Black Mountain Rag: A Song History

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"Black Mountain Rag" is one of the great showpieces of Southern fiddling. The folklorist Charles Wolfe called it one of the most popular fiddle tunes "in modern history."[1] It goes back to the Virginia fiddler Leslie Keith (1906–1977), a contest winner who later played with the Stanley Brothers.[2] Keith did not claim to have made it up from nothing. By his own account he took a bit of the Stripling Brothers' recording of "The Lost Child" and added pieces of two or three Carter Family tunes. He called the result "Black Mountain Blues," after a mountain in Cumberland County, Tennessee.[1] The Striplings, an Alabama fiddle-and-guitar duo, had recorded "The Lost Child" for Vocalion in Birmingham in November 1928.[3] Some writers trace the tune further back, to "The Lost Indian."[1] Sources also differ on when Keith put it together. Accounts range from the 1930s to the early 1940s.[1][4][5]

1937 photograph of mountain fiddler Bill Hensley playing the fiddle in Asheville, North Carolina

Ben Shahn, “Fiddlin' Bill Hensley, mountain fiddler, Asheville, North Carolina,” photograph, 1937. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

How "Blues" became "Rag" is less clear. Two famous fiddlers, Tommy Magness and Curly Fox, are said to have heard Keith play it on the radio and taken it into their own repertoires.[5] One account credits Magness with turning it into a showpiece under the name "Black Mountain Rag."[4] Another says Fox renamed it on his King Records release, which reportedly sold more than 600,000 copies.[1] Sources also disagree on who recorded it first. A biography of Magness says he made the first recording while fiddling with Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys in 1946–47.[6] Other references date Fox's King recording to 1946, 1947 or 1948.[1][5] Whatever the order, the tune spread quickly. Keith's later work with Ralph and Carter Stanley helped make it part of the bluegrass repertoire.[4]

Many people know the tune today from guitar, not fiddle. Doc Watson said it was one of the first fiddle tunes he managed to play on guitar. He worked those parts out in the 1950s, while playing in a dance band that had no fiddler.[7] He put "Black Mountain Rag" on his 1964 debut album for Vanguard, and it became one of his signature pieces.[8] Fiddlers often play it in a cross tuning such as AEac# or GDad, and it is at home in both old-time and bluegrass fiddling.[1]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Black Mountain Rag (1)".
  2. Wikipedia: "Leslie Keith".
  3. Wikipedia: "Stripling Brothers".
  4. California Bluegrass Association: "Happy Birthday Leslie Keith".
  5. SecondHandSongs: "Black Mountain Rag written by Leslie Keith".
  6. BluegrassBios.com: "Magness, Tommy".
  7. WUNC (NPR): "Self-Taught Folk Music Icon Doc Watson Dies At 89".
  8. Wikipedia: "Doc Watson (album)".