In fact, when Loyal Jones, director of the Appalachian Resource Center of Berea College, Kentucky began his research for the book, "Minstrel of the Appalachians, The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford," he didn't realize he'd end up spending over 12 years researching the life of this grand old legend.
Lunsford's passion and "calling" can be witnessed today at any of the mountain music and dance festivals he directed. He may well have done more to preserve the old ballads and dances than any other person in the country. During a time when most people were doing their best to leave the mountains, or change the region, Lunsford gathered songs and square dance figures, working to preserve the cultural heritage of the Appalachians.
His passion for promoting and performing spanned most of his long, interesting life. His goal was to bring respectability to mountain ways. The diverse abilities and energy of the "Minstrel of the Appalachians" or "Squire of South Turkey Creek," as he was called, took Lunsford and mountain culture from the back woods to "Mr. Roosevelt's White House."
Though he may be best remembered as the writer of the legendary "Old Mountain Dew," Bascom Lamar Lunsford is also responsible for the preservation of over 3,000 folk songs and the founding of numerous folk festivals.
Lunsford was an educated man who was equally at home talking to a fiddler from Sandy Mush or folklore scholars and royalty. Though a small man—about 5 feet, 6 inches tall and about 160 pounds—he nonetheless projected a genuine presence.
"He walks all reared back, like a man of dignity," is the way The Saturday Evening Post characterized him. He was always the proper dresser and would usually be seen in his white suit and starched shirt. Though he always looked juxtaposed to his mountain kindred, he had their trust and the good grace to let the performers offer their art without his interference. His purpose was never to upstage anyone, but to display others' talents in the best possible light. The only time he would steal anyone's thunder was when the spirit moved him to buckdance to their music.
"The proper use of words and phrases can take you a long way," he once said. Having to be his own press agent, Lunsford learned early that the art of tooting his own horn was necessary if he intended to be a festival promoter: Handbills from his days as an educator and lecturer seem self-indulgent, but his commanding presence could energize a crowd like a cattle prod.
Lunsford had a massive store of energy. Otherwise he could not have overcome the resistance of his detractors, who felt that the mountain culture was an embarrassment to Asheville's cosmopolitan progress during the 1920s.
He believed in the mountain people and treated them like ladies and gentlemen. In exchange they displayed pride in their abilities and folklore. Lunsford was the keeper and preserver of the culture. He looked upon the preservation of mountain music as his civic responsibility. He understood the mountain ways, having grown up on South Turkey Creek, just 12 miles from Asheville.
Lunsford undoubtedly understood the value of kinship. In an unpublished manuscript on folk dance, he states that square dancing should be done in small groups of people who would remain familiar with each other: He goes on to explain how the Cherokee, his good friends, limit their dancing to small numbers of participants who work together continually.
Though Lunsford became a family man, his true love was folksong collecting and the festivals. As Jackie Ward, present director of the Mountain Dance and folk festival puts it, "I don't believe his family really understood his nature, his vision. They were proud when he was introduced at some gathering somewhere, but probably would have preferred he'd been more of a family man.”
Lunsford's early occupations were never central to his life. For a while he sold nursery stock and collected ballads on his jaunts through the hills. His employer once said that Lunsford's excursions cost the company $500 on one trip for lodging and food in exchange for apple trees. (Today that area is widely known for its annual apple harvest.) For a while he dabbled in beekeeping. And as expected, collected more ballads than honey. One particular honey harvest yielded enough income and confidence for him to ask Nellie Triplett to marry him. One child died at birth, but Nellie bore them one son and six daughters.
Lunsford went back to Rutherford College, where he'd been educated, and then took a position at the Carolina School for the Deaf. In 1912 he attended law school at Trinity College (now Duke University) and was granted his license. Shortly thereafter he became a county solicitor.
The job-hopping Lunsford received a faculty appointment to teach at Rutherford College. That appointment—to teach English and history—was a benchmark for his folklore hidden agenda. Lunsford lectured on poetry and North Carolina folklore. Handbills and posters proclaimed that the esteemed professor would guarantee an entertaining and informative show. This was truly his first professional appearance as a storyteller and folk performer: His stint at Rutherford gave Lunsford the chance to polish his storytelling skills by delivering monologues and recitations, sometimes accompanied by local fiddlers.
