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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview R-0020, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Barbara Greenlief of Kentucky describes the life and career of her mother, Lily May Ledford, a popular Southern singer. Greenlief begins the interview by describing her maternal grandmother's influence on her mother's ideas about music and about gender ideals. Although it was Ledford's father who instilled in her an appreciation for music, the ballads her mother sang to her when she was young would later serve as inspiration for her career. Perhaps more importantly, Greenlief describes in detail the expectations her grandmother had about gender roles, which were in many ways shaped by the Appalachian culture in which they lived. According to Greenlief, her grandmother did not see the pursuit of music as a "respectable" career, nor did she necessarily want her daughters to pursue any type of work that cut against the grain of gender ideals. Nevertheless, Ledford became a professional musician—along with her sisters—during the 1930s, and remained a member of the Coon Creek Girls into the 1950s. Assembled by manager John Lair, the Coon Creek Girls was an all-woman group that performed "hillbilly" or folk music. Greenlief describes the tensions that marked her mother's working relationship with John Lair, arguing that her mother was both appreciative of his impact on her professional success and resentful of the control he exerted over her. Throughout the interview, Greenlief focuses on the ways in which her mother struggled to reconcile her public independence with her internalized beliefs that it was improper for women to challenge men or gender ideals. Ledford struggled with this tension both professionally with Lair and personally in her two marriages, and Greenlief's descriptions of those struggles demonstrate the ways in which gender norms functioned in southern culture during the mid-twentieth century. After leaving the Coon Creek Girls during the late 1950s and divorcing her second husband in the late 1960s, Ledford began to exert more independence in her personal and professional life. Greenlief describes how her mother's work with musicians like Mike Seeger and academics like Loyal Jones, as well as her political activism during the 1970s, enabled her to exercise more control, although she argues that her mother never was able to fully confront the men who controlled her life in various ways.
The daughter of southern singer Lily May Ledford, Barbara Greenlief, recalls the life and career of her mother. Focusing primarily on her mother's years spent performing with the Coon Creek Girls, Greenlief describes her mother's working relationship with her manager, John Lair, and the ways in which she struggled to reconcile her desire for independence with her adherence to gender ideals of the day.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Could you tell me when and where you were born?
I was born in Berea, Kentucky, actually, in 1947, July second. And at that time my parents were playing at Renfro Valley, both my parents at that time.
I know some about your mother's childhood, but could you tell me her brothers' names? That's one thing I haven't gotten.
Okay. There was Marion, Kermit, Coyen, Kelly, Joe, and two of them died when she was a very young girl. That was Kelly and Joe. And the rest of them, with the exception of Kermit, are also gone now.
Was there a Custer too?
And Custer, yeah, I forgot Custer.
Okay. Because that's the one that married Violet.
Right. And Custer. I'm sorry. Yeah.
And where was she in that line-up?
She was third from the oldest, I believe that's right. I'm not sure about that. But I have documentation downstairs that we can look at to tell you that.
Okay. Did you know your grandmother very well, Stella May Ledford?
Yes. Uh huh. Yeah.
Can you tell me a little bit about her?
She was a very delightful, expressive person who was a very hard-working
type, kind of the typical mountain woman. She was the person in the
family who kept everything going. She was the worker. In her later
years, of course I never met my grandfather, he was dead before I was
born, but she still did gardening and killing chickens and all of the
things the way she had always done them. Had the outhouse and all;
that's the way she wanted it. Her influence, I think, on the children
was work, work, work. You know, although I think she was very proud of
Coon—I know she was very proud of the Coon
She had a happy life?
Yeah. She was very happy; she had a very kind of standard way of doing
things day to day, very country, very down-to-earth, but kind of
no-nonsense, too.
You said she was proud of the Coon Creek Girls' success. Did she think that that was a worthwhile career to pursue for a woman, or for anybody?
I think she probably was comfortable feeling that way later in life, but not when they left home. She was very concerned about it. Didn't want them to do it; felt that was for low-class people, you know, to pursue. And, although it helped the family financially, from very early on, once Mom got to Chicago and started playing on the WLS Barn Dance and started sending money back to the family, and shoes, and the kinds of things that were hard to come by. It did help the family financially, and she appreciated those things, but I think probably privately she always felt like she would have rather them to have done something else. She was not really tuned into the music very much. She didn't go around humming tunes and you know, doing the kind of thing you would think would have happened. That was from Mom's father. So, and her mother and dad weren't really partners in the music. It was all from him, and she viewed him as kind of lazy as a result of wanting to play so much music. So that was another factor that kind of entered in, is that she felt like that was taking him away from the things he should concentrate—he wasn't much of a, he wasn't ambitious in terms of providing for the family.
When you say that she felt that the life of a musician was kind of a low-class occupation, do you know where she got that sense from?
No, I really don't. I know they had, they lived up in Powell County, real back in, back in the [Red River] Gorge area, and she had come from Pike County, Kentucky, which is very eastern Kentucky, back in the mountains type place. Music is something people did for fun, you know, just for recreation, and a lot of times drinking went along with that. She was very opposed to drinking; she had been raised by a father who drank—this is my grandmother—and so I think she probably had real negative connotations about those two pairing up—the drinking and the music, you know, although I don't think my grandfather drank. I've never heard stories about that. She just felt like it was something that kept you from doing work.
