Aunt Samantha Baumgarner, fiddler, banjoist, guitarist, North Carolina, Asheville

Samantha Bumgarner records the first banjo record ever

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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

She entered her first music contest in Canton, N.C., when she was still playing her “cheap 10 cent banjo,” Samantha Bumgarner told a Sylva [NC] Herald reporter years later.

Samantha Bumgarner

“And here I looked up and saw all these fine banjos coming in from Asheville. I wanted to leave, but they wouldn’t let me. I tell you I was so nervous I didn’t know I was hitting the strings. … But I won that contest. And I’ve been winning them ever since.”

Samantha’s father Has Biddix played the fiddle, but had not been keen for his daughter to take up that instrument, still in the late 19th century nicknamed by some “the Devil’s Box.” Samantha recalled that she did “sneak” the fiddle out to practice on her own. Has allowed her to have a banjo, at first home-made— “a gourd with a cat’s hide stretched over it and strings made of cotton thread waxed with beeswax”—later replaced by the aforementioned cheap store model.

It took awhile for the promising young musician to gain widespread recognition, though. She was 37 years old when Columbia Phonograph Company took notice of her and invited her and Eva Smathers Davis to New York City to record for them.

Bumgarner was probably the first Appalachian banjo player of either sex to cut a commercial record. In April 1924 she and Davis recorded 10 songs for Columbia, playing frailing-style banjo on six of the tunes, including “Shout Lou” and “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss.” Columbia billed them as ‘quaint musicians’ in their subsequent promotional ads two months later in ‘Talking Machine World’ magazine. “The fiddle and guitar craze is sweeping northward!” it cried. “Columbia leads with records of old-fashioned Southern songs and dances.”

The Columbia playlist:

Big-eyed Rabbit (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis)
Cindy in the Meadows (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis)
Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss (Samantha Bumgarner)
The Gamblin’ Man (Samantha Bumgarner)
Georgia Blues (Samantha Bumgarner)
I Am My Mother’s Darlin’ Child (Samantha Bumgarner & Eva Davis)
John Hardy (Eva Davis)
Shout Lou (Samantha Bumgarner)
Wild Bill Jones (Eva Davis)
Worried Blues (Samantha Bumgarner)

Her recordings were made only one month after OKeh records had produced tracks by Fiddlin’ John Carson and his Virginia Reelers, considered the first “hillbilly” recordings to be commercially marketed in the United States. Thus not only should Bumgarner be considered the first “banjo-pickin’ person” to record and reach a mass audience, but one of the earliest Southern mountain musicians to make it to the studio as well.

Record label for Big Eyed Rabbit, on Columbia Records, by Bumgarner/Davis
Record label for Big Eyed Rabbit, on Columbia Records, by Bumgarner/Davis. Columbia 129-D (81710). Archie Green Collection (#20002), Southern Folklife Collection/Wilson Library/University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

Although she never received critical acclaim, Bumgarner was obviously an inspiration for other women in the Southern mountains, who would emerge a decade later as some of the nation’s most popular entertainers.

***
Yonder comes a rabbit,
Fast as he can run,
If I see another one,
Gonna shoot him with a double-barrel gun.
Gonna shoot him with my gun.
***
Yonder comes a rabbit,
Slippin’ through the sand,
Shoot that rabbit, he don’t care,
Fry him in my pan,
Fry him in my pan.
***
Chorus:
Rockin’ in a weary land (x2)
or Big-eyed rabbit’s gone, gone (x2)
***
Yonder comes my darlin’,
How do I know?
Know her by her bright blue eyes,
Shinein’ bright like gold,
Shinein’ bright like gold. (Tommy Jarrell/Plank Road String Band).
***
Bob Woodcock (Pa.) supplied this verse (a coney is an old English term for a rabbit-Coney Island=Rabbit Island):
Coney on the island, coney on the run,
I’ll get that rabbit in my pan, I’ll shoot him with my gun
***

Big Eyed Rabbit Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis

sources: www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-8/8-2/full-banjo-on-her-knee.html
www.knoxville.com/news/2009/mar/29/bumgarner-plucked-out-prominent-place-in-music/
www.amoeba.com/blog/2009/03/eric-s-blog/samantha-bumgarner-fiddling-ballad-woman-of-mountains.html
MP3 from Archie Green Collection, Southern Folklife Collection/Wilson Library/University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

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8 comments

  1. Hi, enjoyed your post but I did notice that you had confused the roundpeak version of Big Eyed Rabbit with Samantha’s version, if you listen to the clip you have you will see that the tune is different, in melody as well as the verses, Brad Leftwich recorded the tune as” Are You Getting There Rabbit” and the Ledford String Band recorded a version similar to Samantha’s as “Big Eyed Rabbit”

  2. I am looking for a copy of ‘The Last Gold Dollar,’ by Samantha Bumgarner. My father had an instrumental version on 45 that made it all the way through Vietnam and back, before being broken by me when I was young. If you can help me, I would be forever grateful!
    Thank you for your time…….
    Chad West

  3. It is pretty ignorant to call this the first banjo record ever. The earliest recordings of the five string banjo took place in the 1880s in cylinder recordings.

    The five string banjo reproduced very well in early cyclinder recordings and late in the acoustic disks when they appeared in the early 20th century. Thousands of recordings of five string banjoists were made in both Europe and North America by commercial recording artists. In fact, many more ragtime recordings were made of banjoists than pianists, and probably of any other solo instruments. Van Eps and others like him became major recordings stars in the first decade of the 20th century.

    And while US recording companies were essentially racist and recorded only a handful of Black entertainers before 1920, one fo the exceptions were James Reese Europe’s society orchestra that contained no less than 5 banjoists. On the other hand European, particularly English and German recording companies recorded a number of African American banjoists in the first two decades of the 20th century.

