Aunt Samantha Bumgarner (née
Biddix) was a fiddle and banjo player from
North Carolina who, in 1924, became the first woman to record
hillbilly music. In doing so, she opened the doors for all the great female hillbilly and country musicians who followed. Imagine for a second a world without
Brenda Lee, Iris Dement, Jean Shepard, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Norma Jean, Skeeter Davis, Sue Thompson and
Tammy Wynette, to name a few. Not a pretty place.
Samantha Biddix was born in
Dillsboro, North Carolina on Halloween, 1878, the same year
Black Bart held up his last stagecoach and, more relevantly,
Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. Her parents were
Has Biddix, himself a fiddler, and
Sara MaLynda Brown Biddix. Though Biddix showed an early interest in music, her father wouldn’t allow her to touch the
fiddle, an instrument occasionally referred to by hillbillies as a “devil’s box.” Nonetheless, when he wasn’t around, she played it and displayed a natural talent. The
banjo, then viewed as a slightly more acceptable instrument for women, was not forbidden and Biddix’s first, constructed from gourd and cat hide, was presented to her at fifteen. Later, having demonstrated her skills for her father, he bought her a ten cent model and allowed her to perform with him in the area. Ultimately, he consented to her entering a banjo competition in
Canton and she won. Gaining confidence, she began entering and winning competitions routinely.
When she married
Carse Bumgarner in 1902, he gave her her first fiddle but she remained most acclaimed for her banjo playing. A few years later she acquired the nickname “Aunt Samantha.” Although through the lens of modern ignorance, a hillbilly woman gaining fame with the banjo may seem completely out of the ordinary, it was actually fairly common for women to play the instrument, especially amongst hillbillies. In 1916, when
Cecil Sharp and
Maud Karpeles began field recording in the upper south, nearly three quarters of the hundreds of tunes they compiled as
English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians were performed by women. In addition, many famous male hillbillies learned to play from the women in their lives.
Ralph Stanley was taught to play by his mother,
Lucy Smith Stanley.
Cynthia “Cousin Emmy” May Carver taught
“Grandpa” Louis Jones.
Clarence “Tom” Ashley learned to play from his aunts,
Ary and
Daisy.
Morgan Sexton was schooled by his sister,
Hettie.
Earl Scruggs was beaten to the banjo by his older sisters,
Eula Mae and
Ruby.
By the early 20
th century, whilst still not completely respectable, several female musicians gained a measure of popularity playing banjo, including
Elizabeth “Babe” Reid,
Gertrude Evans,
Virginia “Aunt Jennie” Myrtle Wilson,
Stella Wagoner Kimble, Pearl Wagoner, Ada Lee Stump Boarman and
Julia Reece Green. By the 1920s, a veritable banjo craze swept the nation and the most popular brand was the
Whyte Ladie. In some respects, Bumgarner was merely part of a tradition involving hundreds of women before her, but as an especially talented musician who usually bested her mostly male competitors, her fame spread in the recording age in a way her predecessors never could. In 1924, she was contacted by
Columbia, hoping to capture her talents on shellac.
In April 1924, accompanied by guitarist
Eva Smathers Davis of nearby
Sylva, Bumgarner traveled to
New York City where, on the 23, she and Davis recorded ten songs both together and solo. According to
County Music Magazine, that record was also the first release by female musicians in the hillbilly genre. They were also the first recordings of a five-string banjo. Although today the
Cashville country scene has little use for anything but this week’s disposable pap,
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum there does feature the 78s of her initial recordings, which were:
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)
Aunt Samantha seemed reluctant to pursue her music professionally, although others encouraged her to. Instead, she contented herself with teaching younger musicians, including Harry Cagle, who later formedHarry Cagle and the Country Cousins. When famed quack “Dr.” John Brinkley, the so-called “Goat Gland King” (he used goat glands to treat impotency) asked her to allow him to take her to Del Rio, Texas to play on radio station, XERA, she only consented on the condition that Cagle accompany her.
In 1928, she was invited by local banjo-playing lawyer
Bascom Lamar Lunsford to play at his first
Asheville Mountain Song and Dance Festival. She did, and continued doing so every year until 1959, even though suffering from rheumatism and arthritic hands in later years. In 1936, at one such performance,
Pete Seegerwas in the audience and word of mouth about her spread amongst the folk revivalist scene. Soon she was playing
Chicago, Kansas City, New York, St. Louis and
DC, where she performed for the enjoyment of
Franklin Roosevelt. She ultimately recorded again as well, for a company in
Liverpool.
Bumgarner and her husband moved to Lovefield at some point. They never had any children and he died in 1941. Just one year after retiring from public performance, Samantha Bumgarner died of arteriosclerotic heart disease at age 82 on Christmas Eve, 1960. She’s buried in Dillsboro’s Franklin Cemetery.
Although Bumgarner herself seemed content to record rarely and stay in the hills, by the ‘30s, several
Kentuckyian women, including Cynthia “Cousin Emmy” May Carver,
Lily May Ledford and
Laverne “Molly O’Day” Williamson – perhaps encouraged by the possibilities offered to Bumgarner – all used banjo-playing to take them away from the hardscrabble lives in the tobacco fields, hills and hollers of
Bluegrass Countryto professional careers as musicians, the first of many women to follow a path made possible through a by all accounts humble Aunt Samantha.
*****
Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities — or salaried work. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century variations of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
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Eric Brightwell is an essayist, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener. He lives in Los Angeles because he loves it -- not because he was born there. He doesn't really care about street art, sleb culture, sunshine, and prefers mass and active transit to cars.
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Eric Brightwell 