So her father drank?
My grandmother's father drank.
That's interesting, though, because your mother, in her writings, always described him as a hard-shell Baptist, so he was religious on the one hand, but on the other hand….
Yeah, and he was also very harsh. And she—Mom has said she married my grandfather to get away, you know, at a very early age—from him.
Was there also sort of a connotation with being a musician, even if that was your occupation, if you were a professional musician, that that was sort of an easy way out, or, that was sort of what lazy—was there any kind of implication of that for her, that that wasn't real work?
Right. That's exactly right. I know she viewed Mom as lazy, because Mom was a real daydreamer and did not make good grades in school until the eighth grade when Ruby Hayes, her eighth grade teacher, took an interest in her. Before that, Mom had just practically barely made it through school, because she had no interest in it, and then would hit the hills as soon as she got home to play and hide, you know. So, yeah, that's the way she viewed it. And I think she viewed Mom probably as her most worthless child in terms of what she would ever become, you know? Because she was such a daydreamer.
And look what happened!
Right. They were scared to death for her to go to Chicago. And John Lair had to promise that she would live with him and his wife in their home, and that he would transport her back and forth to wherever she had to be. There were a lot of promises made to my grandmother, you know, like that. She felt like, that, you know, if Mom was alone for two minutes on the street she could be kidnapped and gone and never heard from again. I don't think it's that she mistrusted mom; it's just that she was afraid.
Right. Of the big city.
Of the big city. She didn't know anything about that, you know, she'd never been to a big city.
Well, I can understand that.
And really they had very little if anything to read about what was going on. Mom said, and that surprised me, that even newspapers and anything, you know, it was hard to come by news. So, they just, I guess she just expected the worst.
You were talking about which person in the family Lily May got most of her musical influence from. But didn't she learn some ballads from your grandmother?
She did. Back then, I think, early on she sang occasionally when she was
rocking them, when she would rock the babies, which was something
everybody did. You know, that was the common thing. But in terms of my
grandmother interacting with other people, like when other people came
around—my grandfather had friends who would drop by to play music, and
she never interacted, as a matter of fact, it made her angry when they
would come. She felt like, well, they'll probably stay a couple of days.
I remember Mom saying sometimes they would stay, and she would know that
he wasn't going to work, you know.
Got you. And I know she's written in a couple of places which songs those were that she learned from her mother. I guess "Pretty Polly," "Barbara Allen," do you remember others?
The "Little Benny" song, I think, was a song, I'm not sure about that, but I think the "Little Benny" is a song her mother song, and also "The Two Orphans," the song about the two orphans, which is a song that Jean Ritchie and a lot of others do in different versions. It's done a lot in the Kentucky mountains. Those are the only ones I know about. There's one called "The Brown Girl," which could be from her mother. I would say it probably is, because it's a very old song and it's not done much anymore. Or from someone around that area, because it's not something she would have picked up on in her teenage years in mingling with dance groups, you know, so I think that's probably another ballad that she learned at home.
What made a song acceptable or not to your grandmother? Because I know she, there were certain things that she really did not want especially her daughters to sing.
I thinks she felt it was unladylike to sing driving—fast, driving songs, no matter what the subject was. Things that had to be played with a fiddle, as part of the background instruments. The fiddle has a real bad reputation among women in the mountains, as going along with drinking and carousing and all that. I think they thought it stimulated certain kinds of feelings in men, you know, that they didn't want them to have. So, the fast, driving songs were kind of a no-no. And I really—I know that she didn't, you know, the "Pretty Polly," she didn't want Mom to sing "Pretty Polly" later even though she had sung that song to her, because of the subject matter.
Oh, really?
Yeah. That bothered her, once she got out and started singing it in public, you know, she didn't want that to represent what they were—a song about a murder. So, I don't think she had any idea that what was done there at the house would ever be a representation of the Ledford family.
I see.
You know, but it was.
When you say unladylike, what do you think that she meant by that? Why do you think that those songs were not fit for ladies to sing?
I think that my grandmother had a very different view of what she would have liked the family to be, than my grandfather. I think she probably had more discipline built into her than he did, and she, I think she wanted them to go consistently to church on Sunday, she wanted women to act one way and men another. She had very defined roles in her mind about women should do and men should do. But, when you've got the kind of talent that I think was ingrained in him, you know, and transported to Mom, art kind of exempts that. You know, that holding down of traditional kinds [she pounds her fist into her hand to emphasize] of roles and, we don't move out of that, you know, and so, I think she was very frustrated about that. She didn't view it as a musical talent, which a lot of them got—a lot of the children got—she viewed it as learning to be lazy from their father. And it was real difficult for her to look beyond that. She just, that's the way she viewed it. So, all of the kinds of traditional things that other families did, or that the quote "acceptable" families did, they didn't do. And I think that that's where, her eye was on that. That's what she wanted, but she couldn't achieve that with this family. And maybe that came from the Baptist background, you know, the real hard-core Baptist background: if you do things one way, and that's the only way you do them and you don't step out of it one way or the other or you're going to hell. But she was always frustrated about them not walking a narrower course. Does that make…?
