Lawrence Welk and his champagne music
entered our home after Daddy bought a TV. Mr.
Welk helped me decide to learn horn music. I
thought guitar-picking was too countrified for
me. About that time, Jack Shaw, a Greenville,
SC, businessman, brought his trumpet and his
brother, Larry, a trombonist, to visit our church.
Our members decided to form a church band.
Mr. Shaw taught some members to play horns
and encouraged kids to take band at school.
Dad purchased a trumpet; Uncle Fred bought
a trombone. Dad wrote trumpet fingerings over
the tops of notes in his hymnbook.
Dad moved our family to the outskirts of
Greer, SC, as I entered sixth grade; my younger
sister and I had to change schools and leave
our country roots. By seventh grade, I began
taking trumpet at Davenport Junior High (blue
sweaters and white pants were our uniforms). At
Greer High, I experienced dental complications
and switched to sousaphone. During my senior
year, I played alto saxophone in our school stage
band. We performed big-band classics such as
Woodchopper’s Ball and In the Mood, songs
from the Swing Era of the early 1930s through
late 1940s.
During my high school years (1961-1965),
folksinging enjoyed revival. I loved songs by
groups such as the Kingston Trio and The New
Christy Minstrels (they sang This Land Is Your
Land). Bob Dylan and Joan Baez symbolized
folksinging for me. Dylan wrote Blowin’ in the
Wind in 1963. That song asks many questions
we couldn’t answer and became an anthem of
the civil rights movement. Peter Yarrow of Peter,
Paul, and Mary called that song “part of the
secular liturgy of our times.”
“Popular music of the U.S. in the 1960s
became innately tied up into causes, opposing
certain ideas,” notes Wikipedia. Some
songs carried messages about the Cold War,
Vietnam, civil rights, morality, authority, sexual
revolution, and religion. There was much to
sing about during those troubled days when
some people seemed to question the meaning
of almost everything. Folksinging was the nearperfect
medium of expression for the times that,
according to Bob Dylan, were “a-changing.”
By age 18, I was playing guitar (enough to sing
along with, at least). At times, I still strum songs
my late wife, Carol, and I sang in churches and
a few prisons. She often wrote songs about her
faith in Christ. She couldn’t read music, but after
she’d create a song and sing it to me, she’d say,
“Get your guitar and play it for me.” I’d fit chords
to her lyrics and sing harmony as she sang lead
in her lovely alto voice. She wrote often about
inner healing, and those songs still speak to me
as I grieve her passing (Jan. 11, 2019).
Amazingly, I often recall words and tunes to
many songs I heard as a child when my family
lived on 13 rural acres. The arrival of television
to our home did not erase the musical culture
I absorbed before TV landed in our lives when I
was seven years old. Country and Gospel music
are still ingrained in me. ☐
Ma taught Uncle Fred his first guitar chords,
and Earl Few, who lived across the creek from
Ma and Pa, showed Fred things about fiddling.
Fred was a fast learner. Baby Ray Stewart and his
Rhythm Ranch Hands played for barn dances
and radio shows in Greenville, SC. Stewart heard
of Fred and drove to Mountain View School. He
found Fred, a senior (an 11th-grader in those
days), one morning before the school day began
and asked to hear him play. They rode to Ma and
Pa’s house, and Fred fiddled tunes, including Up
Jumped Trouble. Stewart invited Fred to play as
a guest with his band. Fred said he never took
the offer because playing with Baby Ray’s band
might lead him “in the wrong direction.”
Country music has roots in the ballads, folk
songs, and popular songs of the English, Scots,
and Irish of the Appalachians and the South.
In 1949, the term country music replaced the
term hillbilly music. Radio fostered country
music as small stations popped up in the 1920s.
National Barn Dance from Chicago began in
1924 and Grand Ole Opry began in Nashville
in 1925. Jimmie Rodgers is called “the father
of country music,” and the Carter Family is
recognized as “the first vocal group of country
music.” After WWII, country music spread over
America. Many country songs “involved stories
pointing to a stern Calvinist moral,” according
to brittanica.com.
Honky-tonk music came along in the 1940s,
featuring folk like Ernest Tubb (Walking the
Floor Over You) and Hank Williams (Your
Cheatin’ Heart). Honky-tonk helped folk tell
about leaving farm life. Bobby Bare sang Detroit
City in 1963, making popular these lyrics: "I
wanna go home . . . Oh, how I wanna go home.
Last night I went to sleep in Detroit City, and I
dreamed about the cotton fields and home . . .
Home-folks think I’m big in Detroit City. From
the letters that I write they think I’m fine. But
by day I make the cars. By night I make the bars.
If they could only read between the lines . . . Oh,
how I wanna go home."
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L. Steve Crain, around 1970, with his alto sax.
Late Lillian Crain, known as "Ma."
JB Crain, Hovey P and Fred Crain.
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Pa, my quiet grandfather, a farmer, was about
the same height (5’8”) as Ma. He could sing but
played no instruments and seemed content to
hear Ma and the boys (their only children) sing
songs like The Good Old Gospel Ship and Life’s
Railway to Heaven.
Few folk back then seemed to take music
lessons unless they wanted to play piano or
accordion. Most guitarists I knew learnt how to
play from other pickers and played songs "by
ear." When someone asked Glen Campbell if he
knew how to read music, he said, “Yes, but not
enough to hurt my picking.”
At the Pentecostal church we attended in
upper Greenville County, SC, I’d hear hymns
such as Victory in Jesus, Shall We Gather at
the River? and In the Garden. The church had
a piano and organ; other instruments weren’t
part of our worship before I was five years old,
though Brother T.C. Foster played his fiddle
once in a while.
My first buddy, Don Hill, and I perked
up when Brother Ed Few, our song leader,
announced Keep on the Firing Line, a fast footstomper.
We’d asked Mama for rubber bands
and stretch them lengthwise on our hymnals.
Songbooks subbed for guitars as we flailed
rubber bands and sang, "If you’re in the battle
for the Lord and right, keep on the firing line."
As a pre-schooler, I learned to sing Old Time
Preacher Man. (One preacher offered me a dime
to sing it, and I did.) Here are some lyrics: "Well,
I went down to the big camp meeting, ’twas the
most for to see the sight / But I got such a hearty
greet-in’ that I went back ev-’ry night / They had
an old-time Gospel preacher, from the good
book of Psalms he read / And when he started
preach-in’ ’bout the soul salvation, you oughta
heard the things he said / You oughta heard him,
that old-time preacher man / You oughta heard
him, such a-preachin’ you never heard / Well, he
preached about an hour on the Sermon on the
Mount / And when he ended up, he had the devil
on the rout / You oughta heard him, that oldtime
preacher man!"
p.26 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. No. 136 Fred Crain & JB Crain making music.
/brittanica.com
