Keeping mountain music alive

Music is like a memory—each performance a moment preserved, notes recalled but replayed never quite exactly the same way. And like a memory, music survives long after its makers.

“He was the most, probably without a doubt, the most creative banjo player I was ever in a room with,” said acclaimed musician French Kirkpatrick, 75, as he relaxed back into his couch, smiled, and began to reminiscence about his late friend, Carroll Best. 

“When you hear somebody put a string of notes together that just keeps rolling, and he just keeps rolling—it was amazing,” Kirkpatrick said at his home outside Waynesville, N.C. “[Carroll] was not restricted to one style of music. It was phenomenal what he did on a banjo.”

Regarded as one of the all-time great and influential banjoists, Best, a Western North Carolina native, was known for his signature “fiddle style,” which was a melodic, syncopated three-finger stroke he evolved and perfected. Best’s style meant he could follow fiddle tunes note for note. 

“Carroll was a gifted, regional banjo player who influenced national musicians. He was among the first, if not the very first banjo player to move three-finger hillbilly ‘pickin’ toward jazz and melodic melodies requiring a sophisticated ear and independent dexterity given only to few,” said Marc Pruett, Grammy Award-winning banjoist of Balsam Range and, like Best, a Haywood County, N.C., native. “He farmed, he worked in the local mill for years, and to those of us lucky enough to have known him, he freely shared his music.”

Storied “song catcher” Joseph S. Hall captured Best on a reel-to-reel tape during two recording sessions in 1956 and 1959. Hall gathered a handful of Haywood pickers, including Best and Kirkpatrick, to sit around a living room and simply play the melodies they knew and loved. 

Some of the recordings were kept in Hall’s personal and extensive archives, while others were sent directly to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. for posterity, and as a historical record of Southern Appalachian culture. 

Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian studies at Eastern Tennessee State University in Johnson City, recently dusted off those old tapes, and with the help of the Great Smoky Mountains Association, a nonprofit preserving the culture of Southern Appalachia, released a 37-song collection of Hall’s recordings—“Carroll Best and The White Oak String Band, Old-Time Bluegrass from the Great Smoky Mountains, 1956 and 1959.” 

“The Smokies could not have found a better friend for preserving their history than with Hall,” Olson said. “The Smokies have always had such a rich and beloved music history, and were one of the least understood regions of music in the Appalachians, and the Hall recordings have brought such appreciation to the music of this area.”

The recordings are evidence of the past surviving, even as things continue changing, and much of their wealth is in helping people understand from where they’ve come. “To witness other people get reconnected to their family members and their stories, to bring this musical heritage to a new generation has been really gratifying,” Olson said. 

Who was the ‘Song Catcher?’

In 1937, Californian Joseph S. Hall was a 30-year-old graduate student the National Park Service hired for the summer to seek out and capture the Southern Appalachians’ unique people, places and things.

With notepad in hand, he jumped into a pickup truck and headed into the isolated landscape, to return with innumerable pages of stories told in an unique dialect—one that evolved partly out of the Scotch-Irish and German ancestry of mountain settlers, and partly, it seemed, from the mountains themselves.

“He loved his work, and the mountain people loved him,” said Steve Kemp, interpretive products and service director for the GSMA. “He spent months in the work camps, at people’s houses, in the fields, at church and funerals. He immersed himself in the culture.”

The people he interviewed had a variety of distinct accents and created beautiful music, things that ink and paper couldn’t do justice. He knew he had to come back, and did in 1939. Gathering up his primitive recording equipment (which included phonograph cylinders), Hall set out again for the Great Smoky Mountains, this time to be a fly on the wall, simply letting the music play and speak for itself.

Those initial recordings were held at the Library of Congress, until the GSMA compiling them into the album “Old-Time Smoky Mountain Music.” That record went on to receive a Grammy Award nomination for “Best Historical Album” in 2012. 

“When people look back at what was happening [with these recordings], they will see a major link between the [old-time] Appalachian music and how it ties into the bluegrass music that came out of Kentucky,” Kirkpatrick added. “These guys were not copying Earl Scruggs or Don Reno’s versions, these guys wanted to make their own sound.”

Given the album’s success, Olson, the Hall estate and GSMA decided to dig a little deeper and see what other treasures were waiting to be discovered in Hall’s archives—which was how tapes of Carroll Best and The White Oak String Band surfaced. His collection “balances a sense of awe and respect with what continues to be a fair and empathetic representation of the Smokies,” Olson said. 