Yeah. I wonder too, in your mother's autobiography, she says something about a move that the family made from the more isolated portion of the gorge to a more populated one, and there they had the chance to associate with some of the better families. Is that where your grandmother got some of these ideas too, about—it's almost like middle-class aspirations, you know?
Yeah. I don't know. I really don't know. It's possible that that's when
it really bothered her the most, you know, when they moved on down the
river. But I just don't know. I don't know if it was from early on, you
know. Probably when they were 11 and 12 and 13 and started going to the
dances and started playing, you know. That was when they had moved on
down the river. And that,
What do you think she would have chosen for your mother and Rosie, also, had she had more control? What kinds of daughters would she preferred to have raised? Because all three of her daughters that lived ended up as professional musicians.
I'd say, probably her view of what she would have thought they should have done was to get married and stay home and raise kids and let the men work, and be domestic. You know, I certainly think the more modern kinds of conveniences that came along at the time they were raising kids would have been, she would have thought that was wonderful. You know, I don't think she would have necessarily have wanted the old-style of doing things. She would have wanted them to be as progressive as they could in terms of what their homes were like, but I think that she probably viewed women working as something they shouldn't be doing, maybe unless it was a teacher. But I don't know any conversations about her influencing them to be anything in particular.
Right. Where did your mother get such a drive to pursue music? Because all of what she writes, you know, she was always sneaking off to find time, you know, swiping her brother's banjo. I mean, she really overcame a lot of obstacles to do what she wanted to do.
You know, I think, myself, I've thought a lot about that. I think it's genetically inborn. I really do. I think when someone has enough of a talent—it's almost not just a talent, it's a—I think artists who have the perception in the area that they do develop a tunnel-visioned view of the world almost in order to refine that. And if you look back at artists they, you know, a lot of artists have had a very sad social life, or sad family life, because in order to do it and perfect it, they have to have almost that tunnel vision approach to it, where that is the only thing that drives them. And it's such an inborn kind of drive, that I don't think they can help it. I don't think it would be anything they could get rid of. That's sort of the way I view it. I've been around a lot of musicians, you know, and know a lot of families who have people who are successful musicians, and that seems to be what I see. Is that it's almost like a genetic mutation. You know, it's like a person who has no need to be what normal people are. They just have this inborn drive that drives them in the direction that they're going to perfect, whatever it is they have. And my brother is the same way. I mean, talk to him about business things, paying taxes, I mean his wife handles everything. He has no idea. He just keeps his eye on that one thing.
And that's kind of the way she was. The only time Mom was truly happy was
when she was playing, or when she was going to play, and when she was
collaborating with people
Did she have to sacrifice things in her life to achieve that, to maintain that tunnel vision that you are referring to?
She, well, I think that the combination of having that inbred talent and that desire to perfect it, mixed with the kind of subservient view that women had to men, was really a difficult thing for her all her life. She would not openly challenge a man. And, you would not think that if you saw her on stage perform, you know, because she is so powerful. Her performances are so powerful and her stories are very powerful. But she could not get away from that not directly challenging men, so that John Lair, the other men she worked with, both of her husbands, pretty much set the stage for what her life would be, in terms of her success. She wasn't a business type; she did what they told her to do. All she wanted to do was play music; she just wanted to play music. And she did not have the professional kind of success I guess that like Jean Ritchie, whose husband was interested in her career and who promoted her career. I think Mom would have had a lot more wide-spread audience had that happened. But that was a real problem for her. She was always very privately angry about the manipulation, but she would not confront it. So, yet, she was so strong-willed that it ate her up, you know, because she was angry about it.
And from a young age, I remember feeling, why don't you, you know, if you want a washer and dryer, and you don't want to go to the Laundromat any more, why don't you just go buy one and charge it, you know? And things like that, I recognized that from an early age, that she had that problem. She was always having women over and, talk about, you know, how their husbands were doing this, and they wouldn't let them have this, and they wouldn't let them do that, but yet she would not say a word to my father or to John Lair about how she felt. So, that was a big frustration for her all her life. That drive and that ability and that lack of power all combined together.
That is very interesting, because the performances I have seen of her, you're right, I mean, she comes across as so independent and so strong-willed. And that's—one of the things I've noticed that a lot of country music scholars now writing about women performers tend to do is they tend to make her out to be a real feminist in her music. They talk about her as the leader of the Coon Creek Girls and sometimes even imply that she had the power to hire and fire band members, and she did not! It's just interesting to me how that kind of revision of history comes about. And I think it's possible that they knew her in her later years or saw her, and seeing that, could not believe that it could have been otherwise.
The Reel World Band, who probably the most feminist women's group of
musicians we have here in Kentucky, wonderful musicians, kind of just,
you know—she was their inspiration! They were over there all the time,
yet, I would be, you know, they were
Do you know why she stayed with Lair for all those years? Like 30 years or something like that, or 20, I guess it was.
