Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music by Barry Mazor - Book Review

Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music by Barry Mazor (Chicago Review Press, 2014, 340 Pages, $13.49/28.96) is a must read title for anyone interested in the development and popularization of roots music, not only from the U.S. but from Latin America, too. Peer is justly renowned for his early recording and popularization of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. His larger influence on the development of popular music based on roots source material, his vision of how to develop and import international music, and the long lasting nature of his influence are much less well known. In journalist Barry Mazor's carefully researched authorized biography, Peer emerges as a prototype of a certain kind of mid-twentieth century American entrepreneur who was able to make a substantial fortune, build a lasting influence, and live his life with dignity, honesty, and honor. To achieve such a life and reputation in the cut-throat environment of the recording and publishing industry is quite a trick. Mazor presents the story in well-crafted prose that never becomes stilted or pedantic, despite his scholarly approach to the subject matter. Ralph Peer belongs in the library of any student of twentieth century American music.

Ralph Sylvester Peer was born in independence, Missouri in 1892. His father had a small store selling sewing machines, where Peer worked as a youth. As phonographs developed in the early twentieth century, it made sense that Abram Peer would add them to his product line. Thus, Peer grew up in a technological environment where he learned to tinker with phonographs. From early in his life he was viewed as technologically inclined, spending his spare time tinkering and, and as a hobby gardening, which would later become an important element in his life, too. He went to work for the Columbia Phonograph Company, supplying phonograph shops with parts to repair their product. The need for product to feed the hunger of phonograph owners for product for listening led him, perhaps inevitably, to recording and quickly into finding and developing artists to record and markets for phonographs in under-served communities. This led to Peer's lifetime in the record industry, first as an A & R (Artists and Repertoire) man and soon as a music publisher, where he spent the remainder of his long and eventful career. Peer died in 1960.

Ralph Peer

The foundation of Peer's recording fame lies in the well-known Bristol Sessions held in July and August of 1927 during which supervised the recording of local music by a number of artists including the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, The Stonemans, and several gospel groups among others. Now called the “Big Bang” of country music in America, the Bristol sessions set in motion the development of local and regional performers, originally sought out to bolster local record sales, into national acts that would find a larger market. Along the way, Peer signed many of these same artists to personal publishing contracts under a separate company he formed called Southern Music, specializing initially in hillbilly and race records, in which he accumulated and distributed royalties to the performers, keeping a substantial and ethical portion for himself. For company internal political and economic reasons, Peer separated himself from direct employment with RCA, largely because he was personally making so much money. Southern Music was later sold back to Peer and was eventually renamed Peer Southern and is now known as peermusic, typically rendered in lower case letters.

Less well known is that Peer had first recorded early old-time musicians in the Southern Piedmont and New York from the early twenties onward. In 1922, Mamie  Smith was the first black artist specifically recorded to appeal to an African-American audience. Fiddlin John Carson and Charlie Poole were among the now seminal artists also recorded. Peers great gift was to see the appeal such artists, and the many more he recognized and recorded through the next decade or so, could have beyond local and regional appeal. He saw the synergies that could be achieved by matching these artists with different combinations of back-up instrumentation to reach out to broader audiences. At the beginning of their recording careers, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of artists signed publishing contracts with Ralph Peer, who managed the recording of their material by insisting on hiring performers who were also writers and whose work could be copyrighted under the Southern imprint.

An integral part of this book is the central role of Ralph Sylvester Peer in developing, incorporating, and exploiting the ever widening opportunities in commercial, popular music. Finding black jazz performers to back roots artists, for instance, opened up separate markets for the same performances. Signing Bill Monroe, whose music Mazor describes as, “a dynamic musical conversation between the traditional and the very up-to-date.” marked another seminal moment. Such an argument suggests Monroe's own commitment to finding and making these very same connections in his own music and expecting others to continue to do so. Mazor's chapter on the founding of BMI as a rival for the Broadway oriented ASCAP catalog that excluded hillbilly, race, and country music from mainstream recording is the best capsule account of this highly competitive period I've read. I've yet to find the narrower account of the story of the rivalry between these two performers rights organizations. Peer's influence spread to importing Latin American music to the U.S. during the thirties and forties, his work with Walt Disney and MGM in film scores, and much more. Peer deserves to be more widely known and understood. Barry Mazor's book helps accomplish this goal. A list of the artists signed by Peer to Peer Southern contracts, many still widely known and appreciated, would fill several pages if included in this review.