After his trips to the Smokies in the 1930s, Hall became utterly fascinated with the mountains and its people. He never forgot the lifelong friendships he forged, many of which he nurtured until his death in 1992, at age 85. He cherished his time in Southern Appalachia and made several trips over the decades, as a National Park Service employee or freelance researcher, to continue recording as much of the culture as tapes could contain.

On July 21 and Aug. 5, 1956 and July 22, 1959, Hall hauled his recording equipment to the home of Teague Williams (Best’s brother-in-law) in Upper White Oak, a community just outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s thought Hall knew Williams from his travels around the mountains during the 1930s recording sessions. 

“Teague set up the sessions, brought Hall in to make the recordings, and called up the musicians to come and play,” Olsen said. “There really was an atmosphere of trust between Hall and Williams and Williams with the local musicians.”

A seemingly “honorary Appalachian,” Hall found himself consistently in folks’ good graces. 

“I remember [Hall] had a good demeanor about him, he wasn’t a know-it-all person, he just wanted to do a good job,” said Kirkpatrick, who was just a teenager when he met Hall. “He was a real pleasant, easy going person. He would make you feel like he was your uncle.”

“[Hall] was deeply respected and loved,” Olson added. “He gained a deep sense of trust with the families in the Smokies. He earned it and maintained it over the years.”

Carroll Best and The White Oak String Band appear on Hall’s July 21, 1956 session. Only 25 years old at the time, Best played alongside 27-year-old fiddler/rhythm guitarist S.T. Swinger and another guitarist simply noted as “Joyce.” Best’s new bride, 18-year-old Louise, also joined in on the recording, singing a couple of ballads. During the Aug. 5, 1956 session, 24-year-old rhythm guitarist Don Brooks joined Best and Swanger and Teague Williams jumped on the microphone for “More Pretty Girls Than One.” 

Lightning strikes twice

In 1959, Hall returned to the Smokies for another round of recordings at the Williams household. “Back in those days, we played every Friday and Saturday night at somebody’s house, and it might as well have been at Teague Williams’ recording as anywhere else,” Kirkpatrick said.

And so, Williams got hold of the boys on the party line (multiple household phone line) on July 22, telling them to get down to his house to record with Hall.

“[Hall] had this humongous reel-to-reel recorder, and I thought, ‘my goodness, what’s this guy going to do with this,’” Kirkpatrick chuckled. “He told us he’d put the music in the Library of Congress, and I really didn’t think much of it.”

Kirkpatrick noted that one has to put things in perspective as to why it seemed such an out-of-this-world notion that the sounds he and his musician friends made would end up in the national archives.

“You’ve got to think back to the 1950s. There was not many televisions around then and the records you got were 78 rpms,” Kirkpatrick said. “I mean for somebody to want to record you on a reel-to-reel recorder and put it in the Library of Congress of the United States, well, that was big stuff, man.”

Listening to the recordings, one hears the band’s youthful exuberance and the foundation of lifelong melodic talents—especially from Best.

“He really went on to reinvent himself and take his music to another level,” Kirkpatrick said. “He was never comfortable to say ‘I’ve got this,’ he always tried to make the next time better than he did the last time and that’s what really identifies a good musician.”

Following the recording sessions, The White Oak String Band continued to play together for a time before splitting up and going their separate ways, but each member continued to perform and over the years they would cross paths and jam together again. 

Though many feel, even today, Best never got the credit or success he deserved, those in the know, including banjo legends Tony Trischka and Bela Fleck, point to Best as an immediate influence on them and banjo sound. 

“This is an extremely important album for banjo players, and really for anyone with an interest in historically significant old-time, country and bluegrass music,” Trischka said of Best’s recently released recordings. “Carroll Best single-handedly created a unique banjo style that allowed one to play fiddle tunes note for note. He could also burn in a more Scruggsy sort of way, as these recordings will bear out.”

Throughout his life, Best played all around the Southern Appalachia region, winning banjo competitions, ultimately pushing his reputation as one of the finest pickers into the industry. 

Tragically, his life was cut short at age 64 when he suffered an untimely death. 

“Carroll Best was the ‘best,’” said Steve Sutton, Grammy-nominated banjoist of Whitewater Bluegrass Company and Haywood County native. “We played together under a tree at Merlefest the evening before his death. It was tragic and such a loss in so many ways. [He made] the most beautiful sounds to ever come from a banjo. He showed me just how versatile the instrument could be—he was a one-of-a-kind.”