Well, she felt that he rescued her from a very, very, poor, you know, family, which he did. He made it possible for her to send money back to the family. I think she felt a real loyalty to him. Early on, I don't think, I mean, maybe he did, but I think it was only when he got to Renfro Valley that he began to be the manipulator that he was with his musicians. It was as if he owned them: lock, stock, and barrel. Well, he did. He owned them: lock, stock and barrel. It was almost like a coal company, you know, owns the people who work the mines. But, I, she married my father, first Curt Pearson, who was a very powerful man in Berea, owned a lot of coal trucks, had a lot of money, wanted to marry a Coon Creek Girl. You know, they were a big deal then. He wanted to marry HER. She was a very beautiful woman. But I think Mom had this private need to be independent. Therefore when I think when they would tell her she couldn't do something, she would pout, and she would, you know, sulk, or those kinds of things. Or she would go off and talk to other members of the family, which created a negativism, which created a falling out of love, I guess. But she was, I don't know, she was just, she just couldn't seem to really voice to them what needed to be voiced in order for her to move on, to anybody. John Lair, once he moved to Renfro Valley, had them sign contracts that they couldn't record anything unless he said so; they couldn't talk to other people, they couldn't make any other deals. I mean he—the contracts were just—he owned them.
With all the performers? [referring to contracts]
Yeah, with all the performers. Some of the men left, you know, fairly soon, like Red Foley, and Homer and Jethro, people like that who were men and who felt like they had the power to sustain themselves. I don't think she knew that she could sustain herself on her own. She had no idea. She felt that she was lucky to have A job, you know? And I don't think any of those kids in that Ledford family really valued themselves as a person. There was a real kind of depressed, kind of solemn view of themselves, or view of the world that ran through that whole clan. And, she just had no power. You know, she was not empowered in any way as a child. And she empowered herself through her music. But that was the only power she had. Privately she was, in her everyday living situation she was depressed, she was unhappy, she felt she was manipulated but wouldn't do anything about it. She knew she was manipulated. She knew she wasn't treated like she should be treated. But she didn't have the discipline or the willpower or the background training that it took to do anything about it.
And was that the main reason for the unhappiness?
I don't know. I think the whole family is, the whole family has had
depression problems, and they're a very intense group of people,
emotionally. Very, a lot of them had problems feeling that they were
accepted by other people. My grandmother must have preached that a lot,
or something, you know, that ‘If your father would only do this…’ maybe.
I don't know if she did or not. But I suspect that she was always
telling them why they weren't acceptable in the community. And in
general that family has had real problems feeling like they're normal
people. Just withdrawn, and socially—I don't want to say inept, but
socially backward kind of people. With the exception of my Aunt Rosie.
She was the most outgoing one in the whole group. The way she was on
stage was the way she was
I'd like to talk about her later on; I don't know much about her. There's a wonderful quote I think in Lily May's autobiography about when your grandmother wanted to prevent her and Rosie from going to a square dance, she said something like, ‘You're poor girls, and your reputations are all you've got. When those boys get ready to marry, they're not going to marry you; they'll marry somebody from a wealthier family.’ Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?
Yeah. They didn't not feel like they were socially acceptable, I think. And they probably were one of the poorer families on the river; they were tenant farmers, they didn't own their own land. My grandfather didn't like to work. They were flooded out really bad one time, you know, those kinds of things. Bad luck. Plus my grandfather had a brother who was very successful who lived in that area, and they worked for him a lot, and my grandmother was very jealous of that.
Joe Ledford?
Yeah, yeah.
When she was growing up, we talked about the motivation she had and the love for the music. What goals did she have for herself before Lair came into her life? I mean, was he fulfilling something that she had dreamed about, or had she even thought about that as a possibility? What were her ambitions, do you think?
I know she was a daydreamer, but I don't know if she defined it. I have never heard her say that she always knew that she was going to be a professional musician and that was her goal. I think her goal, in her mind, was probably, I'm going to play at Natural Bridge, I'm going to continue to do this. You know, I'm going to be somebody who continues to play music. I don't think she ever had aspirations of being on a national barn dance or anything like, I mean, I don't know. Maybe she did. But I don't know of that if she did. I think it was just to play music wherever she could play music.
Because that was so removed from her existence, I guess, at that time. I wonder if she ever even thought about the possibility.
Women didn't leave and go places. MEN left and went to other places and got jobs, in, you know, like other places, and coal mines, or maybe even to Ohio to work. But women didn't. They just married somebody around there. And if the man moved, then she moved, but the women didn't go anywhere.
So when Lair came along, I guess what you're saying about how later on she felt that she didn't have the resources to strike out on her own, you know, I guess she always had depended on him from the get-go, and just felt—do you think she felt a sense of loyalty toward him or was it just a sense of dependency?
I think it was both. I think it was loyalty and dependency. I think it was also a pride that he took a notice in her early on. He believed in her. You know, when the very first person who believes in you, and recognizes something special in you, helps you out with that, you feel a loyalty, and you feel a pride. And I think that's what it was. But I also know that she felt, I KNOW when she was married, both marriages, she felt totally powerless to strike out on her own in any way. She had no idea how she could do that. When my parents divorced, she used my father's lawyer, instead of getting a lawyer. And he had quite a bit of money by that time. He had been successful in the car business, and I was telling her myself, ‘You need to get your own lawyer and have him represent you; this lawyer's representing Daddy.’ She wouldn't do it. And got a very small portion in the settlement of what he was worth. Enough to live comfortably, but she could have done much better. And in order to not confront him, she decided to just use his lawyer and take what he gave her.