Barry Mazor

Barry Mazor is a longtime music, media, and business journalist and the author of Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, winner of Belmont University's Best Book on Country Music award. He has written regularly for the Wall Street Journal and No Depression magazine; his writing has also appeared in the Oxford American, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, Nashville Scene, American Songwriter, and the Journal of Country Music. (Author Profile from Chicago Review Press)

More than fifty years after his death, Ralph Peer's work still plays an important role in the publication and performance of music, not only in America, but around the world. Even in pursuing his hobby of collecting and cultivating camellias, Peer, because of his thoroughness and gentlemanly demeanor, became known worldwide as he avidly sought out and distributed new and lovely varieties of this beautiful plant. His cultivation of camellias can stand as a metaphor for his cultivation of people and music. In his book Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music (Chicago Review Press, 2014, 340 Pages, $13.49/28.96) Barry Mazor has presented a portrait of the best kind of American businessman – ethical, honest, true to his calling, wildly successful, and still admired. Peer Southern, still largely a family business, continues to be influential and widely admired. Spending time with this fascinating and influential pioneer in the development of popular music has indeed been a treat. I bought this book in an electronic format and read it on my Kindle app.

Pete Seeger 1919 - 2014

We lost a great American today. Pete Seeger influenced generations of American youth, standing for peace and justice for all across the generations without regard for carefully nuanced positions or polls. He followed his conscience and often served as the conscience of the country. Much will be written and shown about Pete Seeger over the next few days and weeks. I'd like to spend a little while writing about what he meant to me during a time when he spoke to a generation of American youth who needed to hear what he had to say.

My earliest memories of Pete Seeger, although I didn't know it was him at the time, was his reedy voice singing "The Golden Vanity" and "Blow the Man Down" with the Almanac Singers on a little remembered collection on 10" 78RPM records from the 1940's. The Almanac Singers, which included Woody Guthrie and Lee Hays, are probably better remembered for their collections of Union Songs. Here's their rendition of "The Talking Union Blues" recorded in July 1941, coincidentally, the month I was born:

Talking Union

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I sang and played this song when I was in high school, along with a couple of other Woody Guthrie talking blues, including "Talking Guitar." I owned an LP record of "Talking Union" by Pete Seeger. His loyalty to the labor movement during the late 30's and into the 40's earned him an investigation by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) and probably cost him millions of dollars, while cementing his reputation as an American of both conviction and courage.

Pete Seeger was a dynamic, arresting solo performer. I saw him twice during the sixties. Both times were at Houston Hall at the University of Pennsylvania. The first concert was with my friend from Westtown School, Tom Satterthwaite. The second time I went with my girl friend Irene Mulford, to whom I've now been married for nearly fifty years.  As a solo performer, Pete would walk out onto the stage alone and start to sing...no introduction, just Pete.  Here are some clips of a live concert in Australia in 1963. While it's part of a larger advertisement for a complete live concert. This is how I remember seeing him for the first time, perhaps a year or two earlier:

Excerpts from 1963 Australia Concert

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Later I bought all the Weaver's albums as well as Pete's banjo instruction recording, which, sadly, I no longer own. When the folk revival really got going, Pete was banned from TV until the Smothers Brothers forced CBS to allow Pete to sing his anti-Vietnam War song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on their hit show.

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The only time I ever met Pete Seeger was at the 1979 edition of his Great Clearwater Revival Festival near his home in Beacon, New York, a festival dedicated to restoring the Hudson River by cleaning out the industrial waste.  I was the newly appointed headmaster of a small Quaker prep school in Poughkeepsie, where Pete had appeared several times in benefit concerts. It was a job I wasn't well prepared for and I lasted less than a year there. Meeting Pete the summer before school began remains a highlight of that year for me.

Seeger's greatest success came, perhaps, with The Weaver's. Here's a clip from a 1951 concert catching them at their dynamic best. The group was a huge hit until the HUAC investigation, which, among other things, killed this ground breaking popular folk group.

The Weavers in Concert

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My memories of a young, vital Pete Seeger are alive and real. I decided not to see the declining Pete at his 90th birthday show at Merlefest a few years ago, so I retain the earlier pictures in my mind. Take your own trip around YouTube to find lots of Pete Seeger through the years, listen to him on your favorite streaming vehicle, and get to know him better. You'll find the journey worth your effort.