After leaving Rutherford, he became editor of the Old Fort Sentinel newspaper, where his flair for self promotion kept his name in front of the public eye. Here again was an opportunity for Lunsford to be close to local people and continue his ballad-gathering quest.
By now his reputation as a song seeker grew beyond the mountains. When folk music scholar Cecil Sharp needed an assistant to collect ballads of the Western Carolina region, he selected Lunsford. This opportune arrangement brought Lunsford's work and enthusiasm to the attention of Dr. Duncan Emrich, curator of American folk Music for the Library of Congress.
The elusive Lunsford again switched occupations and became a special agent for the Department of Justice. This was Lunsford's chance to leave the hills and see a little of the world as a pursuer of suspected draft dodgers in New York City.
After working as a field representative for his church, he spent time as campaign manager for Congressman Zebelon Weaver and then was publisher of the McDowell Sentinel in Marion, North Carolina.
The Lunsfords bought a 40-acre farm on South Turkey Creek and Bascom set up a law practice in Asheville. As expected, his practice suffered since his heart was with his love of music and mountain culture.
In 1922, Lunsford was invited by OKeh Records to release his first commercial recording. He claimed that there was no money in it and that it cost him $50 to travel to the session. He performed two of his favorite songs in that session, "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” written by his friend Fred Moody, and the ballad "Jesse James.”
Three years later, Dr. RW Gordon, head of the Archive of American Music, asked Lunsford to be his assistant on a ballad hunt of the region. One of the more brilliant ways Lunsford gathered songs was to hold folk song contests at local schools throughout the mountains. The prize for the best entry, by Lunsford's judgement, was 50 cents. Gordon appointed Lunsford Official Collector of folk Songs of Western North Carolina; and Lunsford's prestige grew to the point where he was considered an authority on mountain folk songs.
When Lunsford spoke about mountain music, Asheville listened. Loyal Jones writes that the Mountain Dance and folk festival evolved out of the rural gatherings by people who performed their traditional and oral literature in America for 200 years. In the 1920s, there was a profound conflict between old and new, between rural, traditional ways and the emerging industrialization in a progressive city. By now Asheville was an established tourist center and the chamber of commerce was sending ambassadors all over the country to promote "The Land of the Sky."
In 1928, the first Rhododendron festival was held. It was a gaudy show, featuring a baby show, flower show, Rhododendron Ball and as the Asheville Citizen reported, a quaint "folk frolic." This folk frolic was held on June 6 in Pack Square and was sponsored by the local Elks Lodge, the Monarchs Club and headed by none other than Bascom Lamar Lunsford.
The paper reported that over 5,000 attended and that there was "never a more colorful sight in the history of the Vance monument." The report went on to suggest that the mountain dance celebration might be continued as a permanent thing: as a festival of Western North Carolina.
David Whisnant in his critical essay on Lunsford in the Appalachian Journal writes, "In a period in which an army of profit-oriented shysters and hucksters from Nashville to New York to Hollywood were buying and selling the mountains and their culture, Bascom Lamar Lunsford kept his integrity, his eye and his ear authentic, his respect for performer and audience. "
This was Lunsford's chance to prove himself as a promoter and director. He said the festivities would begin "along about sundown" a phrase that would stay with the festival forever. He limited the music strictly to traditional songs, "Sourwood Mountain," "Sally Ann," "Cumberland Gap," and his favorite, "Kidder Cole."
This lawyer-turned-promoter spoke with authority and called the shots at the first, and every festival associated with his name. One year the judges selected a team as the winner of the dance competition, only to have Lunsford disqualify them because team member Willard Watson, a relative of Doc Watson, wore his hat during the performance. Some performers would go on as many as six times while others would not go on at all, depending on Lunsford's assessment of audience response. He gave the crowd what they came for. And they had their favorites, including Aunt Samantha Bumgarner, Obray Ramsey, banjoist George Pegram and buckdancer Bill McElreath.