Right, right. Wow. What year was that that they split up?
Let's see, that was in 1967, I believe.
And they married in….
They married in '45.
As far as the particulars of—you've talked about some of the reasons why she was frustrated with her relationship with Lair as far as not having the option to record or to do other things. What about the way he sort of molded her as a performer? I'm thinking especially of, like the costumes. That seemed to be a sore point with her. Can you talk a little bit about what she felt he was trying to do, and how would she have dressed, for example, in Chicago at WLS or with the Coon Creek Girls; how would she have done otherwise and what was it about that that was so irksome to her?
She wanted to play the fiddle; she didn't want to play the banjo, is one
of the earliest disagreements that they had. I think she felt, at the
very beginning, when he was dressing
And at that point, a lot of people of her stature could have been making good enough money just on the barn dance not to have to go away. That must have been hard when she had children.
Yeah, it was very difficult for her.
Right, right. You say that she never confronted him. Is there any rebellious streak with her at all with regards to her relationships with Lair or men in her life, like husbands? She would talk about the situation with other women; was that how it came out?
That's how it came out. She did not, you know, like you read in books,
about like the river earth
But she would be very frank in her conversations.
Yes, and very descriptive, you know, and not protect them in any way in terms of what they were doing. But she couldn't take it any further than that.
Because I feel like, now of course John Lair was still living when your mother died, I guess, so everything she wrote or said in her lifetime publicly she still, I think she still protected him publicly. In her autobiography there's a hint of resentfulness, the hint of, ‘I would have done this differently,’ but she always kind of laughs it off. And I guess her being polite not to confront them in public, even not to their face, she didn't want to do it.
No, she didn't want to do it. I guess she saw him as kind of a father figure, in a way, you know, or a grandfather figure who had his faults, but ultimately he was the reason for her success. And in public, she was very, she had that notion that you just don't do that, it's not ladylike to, but, we paid for it, you know, because privately she was just, I mean, around the house she was just constantly arguing and fussing and talking to people about how horrible things were, and why didn't somebody do something about it? You know? But she couldn't.
Unladylike, you started to say, unladylike to confront?
Unladylike to publicly rebuke John Lair or anyone.
Right, right. Cari had an idea that she might have investigated, at some point, other options? Do you know how far she ever got with any of that?
When I was about one year old, they stopped playing at Renfro. This was my dad's idea, to go down to Georgia. There was a little barn dance going on down there. So they packed up and moved, for about a year to Georgia, and didn't play on the [Renfro] barn dance. And she did not want to do that; she did not feel like it was fair to John Lair to do that, and it didn't work out financially for them to stay, so they come back.
Interesting that that loyalty to Lair was one of the things that would have drawn her back. And of course when the Coon Creek Girls moved with Lair to Renfro Valley to Cincinnati, two of the women didn't go.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Do you know why she and Rosie would have stayed with Lair? Were things fine up until that point that they didn't mind going down to Renfro Valley with him when the other two Coon Creek Girls were splitting off?
I think that the other two probably could see that he was not paying them what they should be paid. I think they were from more affluent backgrounds, so they didn't feel the need as much to I guess to kind of sacrifice any other kind of career they may have to go down there with him. It wasn't a sure thing. Mom and Aunt Rosie were so homesick for Kentucky. You know, they'd lived a very primitive life. And plus I don't think they knew anything else to do. You know, it would have either been go with him or go back home. They didn't know what else to do. They didn't know that you could find people to represent you to get you other jobs. They weren't savvy in that way. I really don't know if Daisy tried to influence her to do things a different way; I don't know about that. I think they just didn't know that they could do anything else. Plus I know how homesick they were. They were terribly homesick. So, and I'm sure he was doing a lot of talking about how they would be able to go home, and he would take care of them. They just, music was about all that family had that was advanced. Everything else, all the other thinking—I'm not saying they weren't intelligent, because they were. They're a very intelligent strain through the Ledford family. I think it was just the primitive means, you know, of not knowing what else to do.
Getting back to some of the things that Lair had them do or not do that your mother may have not appreciated, can you talk a little bit about her repertoire? Because I know that she writes a little bit about that, about the kinds of songs that he wouldn't let her sing. And one thing I'm curious about is your opinion of why those particular songs that she wanted to sing, like "John Henry" and "John Hardy," why did she have a particular liking for songs like those?
I think probably she was a very, she had a very raw, kind of intense, very feeling kind of inner self. You know, just that kind of need to express but couldn't. And I think that followed her her whole life, that need to be earthy and that need to let it all out—gut level. And those songs did that for her—did for her what she couldn't voice. I think he wanted them to be perceived as these sweet little mountain women, and not to, you know, "How Many Biscuits Can You Eat" is fine, you know, that's cute, and that's representative of the kind of songs women would have sung. I think that he probably did not want them to be perceived as harsh and raw and low-class, and maybe he, perhaps he thought that might happen if they sang those kinds of songs. He was very perceptive in terms of what he wanted the public to view. He had a lot of talent for what he thought people wanted to hear in the general audience. And I certainly think there were a lot of things he did with that show that made it successful because of his perception of a wide audience. He didn't have any idea about very traditional music, keeping—you know, I think his idea of the oral history of traditional music was that it be accepted by a very wide audience, so, that's what he wanted to keep. And, you know, his idea of oral tradition's very different from somebody's like Loyal Jones, to record it like it is, rather than to record it to be successful and publicly accepted. That's the view that I have, from things she said.