    There is a quite ignorant approach to banjo history that isolated banjoes as something “Appalachian” or native to “mountain folk” or whatever, but across the mid 19th Century there was a massive world of commercial, popular music, and art music banjo entertainment that involved stars on an international level. At the turn of the century leading banjoists like the AfroAmerican Bohee brothers gave lessons to the British Royal family and banjoists like Horace Weston, another African American, did command performances in Buckingham palace in the 80s.

  4. Dear Chad,
    I have THE LAST SILVER DOLLAR on tape. Samantha Bumgarner was my great aunt and Western Carolina University has sent me some of her originals. I’ll be happy to make a copy for you if you like,
    Cody Biddix

  5. My one Eva Garner and Samantha Blumgarner flag Columbia 78 rpm is among my most prized possessions. Just wonderful artists and moving recordings. Despite what Tony Thomas says which is pretty much 99% negative and borderline hostile, I think what the poster above meant to say was this was the first banjo 78 rpm record recorded by what would later become known as bluegrass or country music, a significant title to hold in American music. People like Van Eps and Vess Ossman obviously are not bluegrass or country, nor is the AA artists you seem to be obsessed with, Tony. I think it’s much more topical and helpful to focus on the actual artists being discussed on this page, and their significant and beautiful contribution to the history of 78 rpms and the canon of recorded music.

  6. The writer didnt say this was the first 78 in this category by a woman, but the first banjo recording. As such it was off by about 40 years. It is also off by probably 5-10 years to more years for the first 78, and if you want to talk about old time music, not bluegrass you can say it is about 10 years older. I spend my time studying banjo history and my work on this issue has been published by Oxford University Press, Duke UP, and U of Illinois Press. I have presented at most of the Banjo Collectors gatherings since 2005 and have given presentations on banjo history at the Suwanee Banjo Camp,m Banjo Camp North, at universities, folk organizations, and music history gatherngs across the US, and in Sweden, Germany, and England. Please tell me what research you have done on this issue?

  7. The headline says “Samantha Bumgarner records the first banjo record ever” It is wrong by 40 years. In 1924 there had been THOUSANDS of banjo recordings dating back to the 1880s in the US, Europe, even Australia and New Zealand. So this is not true. This was not the first 78 either. It probably isnt the first 78 in the genre that would be known as old time music. It is just wrong. it doesn’t take away from her, but it is factually true and illustrates the real history of the banjo. If the real history of the banjo is offensive to you, that is a problem.

  8. Tony Thomas is one of the tops researchers on the banjos roots in Africa as well as it’s prevalence in early America as African slaves fashioned instruments that resembled those they had played in their homeland. They also crafted bowed instruments. Thus it’s certainly true that the banjo was common among African-Americans. I would be interested in exploring early audio recordings of African-Americans playing the banjo and would love to hear recordings on early wax cylinders and discs of this music. But, that’s a different topic than this article .

    Yes… The title of this article is incorrect and false and misleading. Yet the content of this article seems to be mostly factual and interesting.

    In the article we read “Bumgarner was probably the first Appalachian banjo player of either sex to cut a commercial record.” That sentence is worth exploring. First we need to define what is meant by “Appalachian banjo player”.

    What are the earliest other recordings of European-American banjo players who lived in “Appalachia” … if any?

    There are certainly earlier recordings of many other banjoists playing other banjo styles, such as Van Epps. and Ossman. There are earlier recordings of tunes such as Turkey In The Straw, which are often associated with southern Appalachia.

    Are there early (pre-1924) recordings which are similar in style to the banjo style of Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis? Are those recordings European Amerians or African Americans?

    That leads back to a comparison of early African-American banjo playing, later minstrel banjo styles, ,and the clawhammer and failing and 2 finger style of banjo played by European Americans in Southern Appalachia.

    Tony Thomas would certainly be one of the top experts who might be able to address this question. ( I’ve read previous discussions of this question but am not qualified to discuss it.)

    My particular interest is focused on the banjo styles played in Western North Carolina in the 1800s and early 1900s. I would love to be able to document particular African-Americans in that area who played the banjo (and /or fiddle) during that time period.
    I have read where certain early European American fiddlers and banjo players in that area say that they learned from African-Americans. For example, Osey Helton, who lived near Asheville and made recordings about the same time frame as Samantha Bumgarner, claims to have “learned to fiddle from an African American former slave who worked with his father at a whiskey distillery in Asheville. ”
    I am confident there are many many other examples.
    Samantha Bumgarner credits her father Has Biddix as being a strong influence on her banjo and fiddle playing. Could the Biddix family have been influenced by any African-American musicians in that area?

    Other early traditional musicians in Western North Carolina who I’m researching include

    John Harrison Sneed b.1847
    Jesse Hilliard Rogers b.1848
    Haselton Leander Biddix b.1852
    Joe Orr b. 1853
    Mitchell Wallin b.1854
    J D Harris b.1859
    James Silas Kirkpatrick b.1859
    Arthur Watkins b.1872
    John D Weaver b. 1872
    Julius Sutton b.1873
    Bill Hensley b.1873
    Samantha Bumgarner b.1878
    The Helton Brothers b.1879
    Marcus Martin b.1881
    Bascom Lamar Lunsford b.1882
    Manco Sneed b.1885
    Otis Sherrill Kuykendall b.1886
    George W Landers b.1886
    G B Grayson b.1887
    Eva Davis b. 1888

    (Note: Some of these musicians claimed to be part-Cherokee)

    I hope to find if any of these musicians were influenced by African-American musicians..

    The haystacks are many and the needles are small… but I enjoy a challenge.

    Don Talley
    Black Mountain NC
    dontalley@gmail.com

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