Tondeleo: As you know, I initially expected rural Americans, especially those from the southern Appalachian region, to all play bluegrass music, ad to only like bluegrass. That is why I was surprised when I first began meeting Doc, Big Dave and their friends, because not only do they not play bluegrass music, but they seem to have an aversion to it.
I have learnt these past few years that some of the aversion is shame. Shame for the poverty they grew up in, shame for being thought of as hillbillies, and shame for the memories that some of the bluegrass music evoked. I had never thought of these factors.
I always thought of bluegrass as happy, simple music that hearkened back to a simpler more honest and good time in simpler and more wholesome environments. But for many people who lived in those times and places the memories are anything but good.
Doc: See, Tondy, to a office boy what has never been
down to where we lived, it seems good and happy. Or if someone been away a while. But if you lived there and were dirt poor, and your daddy was a drunk, and your older brothers was drunks, and your grand daddy was a drunk and your uncles was drunks, you ain’t got to many good memories in the first place. ‘Bout nothin.’
You remember fightin’ and hollerin’ and women bein’ hit and ‘bused an’ getting’ your own butt whipped for doin’ nothin’ or for standin’ up to the old man when he was drunk and hittin’ your mama. And they was always bluegrass music bein’ played in the background.
Big Dave: Yeah, and when you go to town people look down on you for how you talk and how you dress and you don’t have any money to buy anything. You get ashamed of what you are and your family and everything you got. when people look at you and spit, and then cuss you, callin’ you a dumb hillbilly, you’re not going to do anything to make them think that even more.
Doc: We was poor, and we worked with other poor whites, poor blacks… anyone what wasn’t getting’ paid good or treated right. With all that pain built up, we needed to get it out, and we played music and sang about it. We wasn’t thinkin’ what KIND of music it was. We just sang what we was feelin’ and about what we was goin’ through.
Some of it was songs we learnt off the radio what was singin’ about how we felt. Some was songs from other people what talked about how we felt. Some was church songs, about the Lord or askin’ the Lord to get us through a hard time.
Some was about how good it felt to be in love. Some was about bein’ cheated on or bein’ brokenhearted. It was all kinds of music. Some Kitty Wells, some Hank Williams, Webb Pierce, Bob Wills, Hank Snow and we listened to Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, John Lee Hoo
ker. I always liked John Lee Hooker real good.
Big Dave: I like John Lee Hooker real good, too.
Doc: So we played a bit of this, a bit of that. The whites and the blacks, they called themselves coloureds back then, all sang about the same things. Havin’ no money, mean bosses, mean women, cheatin’ women, whiskey, fallin’ in love. Tondy, all people feels them things.
We didn’t never put a name on what we played. Only when I come up north did they call it a name. It was just music what poor people knowed and sang.
Up here, in the 90’s they said what we played was blues. But not real blues, they said it had other names. We said it was “downhome” music. I still call it that.
Big Dave: They call some of it “country roots blues.” We play some of that, on acoustic. I heard that it is called Piedmont Blues, especially what Doc plays when he is playin’ alone at the house. That’s acoustic and they use the thumb for the bass line and the pointy finger for the chords or notes.
But most places if we are playin’ indoors, we use electric guitars and play old blues music that most people like. We play it because we know how and because we like it and they like it too. Blacks and whites.
Doc: I heard that one before, Big Dave. Piedmont.A man in DC called it that. That is how whites and blacks played guitar down home. It’s how you play when you just sit down and start playin.
I don’t play that way out in public too much ‘cause I think it might sound too much like a poor man. But I do that on my ‘lectric guitars what gots bass strings. Nobody notices it, but it gives me that bass line and the rhythm guitar line and a little lead. When the guitar is set right, that is the best way to play if you come from down where we do.
Big Dave: But Doc is the onliest one I know with the bass set up like he has. It sounds real good, and it gives me somethin’ to play lead over. Makes a full sound.
Doc: When we play Gospel music, it’s the same way. Old downhome songs from when we was kids. We ain’t do nothing new. We do a lot from the Gales…
Big Dave: Their real name is The Sensational Nightingales. I only learned that a few years ago, Doc.
Doc: We do Gales’ songs. Spirituals. Sister Rosetta Tharpe – Marilyn sings her stuff a lot. Just stuff we grew up on. People like it the first time they hear it, and the old folks love it ‘cause ain’t nobody do it anymore, but us. They see us and still think, “Look at those dumb white hillbillies, but when we start playin’ and the Spirit starts movin’ they are clappin’ and singin’ and stompin’!