What do you think he was trying to achieve with the Coon Creek Girls? How did he want them to be perceived?
He probably wanted them to be perceived as unique, you know, the first women string band, but yet, he did not want them to be perceived as feminists, or someone who would upset the apple cart in their community. You know, they were women who played music at dances or that would have been the representative, if there were women who played at dances, but he did not want to, like on a religious level or a social level, for them to be perceived as people who would go over the line.
And those songs we talked about would have been pushing it because of the behavior in them.
Right. He wanted them to be spunky on stage, but he didn't want them to be feminists on stage. You know. And so he controlled that very closely. The kinds of things they said on stage—he didn't want them to say much. He just wanted them to play. And the things that they said on stage were usually led by men. You know, men were the emcees, or Slim Miller was the comedian. And they responded to that, rather than doing very much initial talking on their own.
Although at one point, I don't know if Daisy told me this or I read this that your mother has said, that there was one emcee that was always nervous when the Coon Creek Girls were on stage because he never knew what they were going to say.
Oh!
Maybe Daisy told me that. But it made me think that maybe they had a little bit of leeway, and this was in Cincinnati, but a little bit of leeway to kind of play around, to cut up a little bit?
Hmm! That's interesting.
And she may not be remembering that—it's been so long—quite as it happened, but that's just a little bit of a different take on that. That at least in Cincinnati things weren't as scripted as much and they could play around a little bit. I don't know if that's true. To what extent were her goals, I guess her ambitions, professionally and personally, met in her lifetime? I know you say she wasn't happy…
I think her goals were met at WLS to the extent that they ever were. Once
she got to Renfro Valley, well, once she got married, then she became
doubly controlled and had very little independence, very little avenue
to be happy, because she was happy only when she was playing music, and
once she got to Renfro Valley, that was very controlled by John Lair.
Her first husband was not a musician, and there was no music, you know,
there was no one coming to their house to play music or do any of that.
They had a child, she
Of course, my dad was going with her, and that was a support, because they were musicians on the same road show. My father was also a very controlling kind of person. He was very talented too, but he was more talented in the business area, really, than any other way. He did not recognize the importance of traditional music; he just wanted successful country music to be the way it was. So she could not express her innate talent at home very much with him. When people came to play, the gospel music was really—he liked gospel music, and that's what they mostly sang at home when people would come over, they would get these gospel groups and she loved that. I think she felt a real influence of black music, you know, the gospel music of the south in the Appalachian kind of music, and it is. There's a lot of that kind of flavor that runs through it, and so she was able to feel that when she, you know, when they played gospel. But she never really got any support much from him in terms of maintaining or hooking up with people in the '60s who were beginning to recognize the importance of oral tradition and that kind of thing. He had no interest in that whatsoever. And they stopped playing at Renfro in about, well, actually, we moved to Berea when I was seven, in about 1955, and then they went back and did a few more weekend things after that for a few years. But Renfro's popularity just kind dissipated with the coming on of rock and roll and more interest in that. Once she moved to Berea and stopped performing at Renfro at all she really had a hard time. She just was very depressed and didn't know what to do with herself, and just really struggled during that time. She had Aunt Rosie living there, who tried her best to, you know, Aunt Rosie would get involved in social clubs, gardening clubs, and all that kind of thing; she was always you know, finding something to do. Had a life beyond music. And she was always trying to rope Mom into it. Mom always felt, oh, those people don't like me, I don't like that kind of thing, I just want to, you know, no, I'm just going back home. So.
And what, did she play music at all in that time span? I'm not sure what
year she was rediscovered by Mike Seeger and others, but do you know
about what that
That was during the time we lived, I married and we lived in South Carolina during that time. It was between like, it was about 1976, I think.
Oh, that late?
Yeah. That she really, now, she had done a few little things here and
right around Lexington. But it was in the late seventies when she
started traveling with Mike and
That must have been so hard.
Yeah. But she just, she did, like hook up locally. As I said, once she moved to Lexington, she started to hook up locally with some people there who would come by the house and play. People who were interested in folk music. But the Seegers didn't come along 'til the late seventies.
Okay. So it wasn't as if she wasn't playing at all.
Right. They were going to dam the Red River Gorge, the Army Corps of Engineers. And they started having these things up there to raise money to stop that. You know, these political kinds of gatherings, and she would go back and play those, and that was fun for her to get involved in that. She, there were a couple people at UK [University of Kentucky] who found out about her who did folk classes, and so they would come over and interview her from time to time. So she had a little bit of outlet, but not much.
Loyal Jones.
Loyal Jones. That happened in the '70s, too, that he had her come to Berea College to do the classes there, and that was when he started encouraging her to write her autobiography.
Were there songs that, we've talked about how Lair restricted some of the repertoire of the Coon Creek Girls and of your mother. Were there songs that he had her play that she did not like? Or, did she just not mind those and just wish she could play additional ones? What was the situation with that.