In the late 1920s, Lunsford and Lamar Stringfield, who was also from Mars Hill, collaborated on publishing a folksong book called "30 and 1 folksongs.” It was Stringfield's interest in folk music that created his alliance with Lunsford. Stringfield transcribed the songs and Lunsford did the documentation. Stringfield was a classical musician and writer who was hard-pressed to find a symphony to perform his composition based on the fiddle tune "Cripple Creek." The idea was not odd considering the success of Aaron Copeland's recent composition, "Appalachian Spring." Eventually he convinced a group of local Asheville musicians to perform the piece. Shortly thereafter the composition won the Pulitzer Prize. The newly formed group became the North Carolina Symphony.
The 1930s proved to be the years of Lunsford's greatest contributions to his chosen calling. After spending some time as reading clerk for the state legislature, he was asked by Dr. Dorothy Scarborough, author of ''A Song Catcher in the Southern Mountains," to guide her on a North Carolina ballad hunt. This offer and the landmark events which followed were the results of his track record with the festival and his growing credibility as a folk scholar.
In 1934 he was sent to California as an ambassador of goodwill by the city of Asheville. Soon after Sarah Gertrude Knott directed the First Annual National folk festival in St. Louis. Lunsford stopped there on his way back from California where Knott praised Lunsford, stating that "no other person has had more influence on me (than Bascom). " In fact, she conceded that the National Festival was based on the Asheville Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. In years to come, Lunsford would bring a delegation from Asheville of his favorite folk performers, including the Soco Gap group and Aunt Samantha Bumgarner.
Through his association with Dr. Scarborough and their ballad hunt, Lunsford was asked to record his "Personal Memory" collection for Columbia University. This led to a two-week recording marathon yielding 315 folk songs played and sung before two microphones, seven hours a day. He was 52 years old at the time.
Lunsford, the formidable music resource, became the director of a WPA folk music project in 1936, eventually working for another New Deal program, the Resettlement Administration. This work was under the direction of Charles Seeger, Pete Seeger's father.
By now Lunsford felt financially adequate enough to pursue another dream. Though money was in short supply in the mid-'30s, he built a two-story home, modest in all respects except for the oversized living room that was large enough to accommodate a full blown square dance. George McCoy, editor of the Asheville Citizen called the home, "The House the 5-string banjo built."
It was during this time Lunsford met John Lair, former musical director of WLS Radio in Chicago. Lair was working for WLW in Cinncinnati and had just organized the Renfro Valley Barn Dance. With Lunsford's help he began the Ohio Valley folk Festival with Lunsford as director. Another fortuitous meeting took place for Lunsford. At Renfro Valley he met Myrtle Cooper and Scott Wiseman, otherwise known as Lulu Belle and Scotty, who were to latter popularize Lunsford's "Old Mountain Dew."
As one important event led to another in Lunsford's life, his attendance at the Fifth Annual National Folk Festival in Washington D.C. stands as a benchmark. It was there that Lunsford was asked by Franklin D. Roosevelt to perform in and direct a folk music program at the White House to entertain King George of England and Queen Elizabeth.
According to Jackie Ward, "It's been said that Bascom was directly or indirectly responsible for over 100 festivals."
In 1949 he was asked by the Library of Congress to represent the United States at the first International Folk Festival to be held in Venice, Italy. His massive scrapbook is full of pictures of the Venice trip, and also includes one of the original posters from the festival. One can imagine the expressions on the faces of curious Venetians as they watched Lunsford call an Appalachian square dance in the middle of St. Mark's Square. As Loyal Jones states in his book on Lunsford, "He was determined to leave a bit of Appalachia there."
That same year Duncan Emrich, head of the Archives of American folk Song at the Library of Congress, invited Lunsford to re-record his memory collection under technically better conditions than the original recordings done at Columbia University. The 69-year-old Lunsford obliged and a total of 317 songs, stories, fiddle tunes and dance calls became part of the Library of Congress collection.
Today, the original Columbia University and Library of Congress aluminum discs are housed at Mars Hill College in the Appalachian Room of the Memorial Library.
In the 1950s Lunsford recorded three commercial records which are still available today. He also recorded a collection of songs from Dr. John Ball at Miami University.