Pete Seeger 1919 - 2014

 

Merlefest 2010 - Preview

How to Thrive at Merlefest

In the years since its founding in 1988, Merlefest has become the brand name for acoustic music festivals along the east coast and across the country. It attracts visitors from around the world to Wilkes County, North Carolina in the last weekend in April and has contributed huge amounts of money to its sponsoring institution, Wilkes Community College. Begun as a small event to celebrate the life of Eddy Merle Watson, Doc Watson's son, who was sadly killed in a tractor accident, it has become a giant event, attracting tens of thousands of music fans and the best practitioners of acoustic music each year. Now, with fifteen stages ranging from the huge Watson main stage to the tiny Plaza Stage and out-of-the-way venues like the Mayes Pit and the Lounge, Merlefest presents a sometimes daunting and always interesting logistical problem for attendees wishing to get the most from four days spent there. If there are 15,000 people on campus on a given day, there are 15,000 different festivals going on. This post is designed to help people attending Merlefest use the resources available to get the most possible enjoyment from their time there. We first attended in 2003, and a new world of musical experience and excitement was opened to us. Our wonder at its breadth, diversity, and excitement has not wained. The festival has changed, matured over the years, but its commitment to celebrating the traditional while introducing and advancing the new and innovative remains a central aspect of its appeal, first ennunciated by Doc himself. I hope this small guide provides some assistance.

 Watson Stage

Crowd at Creekside Stage

 

The Music: A look at the Merlefest list of performers and acts scheduled for the Watson Stage suggests the direction Merlefest sees itself going. The overall list of performers contains many Merlefest favorites (of course Doc Watson as well as Sam Bush, Peter Rowan, George Hamilton IV, David Hold, the Kruger Brothers, Pete & Joan Wernick and many others), many of whom have been performing at Merlefest since its beginning. You may, however, have to hunt around for the venue where you'll be able to see these historic figures as newer and more youth oriented acts tend to dominate the large venues. Merlefest has also proven itself to be a bellweather at identifying and recognizing rising figures in acoustic music. This year many bands we haven't heard of or seen are on the schedule. They include: The Gravy Bros, WPA, Johnson's Crossroad, and many others. Also included are bands we know and seek out in our own festival rounds: The Gibson Brothers, Balsam Range, The Greencards, and the Steep Canyon Rangers, this year featuring Steve Martin. Other attendees will find their favorites as well as other bands they've wanted to see but not had the opportunity yet.

Sam Bush

 

Tut and Lee Taylor at Plaza Stage

The Watson Stage performances through the four days of Merlefest suggest a direction the festival is taking. In the years we've attended Merlefest, only one Sunday closer has kept the grounds filled late into Sunday afternoon. When Alison Krauss and Union Station closed Merlefest a few years ago, you couldn't see the back of the audience! In recent years, Sunday has featured nostalgic performances by aging artists. Last year's mariachi program by Linda Ronstadt and a troupe of Mexican singers and dancers signalled an important multi-cultural statement but couldn't hold an audience. This year, Merlefest is being closed by the Avett Brothers, a highly entertaining group with huge appeal to younger audiences. Other Watson Stage performances on Sunday afternoon include The Lee Boys with the Travelin' McCourys and W.P.A., an indie band including Sean Watson, formerly of Nickle Creek, and Luke Bulla, who has performed with Bela Fleck and Jerry Douglas. This afternoon of music, along with the very energetic celtic band Scythian will be loud, rock-tinged, plugged in, and attractive to a much younger demographic than Sunday has traditioanlly offered at Merlefest.

The Local Boys on the Cabin Stage

The Food Tent

Another feature of the Watson Stage, where performers are confronted with sixty rows of reserved seats appears to be that younger groups with a youthful appeal are scheduled there before 5:00 P.M., when seats are open to all. Remember, when the owners arrive to claim their seat to gracefully and quickly relinquish it. Evening groups, when the reserved seats are truly reserved are set aside for audiences who seek a more traditional or familiar experience until the last performance, when, if there's a mass exodus, the emcee often invites all in again. Main stage evening performances feature Taj Mahal and Rhonda Vincent & the Rage on Thursday, country singer Dierks Bently featuring the Travelin' McCourys as well as Daily & Vincent and Sam Bush on Friday, and Elvis Costello followed by The Steep Canyon Rangers featuring Steve Martin on Saturday. This scheduling should keep these seats pretty well filled for most of the days. The large jams featuring several bands performing together seem to have been eliminated. The My Friend Merle set, formerly found on the Watson Stage has been moved to the indoor Walker Center, perhaps as an accomodation to Doc Watson's age. People wishing to see Doc perform this year will need to seek him out.