I don't remember her not wanting to sing particular songs. I do remember
her talking about, you know, he would always write up what they were
going to sing and she didn't like that. She wanted to choose it herself.
But I don't remember her ever saying she didn't like any song that they
did. She did not like bluegrass music at all. She thought it was kind of
a more modern, you know, trying to do away with traditional music and
bring something more modern on. She did not like that to be performed on
the barn dance; she hated it. And very often she was introduced as a
bluegrass performer, and that really made her mad.
What did she like best about performing or about being on stage?
She was very charismatic. She really knew how to take an audience in her
hand. And I think as much as anything else, just that power that she
felt when she was performing. The fact that she was able to get them
when there were men performers who
When she sang—she had such a wonderful voice—what do you think she putting into it, besides the message of the lyrics, besides whatever that is—what else is going on, do you think, in her voice and in the way she sings? She's got such a hard, really forceful sound.
I think probably all of her frustration, all of her wishing people could recognize, or wishing the people she struggled with could recognize the depth of her feelings, the depth of who she was. She had a difficult time doing anything more than—I don't know how to describe this—her, the way she expressed herself to people was like a lecture. When she talked to her friends or her family about herself, it was almost like a lecture. It was almost like, this is the way I feel, and this is the way it is, and I don't understand why I can't communicate this to Glen, or why he doesn't understand. She would have been a great teacher, you know, she would have been a great teacher of her music, because she had the ability, when she was talking, to just capture whoever it was that was listening to her. But that same thing, that same kind of persona that made her so appealing to hear by other women, by historians, was a real turn off to my father or to people who were very close to her. Because it was as if she wasn't communicating with us; she was lecturing to us. And so, to get real personal with us was, she just didn't do it. And she didn't know how to do it. She thought she was doing it, when she would be in that kind of, you know, that kind of mode of telling a story, telling her story. I don't really know how to describe any better than that.
So, the people that she could and would share those feelings with, she would just pour them out. She would be open and honest about them, but it was all kind of one way?
She didn't even look at you. It was like she was looking over there, you
know, just telling it all. Yeah. So, she thought constantly. I mean, a
lot of the times, even when she was working around the house, her lips
were moving. She was talking to herself. She wanted desperately for
people to understand, but she couldn't hook up on a real personal level
and just see close, you know. It was always kind of a lecture kind of
thing, kind of a philosophical presentation.
What was it that you think she wanted people to understand about her?
Yeah, that's interesting.
My other aunt, who they called Black-eyed Susan, Minnie? Was a very unusual personality. She explored like eastern religions and things like that at an early age that nobody was doing in the '50s. I mean, she was a very Bohemian thinker, but yet subservient to men also. A very unusual combination of, you know.
How do you think Rosie ended up so different?
I think she married a man who was—Uncle Cotton was, you know, Red Foley's
brother. He was from a fairly affluent family there in Berea. I can't
imagine why they got together in the first place. I mean, I can't—she
was more outgoing. She was always THE one in the family who was most
outspoken and funny and, she just had a real funny flair to her
personality. Which I think was probably genetic, I mean I think it just
was always there. But he was a very unusual man; her husband empowered
her and just worshipped her. And maybe it was that outgoingness, that
willingness to just have fun. I don't know, I don't know what—but he
would even try to convince Daddy to be more giving to Mom, you know,
because they were pretty close friends. Not because—Daddy respected him
because of who he was. You know, he was a Foley. I think my father was
very impressed with prestige. I don't know. I don't know where that came
from. But her kids, my cousins, were given anything they wanted. You
know, they were just lavishly—had motorcycles and ponies, and things
that, you know, were unheard of when I was growing up. I don't know. I
don't know but Mom—she worked on Mom constantly, trying to get her to
confront Daddy about things, and she never would. And she would get so
tired. I remember her saying, ‘Lily May, I've talked to you 'till I'm
blue in the face about this. Why don't you just do something?’ You know?
With Lair, did your mother even—you say she didn't confront him—would she ever have ventured, like the girls did when they said, ‘Mr. Lair, we thought we'd call ourselves Wildwood Flowers.’ Would she have ever ventured to say something like, ‘Mr. Lair, I'd like to pick some songs for the program.’ Would she have tried to raise some things and then he didn't listen so she didn't push it? Or would she not have even bothered?
I feel like she probably made some suggestions, yeah. She would never
have, if he said no, that would have been the end of it. I don't know. I
wasn't, you know, I was never around those kinds of things. But I would
guess that she would probably make an occasional suggestion. She would
do that with my father, but that's, you know, he would very quickly,
[she hits one palm with her fist]. So, she seemed to surround herself
with men like that. And I don't know whether she saw them as models of
people she'd like to be like, and that's what attracted her to, you
know, men like that? Or what. But both of her husbands were very—just
like John Lair. Very controlling. You know. You did not—and I
Oh, interesting!
Yeah. She saw me as just like Glen. You know, I was always just like Glen. The way I was just like Glen was that I was just as outspoken as he was, and would not allow myself to be, you know, controlled by things that I felt were unfair. So, her perception of that was: Barbara's just like Glen. So, you know, there must have been that strong message of: be a lady, you know, be subservient to men. That is the way that we women here are to—you know, it's in the Bible, you know, that you're supposed to let the man make the last decision. And I don't think it was only a not knowing how, it was too the way women were supposed to be. And I think she viewed—I remember her always having a lot of sympathy for Cotton, when Aunt Rosie would, she felt would over-manipulate him. You know? She would say, poor Cotton, you know, Rosie's just gone out and bought another couch, or she's gone out and done this, and she would sympathize with him!