The '50s also saw many changes in people's attitudes about folkways as the country became more homogenized. Interest in traditional things and mountain heritage waned. Lunsford, not being a political man, despised the use of folksongs as a vehicle to promote any political philosophy. In his personal song book collection was a book by John Greenway called "American folk Songs of Protest," Lunsford wrote in the cover leaf: "I ordered this book, received it July 22, 1953. It shows to what extent left wing leaders have tried to use the legitimate folklore and folk songs to secure their own ends of sowing dissent and unrest."
Through the McCarthy era, when anyone who played a stringed instrument was considered suspect, Lunsford was never suspected of any radical behavior or considered a candidate for blacklisting. Though he was kind to Charles Seeger's son, Lunsford once ejected Pete Seeger bodily from the stage at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival for performing a protest song. Later, during the Vietnam era, Lunsford refused to have his name included in a list of folk singers who were protesting the war.
In 1960, his first wife died and he married Freda Metcalf English, a popular folk singer who accompanied him on some of his recordings. That same year Lunsford was the recipient of the Burl Ives Award for his contribution to cultural preservation.
In 1964 he suffered a stroke and missed the mountain dance festival for the first time. That March, in spite of his need for recuperation, the 83-year-old Lunsford agreed to work with film makers David Hoffman and Jonathon Gordon on a made-for-television movie titled, "Music Makers of Blue Ridge, featuring Bascom Lamar Lunsford." At first he thought it was a wonderful way to showcase "his people" and the mountains. Unfortunately it became one of his greatest embarrassments.
"I showed them the best we had and they chose the worst," he later said of the film. And it's easy to agree with him. If there was an opportunity to show mountain backwardness, the film makers kept it in.
In 1966, Lunsford suffered another stroke. The Chamber of Commerce turned the direction of the festival over to Bob Lindsey, who had come to the chamber as travel promotion manager. Lindsey's efforts were much in need since attendance at the festival had dropped considerably. He felt that the lifeblood of the festival could be stirred with increased publicity and more attention given to Lunsford as a musical treasure. Lunsford was to stay on as a consultant. The following year attendance jumped and the festival flourished. The Mountain Dance and Folk festival was Lunsford's main love throughout his later years.
By now the octogenarian received his well-deserved share of recognition. He was on the board of directors of the National folk festival for 12 years, was listed in Who's Who in Music, installed in the Mountain Music Hall of fame, and received distinguished citizen awards from the state of North Carolina and the North Carolina folklore Society.
September 6th, 1969 was declared Bascom Lamar Lunsford Day at Mars Hill College and he was named Honorary Mayor for a Day. The college gymnasium was the scene that night of the first Bascom Lamar Lunsford Mountain Music and Dance Festival, which has been an annual event ever since—held during the first week in October.
The Lunsfords moved from their home on South Turkey Creek to an apartment in Asheville that year. Jackie Ward recalls how the ailing Lunsford would attend festival meetings at the chamber office, prop up his leg and stoically take in the session like a general overseeing his troops. He would not receive visitors at the apartment unless he was properly dressed in his starched shirt, she added.
The Chamber's folk Heritage Committee gave him a birthday party at UNC Asheville that year, as did Mars Hill College, celebrating his 90th year and his contributions to folk music.
Bascom Lamar Lunsford died on September 4, 1973 after attending the 46th annual session of his Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. He was 91 years old.
Earlier this year I visited South Turkey Creek and stood by the marble monument to Lunsford that stands in the tiny graveyard behind the Western Chapel United Methodist Church. I felt a sense of loss as well as a feeling of friendship with a man who devoted his entire life to the preservation of an entire culture. Now that Lunsford is part of that heritage, the ballad collecting and festivals are being perpetuated by Mars Hill College's Richard Dillingham, Jackie and Earl Ward of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, and Loyal Jones of Berea College, in Berea, Kentucky. And people like Dave Freeman of County Records, who had the good sense to record Lunsford and his compatriots while they were still with us.
Jackie Ward believes that Lunsford is still around. She says that she sees him in the faces of the 13-year-olds in the audience of the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival.
During the festival the college media center offers a film series on mountain life and the life of Lunsford. You can also experience the admirable efforts in cultural preservation by the Southern Appalachian Center, which includes a rural life museum, based on farm life from the 1850s to the present.