It May Rain, But There's Always a Rainbow

Use the Map: The Merlefest Map on line has been vastly improved and made much more usable. By making it more to scale and allowing readers to zoom in on various parts of the map, Merlefest has provided a clearer idea of how the WCC campus is laid out and how to navigate from venue to venue. The only problem lies in the absence of topographical detail. The Watson stage and many important parts of the campus lie on a flat plain surrounded by rather steep hills. To move from, say, the Watson Stage or Creekside to The Walker Center or the Hillside Stage requires not only a walk, but a climb. People planning to attend a performance at Creekside and then move to the Hillside Stage must allow about half an hour and be prepared to climb several hundred feet. Thus, conditioning becomes a factor.

Hillside Stage Crowd for Album Hour

 

Hillside on Sunday Morning

Study the Schedule: The Merlefest Web site has the complete schedule and makes it available as a PDF document. Download the schedule and study it! The schedule will take 12 pieces of paper and some ink, a good expenditure if you wish to use your time well during Merlefest. You can waste hours of time standing in the middle of the campus trying to decide which way to turn and where to go next. While you don't want to be in a constant rush at Merlefest, you do want to attend as many musical events as you can while also enjoying the ambience, getting enough to eat and drink, and putting aside time to get some rest.

Browsing the Shoppes at Merlefest

The Expo Tent

Shopping at Merlefest: The Expo tent at Merlefest is the place to shop for instruments and instrument accessories. Top manufacturers of all major acoustic instruments have booths at Merlefest, either in the Expo tent, behind it on the path to the Creekside stage, which is sponsored by Gibson, or in the much larger Shoppes at Merlefest area, which is a sort of mall. All these venues can offer pretty good bargains. The Merlefest Mall where CD's and other band memorabilia can be purchased, on the other hand, is quite expensive, since a $3.00 premium is added to all merchandise in support of the Wilkes County Chamber of Commerce. This puts buyers in a tough position, because there's a huge choice of CD's, t-shirts, and DVD's available from most Merlefest performers. Saturday afternoon is often a good time to shop for new instruments in the Expo tent, as many dealers and manufacturers would rather make a good deal than carry merchandise home with them. There's also a crafts tent selling higher end crafts, including some very good instruments. Some instrument vendors prefer The Shoppes at Merlefest as a sales venue, perhaps because space costs less there. Regardless, there are plenty of vendors selling very good instruments available at Merlefest if you're in the market for one. There's also clothing, art work, crafts, and much more available. Shopping at Merlefest is fun and provides a break from music, if you want one.

The Plaza 

Jamming Area 

Eating at Merlefest: A few years ago, in an effort to provide more green space and distribute the crowds more evenly, food vending was somewhat decentralized. The main food vending tent is a huge circus tent to the left of the Watson Stage. A number of organizations including churches, Wilkes Community College student organizations, and service clubs sell food ranging from snacks and coffee to full meals. Meal service includes barbecue pork and chicken, spaghetti, Thai food, and more. The food is well-prepared, tasty, and reasonably priced. This tent is exceptionally crowded during dinner meal breaks. At other times, the lines are fairly short and move well. Time your eating away from the breaks and do yourself a favor. There is lots of seating under the tent, and it's near enough to the stage to be able to hear well and eat at the same time. There's also food service near the Shoppes at Merlefest including excellent coffee, hot dogs, ice cream, and so-on. Near the children's activity area, including the Little Pickers Tent, food more desireable to children is sold, including such fair fare as funnel cakes and corn dogs. Many people bring their own food into the festival in coolers or back packs. Please remember that all carry in bags (including cameras and baby tote bags) are subject to inspection. Any alcohol or illegal drugs will be confiscated. I only wish they'd do the same for tobacco. No such luck, but smoking is supposed to be severely restricted. There are spaces set aside for smoking, but then, smokers don't like to breathe other people's smoke either. Anyway, there are plenty of food choices and the price is right for this kind of venue.

Pre-Festival Jams Sponsored 

by

Wilkes Acoustic Folk Society 

The Late Donnie Swaim and Wife Lynn at Jams

 

Jammin'

Rest Room Facilities: There are plenty of porta-potties spread out over the festival grounds, and they're kept remarkably clean by the several roving pump trucks available. Also, many of the campus buildings are open with clean rest rooms in an air-conditioned environment. In recent years, the fetival has also provided portable flush toilet facilties, which are also cooled. These tend to get long lines, especially on the women's side, so don't hesitate to use those little blue plastic conveniences. They're just fine.