Interesting.
So, it was a combination I'd say.
So she bought into the system but resented it at the same time, was kind of what was going on there.
Mm-hm.
Yeah.
I think when she got away from, you know, when my parents divorced, she moved to Lexington. She had the means—she had a house and she had so much money a month from my father. So I think that gave her some independence that she had never had before. She didn't know she could have. So, the people that she, now, she did, there were several characters who would come there and spend all day talking to her and, you know, taking notes that were just trying to produce some little—I'm not going to mention names, but who would produce little books about her that she was very embarrassed by.
I know who you're talking about.
Okay. She would still give them her time, you know, be very gracious. But
she began to make what I consider smarter choices about people she
hooked up with, like Mike Seeger and like Loyal Jones. And I think, I'm
so glad she met Loyal Jones. Because I think, that was, she finally
found a man, you know, that she had some kind of professional
relationship with, who she felt was genuine. And she just, every time I
went over to talk with her, she mentioned Loyal Jones and what a
wonderful person he was. And she just couldn't realize that there could
be a man like that. So I'm really glad that he was able to work with her
on some projects. Because it gave her the model she'd never had. And she
just so highly respected him.
You were talking about her relationship with Loyal Jones and how that was a positive one for her. In general, what did she get out of those later years? It sounds like those were really rewarding years for her.
I think they were her best years, aside from the experience of WLS, which
I don't think could have been topped in her life. She got a lot of, I
guess, affirmation from people who were important, you know, and who
were important in a sense that she discovered later was happening: that
sense of oral history about traditional music. That was not something
that she knew about in her early life. You know, that kind of scholarly
approach to preserving what went on in the mountains of Appalachia. That
was not something she was even aware of, I don't think. Now, she started
reading, once she moved to Lexington she started reading Wendell Barry's
books, and James Steele's books, and people who were writing about the
Appalachian area of Kentucky. She had never done that before.
And so, the later interest allowed her venues again
To come out.
Now would you say that songs like "Pretty Polly" were the dearest to her heart? Or, you referred to that as…
I think the driving songs were the dearest to her heart. She sang a lot of the mournful kinds of songs around the house, but I think they were more to rock Cari, or, you know, later to rock Cari and to, you know, or earlier on to take care of kids with. But when people came to hear her play, there were local musicians like, oh, what's his name. A black musician who plays blues; what's his name, that came to the house a lot, too.
[Her husband comes in and says name is Sparky Rucker.]
He would come a lot and, once she moved to Lexington, and stopped having the music parties with Dad, you know, the kind of more Nashville like, then people started finding out she was over there who played traditional music, through UK and through Loyal and people like that, and Sparky was one who came a lot. And he was playing in other states a little bit and was hooking up with some of these festivals some. So I'd say he was probably one of the ones who was instrumental in Mike [Seeger] finding out about her. I'm trying to think of others who were more local. The Albans, you know, who would have her come play at the state parks in Kentucky, and Sparky would play those a little bit.
I'd say Jean Ritchie.
Jean Ritchie would be another one. Jean was playing locally a lot, so Jean would have been another one. But I think probably Mike Seeger and Alice Gerrard found something in her that was different from Jean's music. Which was a more raw, kind of more the—Jean's music was more the acceptable to the middle social class, and Mom's was the more driving, down-home kind of stuff that the poor people played. And saw a different—something different, you know, that she had that way.
When she sang songs like "Pretty Polly," those murder ballads, do you think there was any particular reason that she was interested in those kinds of songs?
Yeah, because that one song, "White Oak Mountain," I saw in the Appalshop film; there's one clip of her singing that, and it is so powerful when she talks about getting down a 44
And blowing off a sorry man's brains!
You know, you're going, ‘God, who is she thinking about?’ Because she—she's really very serious and solemn as she sings it, and it's very—there's a lot of sadness in her voice, too.
She was a very frustrated woman about that element of not being able to confront men. That was a big element of her frustration in her life.
Did she recognize that what she was doing, as far as, that she wasn't confronting them? Did she recognized that she had for some reason an inability to do that? Or did she just see that, you've been talking about how she felt like: why don't they understand!
She did not recognize that she had a problem with that. No. She thought they had a problem, I think. And if she did, she may have privately recognized it and not been able to voice it. I don't know.
"Banjo Pickin' Girl" is another song that I wanted to ask you about. I know that she and Lair and Rosie all kind of, it sounds like, wrote verses to that. Do you know if that had a special meaning for her, that particular song?
I think the wanting to break away part, you know, of ‘I'm going around the world’ probably did. Yeah, I think it was a, you know, a need to break away, a need to be independent. I don't, you know, ‘I'm going around the world; I'm a banjo pickin' GIRL,’ you know, was probably a longing she had to do that, but I've never heard her say that. She would never say that. That's a guess.
I just have a few more questions. You said probably nothing could top the WLS experience. What was so great about that year for her?