Hobart Smith
Frank Proffitt
Roscoe Holcomb
GENTLEMEN
Hobart Smith was the oldest of the three gentlemen, and gentlemen is the key word when remembering and listening to their music today.
Smith was born in Virginia in 1897. Gifted as a player on fiddle, banjo, guitar, accordion, harmonica, piano and organ. Whew.
Roscoe Holcomb was born in Kentucky in 1912 — he often worked as a farmer and coal miner and it would be his corroded lungs as a coal miner that would end his life. Luckily we got his music first.
Frank Proffitt was a year younger than Roscoe and born in Tennessee and raised in North Carolina on a tobacco farm, which he took up, along with work as a carpenter and in a spark plug factory. With his own hands he made fretless banjos and dulcimers.
It was the musician and music historian John Cohen who coined the term "High Lonesome Sound" for Roscoe, but this may be heard in passages of all three gentlemen.
Play them, and watch the animals and birds come closer.
Smith was born in Virginia in 1897. Gifted as a player on fiddle, banjo, guitar, accordion, harmonica, piano and organ. Whew.
Roscoe Holcomb was born in Kentucky in 1912 — he often worked as a farmer and coal miner and it would be his corroded lungs as a coal miner that would end his life. Luckily we got his music first.
Frank Proffitt was a year younger than Roscoe and born in Tennessee and raised in North Carolina on a tobacco farm, which he took up, along with work as a carpenter and in a spark plug factory. With his own hands he made fretless banjos and dulcimers.
It was the musician and music historian John Cohen who coined the term "High Lonesome Sound" for Roscoe, but this may be heard in passages of all three gentlemen.
Play them, and watch the animals and birds come closer.
Hobart: web.ukonline.co.uk
Frank: www.loc.gov/folklife/guide/folkmusicandsong.html
Roscoe:www.southernspaces.org/.../2008/matthews/1g.htm
Frank: www.loc.gov/folklife/
Roscoe:www.southernspaces.org/.../