Smokers Persist

The Plaza Stage

 

Weather: The Wilkes Community College campus features a flat plain where the Watson Stage and many other stages are located surrounded on two sides by quite pretty hills, one with campus buildings rising up from them and the other featuring very nice housing. Wilkesboro is set on the eastern edge of the Smokey Mountains. The festival is held the last weekend in April Springtime in Wilkes County can be counted on to feature variable weather and you can expect quite a range of it during the four days of Merlefest. On sunny days, the campus can be very warm. If it's clear, when the sun goes down a chill, damp miasma will flow into the Watson Stage area allowing the air to become quite chilly. We've experienced temperatures from the mid-eighties down into the low forties on the same day. We always come to the campus with three or four layers of clothing, sun block, and plenty of water to help us stay hydrated. The most important items of clothing are dry warm socks and a winter cap. Keep your extemities warm and you can keep fairly comfortable at night.

Alberti Flea Circus

Little Pickers

 

Small Joys: It's easy to allow yourself to be enticed by the big stages and big names. Action on the Watson stage, the Album hour on Saturday afternoon at Hillside, or the closer intimacy of big-time bands at Creekside all claim large audiences. However, there are smaller and more humble venues at Merlefest which can yield wonderful and surprising joys. The Little Picker's tent provides a place for young performers to strut their stuff and name performers to present music for children. Stop by there to check out the next generations of musicians. While you're there, look for the Alberti Flea Circus and watch Mr. Alberti put his tiny charges through their paces. Take a look at the delight on the faces of young and old. Look for the jugglers and stilted giants walking about the grounds. Spend some time watching the annual sand sculpture grow towards completion. Go to the Traditional tent to hear cloggers or shaped note singing on Sunday morning. Visit the jamming area sponsored by the Wilkes Acoustic Folk Society. Stop at the Plaza stage to say hello to Tut Taylor, at age 86 still a wonder and an innovator as the “flat picking dobro man.” Spend some time wandering the grounds doing some good solid people watching. What a bunch of wonderful and diverse characters attend Merlefest!

Last year Merlefest took a significant financial hit, along with all the rest of us, when the economy was so scary that many people just couldn't take the chance of spending the amount of money this huge event costs. This year the people who do the thinking appear to have changed the demographic focus, particularly on Sunday, to attract and hold a younger, and perhaps more affluent, crowd through closing on Sunday afternoon. One can only hope this gambit succeeds. In the end, Merlefest still represents the goals set by Doc Watson in the beginning, to offer “traditional plus” music. While the overall sound has become increasingly contemporary in recent years, the traditional is still clearly there while the range of music growing from the traditional has expanded and come to dominate the festival. The mixture remains interesting and compelling.

Mando Mania at Creekside

R & R Tend

Sand Sculpture by Sandy Feat

Merlefest 2009 - Sunday

Sunday at Merlefest was hot and dry. The preliminary announced attendance for the week was above 70,000 and there were a couple of record setting days. Not bad for a deep economic decline. Merlefest seemed to be a worry-free zone for four days, which had to supply some renewal for people facing difficult times. I'll be writing a much more detailed assessment of the entire festival soon. Look for it on Wednesday or Thursday. For now, pictures of the last day will have to do. Before going to the pics, however, I want to give special thanks to Ken and Bobbie Glass and their staff at Dine-n-Dash at 1299 Collegiate Avenue on the access road to the Merlefest grounds. They serve fine breakfasts, lunches, and frozen yogurt specialities as well as fancy coffees. The best thing, for us, is that they have a very good internet connection and encourage customers to settle in and do their work. Enjoy the food, the hosts, and the internet!

Dine-n-Dash

Ken & Bobby Glass with Two of their Staff

Shaped Note Singing in the Traditional Tent
for Bob & Ann Cook

Janet & Greg Deering in the Expo Tent

Sierra Hull & Highway 111

Sierra

Clay Hess and his Hayes Guitar

Cory Walker

Jim Van Cleve

Jacob Eller

Wayne C. Taylor (Wayne Taylor & Appaloosa)
Taking in the Scene

Pete Wernick on the Cabin Stage

Eric & Leigh Gibson Make Merlefest Debut
as Pete's Guests

Eric Gibson, Leigh Gibson, Pete Wernick & Buddy Green
on Cabin Stage

T. Michael Coleman, Jack Lawrence & Tony Williamson
at Americana Stage

Steve Barker & Dr. Tommy Bibey on Plaza Stage

The Greencards on the Hillside

Carol Young

Eamon McLaughlin
Kym Warner

Jake Stargell

The Gibson Brothers on Hillside

Eric & Leigh Gibson

Eric

Leigh

Mike Barber

Clayton Campbell

Joe Walsh

Linda Ronstadt
featuring
Los Camperos de Nati Cano

Linda Ronstadt

Linda