypsilanti for another small party given in our honor. The best thing that can be said about that one is that we got to pick in an air-conditioned house. Then, as if that weren’t enough, we drove to Detroit to see some friends of Jo’s play at an open mike there. That drive was exciting (in a bad way) because they had closed the

interstate for construction. So we got an up-close-and-personal tour of downtown Detroit after dark. If I never have to go there again I’ll be glad. Scary place. I was so tired that, when we finally arrived at the open mike, I refused to play at all, even though we were repeatedly asked. I just wanted a bed. But the night was redeemed in the end when I met Jeff Burke and Vida Wakeman. They are a songwriting couple from New Orleans who play at bars and honky tonks all over the country. They have a Gillian-and-David aesthetic, but are more on the bluegrass side. I was especially excited to discover that Vida is a kick-butt rhythm guitar player. She can flat nail it to the wall. We decided to get Vida up with Uncle Earl to sing one of her songs, Don’t Leave The Lights On, at our Tuesday night concert. We even rehearsed the song right then and there and all got quite excited about it.

At this point our trip was only half over, but I’ve run out of room. Highlights from the last two days include: a two-hour photo session with a photographer who wasn’t used to shooting bands, a post-photo shoot late-night practice, a fairly decent Tuesday night gig, driving until 2:30 a.m., sleeping four hours, and then driving another 40 hours in order to get Amanda back to Nashville in time for a math class. Who says the life of a road musician is not all glitz and glamour?

Looking for First Generation Wibbers

I’m looking to add more women to my database, particularly those relatively unknown women who were playing bluegrass in the ’50s, ’60s, and early ’70s. Many of these women played in family or gospel groups that did not travel extensively. Many did not even record. I don’t want their presence in the world of bluegrass to be lost. Call 800-227-2357, email, or write. Address below. I hope one day to turn this into a book! All help greatly appreciated.

Kudos to Kaufman Kamp

Next year’s lineup for Steve Kaufman’s Bluegrass and Old-Time Banjo Kamps includes four women instructors out of a total of six! Laura Boosinger and Cathy Fink will handle old-time styles, while Janet Davis and Murphy Henry (that’s me!) will handle the bluegrass. The guys? Dennis Cap linger and Bill Keith. Now we need more women students! Info at www.flatpik.com.

To That Mansion In The Sky

Banjo picking girl Ola Belle Campbell Reed, 86, passed away August 16. She had been in a comatose state for years after suffering a stroke in 1987. Born in North Carolina, Ola Belle started playing old-time banjo in her childhood. After her family moved to

Maryland during the Depression, she played professionally with her brother Alex. In 1949, she married musician Bud Reed, and they had two sons, Eric and David. Together she and Bud and Alex had a band called the New River Ranch Boys and Girls. For years, she and Bud ran New River Ranch, the country music park in Rising Sun, Md. High On A Mountain and The Leading Role are two well-known songs that she wrote.

Sally Wingate, now banjo player with Heartstrings, lived near Rising Sun when she was a teen and would drive to the park on Sundays to pick in the parking lot. Almost always she would be asked to sit in for a number or two with Ola Belle’s band. After Sally had been in college a few years, she came back to visit with Ola Belle in the country store she ran. As Sally was leaving, she, the philosophy major, and Ola Belle, the country musician, got into a deep, philosophical conversation. Sally said, “She was the most awesome philosopher. What a wise woman. She was one heck of a great performer, but she was more than just a musician. She was deep. It was an eye-opening experience as to who she really was. I was very surprised and taken by the depth with which she spoke. She was connected to some bigger picture here.”