Dock Boggs: His Folkways Years 1963-68

Dock Boggs

album cover

The Wise Man of Wise County

Wise County is in the extreme southwestern portion of Virginia, near the state’s borders with Kentucky and Tennessee. It’s craggy Appalachian country, where for generations coal mining was the primary employment. It’s also a cradle of much traditional American music. Bristol, the town that straddles the Virginia-Tennessee line, is where the Carter Family made the first commercially available country recordings. Bluegrass pioneer Ralph Stanley was born in nearby Stratton. Not far from there, in Norton, Moran Lee “Dock” Boggs (1898–1971) grew up. The youngest of ten children, Boggs was working in a coal mine by age twelve.

Though he’s the least famous of the Virginia pioneers, Boggs ranks among the most inventive. He was one of the first to explore the connection between Appalachian mountain music and the blues; his early recordings “Sugar Baby” and “Country Blues” from the 1920s opened up a conversation between the Virginia hills and the Mississippi Delta that continues today.

Boggs’s chosen instrument was the banjo. But he didn’t play it in the brusque “clawhammer” style of Charlie Poole and others. Instead, using an “up-picking” technique borrowed from finger-style guitarists, he plucked single notes and chords using three fingers, an approach that gave his accompaniments a marked sophistication. These rarely, however, overshadow the man’s plaintive, forever besieged vocals. As he applies this contrivance-free voice to common mountain songs, Boggs transforms the death-haunted echoes of rural blues, murder ballads, and cautionary tales of bleak prison life into time-stopping miniatures. His songs are the tragic soundtracks playing in the background of worried lives—be they obsessed and cruel lovers (“Pretty Polly”) or unrepentant alcoholics (“Drunkard’s Lone Child”).

These chilling pieces were decades ahead of the musical sensibilities of the late ’20s, and Boggs knew it: Frustrated by his lack of success, he sold his banjo in 1933 and abandoned music, making his living for a while as a bootlegger. He was rediscovered in the early 1960s by Mike Seeger of the New Lost City Ramblers, and persuaded to record for Folkways.

This two-disc set, from 1963–1968, finds Boggs revisiting his core repertoire some forty years after the initial recordings. He doesn’t make any radical changes. His voice is more weathered, almost harrowingly so, but he sings with the same fierce spirit, trusting that the truths of these sturdy, old-as-the-hills tunes will endure.

Genre: Folk
Released: 1997, Smithsonian Folkways
Key Tracks: “Sugar Baby,” “Danville Girl,” “Pretty Polly”
Collector's Note: Boggs obsessives should prepare to hunt for Country Blues, which is out of print.
Catalog Choice: Country Blues: Complete Early Recordings: (1927-29)
Next Stop: The Stanley Brothers: The Complete Columbia Recordings
After That: Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings
Book Pages: 101–102

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Comments:

#1 from David Horgan, Washington D.C. - 09/26/2008 9:42

Tom,

Enjoying the book - so far I’ve counted 10 recordings on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (1% of the list!) - I wonder what the most by any record label (major and indie) is?

I do need to point out that the Dock Boggs album (His Folkways Years , 1963-1968) was issued by Smithsonian Folkways in 1997, not by Revenant as indicated in the book/website. The “catalog choice” listed in the entry is the Revenant album (Country Blues: Complete Early Recordings”.

It would definately make a good choice to be featured as it’s essential American music that has been heard by very few people relative to other selections on the list

best,

David Horgan
marketing
Smithsonian Folkways

#2 from David Horgan, Washington, D.C. - 10/09/2008 10:40

Thanks for making the update!

#3 from stephen parker, alabama - 10/15/2008 9:41

‘country blues’ is worth the hunt. consider it the missing ingredient (with carter family and jimmie rogers) in the americana roots trinity.

#4 from David Horgan, Washington, D.C. - 10/16/2008 10:11

Great point - FYI, the Revenant “Country Blues” is a re-issue of the original Folkways album plus a few tracks:

FWRBF654
Dock Boggs - His Twelve Original Recordings
Dock Boggs

http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=133

If you are looking for the original stuff recorded in 1927 and 1929 you can get it as a custom-made CD from Smithsonian Folkways at the link above.

In fact, the entire collection of 3,000+ recordings put out by Folkways from 1948 through today (and ongoing) is in print on Custom CDs that include the original liner notes as .PDFs on the disc.) The entire collection is also available for download (with a few exceptions) from the Folkways website, iTunes, eMusic, Zune, and other sources.

1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die