The center is directed by Richard Dillingham, who oversees the preservation task forces that strive to increase the number of folk festivals and improve the quality of life for the people of the mountains.
The most unique aspect of Richard Dillingham's work is the overseeing of the Bascom Lamar Lunsford collection, which is housed in the Appalachian Room of the Memorial Library.
This massive collection includes the original pages of the songs he collected from his half century of ballad hunting: his musical instruments, the personally signed photograph he received from the Roosevelts, a showcase full of awards, his unpublished manuscript of the book he intended to write on square dancing, the actual aluminum disc recordings he made for both the Library of Congress and Columbia University and other memorabilia of a full life.
The most remarkable item in the collection is the 32"x26" scrapbook. This 405-page, nearly 100-pound tome was almost eight inches thick when the Lunsford children presented it to their dad in the 1950s.
Lunsford never missed an opportunity to get his name in print and the scrapbook is a tribute to his ability to promote his life's work and himself. Moreover, the scrapbook tells a story of the growth of Lunsford's calling, for it contains rare photos of many of the performers of his festivals, handbills, press clippings, birthday cards, letters and is peppered with Lunsford's handwritten notes throughout, like "She was a good friend" or "We must fight to preserve our folklore.”
Bascom Lamar Lunsford spent his whole life fighting for his folklore. He brought his best to preserving mountain culture, and in tum, he created a stage for mountain musicians and dancers to do their best for him and their heritage. Lunsford helped the mountain people understand and appreciate their own lives and traditions.
"I've had a lot of fun," he said in his 89th year. " I've had more fun than anybody."
Lunsford was considered the top square dance caller in the area and an adequate banjo and fiddle player: as can be attested to by listening to "Music from South Turkey Creek" on Rounder Records (#0065) or "A Collection of Mountain Banjo Songs & Tunes" on the County Label (#515). The film, "Music Makers of the Blue Ridge," demonstrates some fine banjo work by Lunsford and gives the viewer a good insight into his energy and ability to retain lyrics.
His favorite songs included. "I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground," which he learned from Fred Moody, and "Kidder Cole," a love story about a belle of the south as seen through the eyes of a broken-hearted suitor. This was a true-to-life story written by retired Supreme Court judge Felix Alley, from Cashiers Valley, concerning his youthful reminiscences. Lunsford also liked to collect banjo tunes, fiddle tunes, children's songs and stories, as well as the traditional mountain ballads of English and Scotch-Irish descent.
Lunsford used the ballad form in composing his own songs, sometimes using old familiar tunes with new words. Among the songs credited to Lunsford are, "Dogget's Gap," "I'm Goin' Away," "The fate of the Santa Barbara," "Bryan's Last Battle," "Booth" and the song for which he'll be best remembered, "Mountain Dew."
Some scholars claim that Lunsford may have borrowed the key elements for the song from an Irish tune that he possibly heard in 1916. But as Asheville folklorist Jackie Ward states, "at this point in time, it really doesn't matter." Written in 1920, while Lunsford was still active in his law practice, the story in the original version tells of a young man's day in court for running moonshine.
Today, only two of the original stanzas are used as part of the song's refrain. "Mountain Dew" in the more popular version has been recorded and performed by innumerable country artists, the more notable being Grampa Jones, Roy Acuff and Lulu Belle and Scotty. According to Richard Dillingham of Mars Hill College, Lunsford's family has received royalties on over 110,000 documented recorded usages of the song.
The current version of "Mountain Dew" came to be under interesting circumstances. Scott Wiseman, of the popular Lulu Belle and Scotty duet, heard Lunsford sing his original version a few times during visits to Wiseman's North Carolina log cottage. Not believing the song would have universal appeal with the original lyrics, he went about writing a new set of words to it.
Though their employer, WLS Radio in Chicago, would not let them sing a song about illicit liquor on the air, Lulu Belle and Scotty recorded "Mountain Dew" in 1945, retaining Bascom Lunsford as cowriter so that he could receive part of the royalties. The song was an immediate hit.
Note: These archival articles are presented exactly as they appeared at the time of the issue in which they appeared. As such, all quotes, as well as references to temporal facts, artifacts and other items are contemporaneous to the date of original publication.