Of those Hall recorded, French Kirkpatrick and Raymond Setzer and Louise Best, Carroll’s wife, are still alive—but the music continues to survive. Best’s grandson, Jerry, can pick up the banjo and play just like his “papaw” did, and the recently released recordings will keep handing down the tradition. “Younger people can hear them; children can hear what their ancestors did,” Louise Best said. 

And though Best is physically gone from the earth, the sounds of his body, mind and soul echo deep into the history and backwoods of Southern Appalachia, a strong undertow in the vast, melodic ocean of mankind, one that will be felt for countless future generations. Even 19 years after his death, Pruett’s heart still holds a piece of Best in it.

“After a person is gone, their individual human history decays into little shards of memory in the minds of loved ones and friends,” he said. “As I close my eyes and remember Carroll, those shards of memory morph into sparkling music notes, diamonds almost. Then, I begin to hear a banjo rippling and pinging through cool night air at a Crabtree farm. And I see Carroll Best smile again, surrounded by family and friends he loved.”

The boy from Laurel Branch

French Kirkpatrick just wanted to play music.

“I kind of wanted to be a singer, but I couldn’t sing worth a hoot,” the 75-year-old chuckled. “I wanted to be a regular picker, a banjo player, I even tried to play the fiddle one time, played the harmonica—I was a multiple-testing type of person.”

At his home in Ironduff, in the rolling countryside of Haywood County, N.C., Kirkpatrick has spent his life soaked in the sounds of Southern Appalachia. Growing up the rural community of White Oak, he remembers being a toddler hearing his father and siblings play the Saturday Night Roundup on WWNC in Asheville, N.C.

“The music was an integral part of our lives. I listened to them on the radio, and being a 3-year-old kid hearing your daddy play banjo [was great],” he smiled.

Like most pickers raised in Western North Carolina, music was something that was constantly around. Before Interstate 40 was constructed, the main route from Asheville to Knoxville or Nashville was through Newfound Gap. Kirkpatrick’s father William, a musician himself, would house innumerable other performers passing through the area to and from shows. 

“Daddy didn’t even lock the doors in the house,” French said. “That’s just who we were. [All these musicians would] stop by, get a meal, [stay the night] — he just wanted these guys to be taken care of.”

Whether it be a neighborhood meeting up on the weekends for some porch sessions or simply crossing paths with an instrument in your household, the melodic sounds of the mountains have always rung true.

“Music is an expression of the soul with what you can do,” Kirkpatrick said. “If you’re a musicians, it’s part of your DNA—it’s part of who you are.”

In his formative years, Kirkpatrick was taken under the wing of renowned Haywood County banjoist Carroll Best, who taught the teenager his signature three-finger style, which incorporated fiddle notes into banjo playing—a concept as wild for the time as it was intricate.

“I wanted to play banjo and [Carroll] taught me the three-finger stroke, but Carroll did so many syncopated type licks and stuff,” Kirkpatrick chuckled, referring to Best’s astounding pickin’ talents.

It also was Best who would bring a young Kirkpatrick along on the weekends to play gigs around the region. Eventually, Kirkpatrick joined the Mountain Valley Boys, a group who toured the Southeast, opening for the likes of Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton—two of the biggest names in the music industry at the time.

“We did go out and did a few things, but we were never stars,” Kirkpatrick modestly said. “It was a hobby, we wanted to play, never made no money out of that, just something fun for us to do.”

And as the usual wear and tear of old age takes its toll on Kirkpatrick, he still picks up his banjo or guitar and plucks some tunes, even if it can be a tad painful.

“This’ll go, it all goes sooner or later,” he said, raising his hands to show their well-earned wrinkles and calluses. 

Kirkpatrick has lived and thrived in Western North Carolina, a region filled with folks as genuine and uniquely talented as they are real.

“Everybody has got their mind set in the right direction, just salt of the earth people, people that want you to succeed, want for you to have a roof over your head,” he said. “It’s that unselfish attitude that circulates through Southern Appalachia. It’s not that I was born here, it’s that I was never going to leave here—I would have never left these mountains.”

Bring it home

“Carroll Best and the White Oak String Band, Old-Time Bluegrass from the Great Smoky Mountains, 1956 and 1959,” includes 37 songs and a 64-page booklet with photographs of the musicians, as well as extensive notes detailing their histories, their styles and the songs they played. The album is available at all Great Smoky Mountains National Park visitor centers, by visiting smokiesinformation.org or calling 888.898.9102 (x226).