It Ain't City Music in an Historical and Cultural Context
“It Ain’t City Music” in a Musical, Cultural, and Historical Context
By Kip Lornell, vernacular music scholar of the Music Department, George Washington University. This essay was inspired by and partially derived from his Capital Bluegrass: Hillbilly Music Meets Washington DC (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Most people associate what is known locally known as the DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) with the Federal Government. They often view the District as one immense mall that stretches westward from the base of the United States Capitol, the Smithsonian Institution's various museums, and a host of iconic monuments. If sports topics arise, then Washington's NFL team or the National League baseball team, the Nationals, are likely to be discussed.
When it comes to music and Washington, D.C., many folks will point you towards the Kennedy Center or the 9:30 Club. Others will merely shrug. The more knowledgeable fan would no doubt cite punk and/or go-go music as local music, and they would be correct. Few people, however, are likely to link country music or bluegrass with Washington, D.C. This oversight would be an error, especially for the years immediately following the end of World War II.
During the Depression tens of thousands of immigrants—often from nearby southern states--helped to swell the population of the District. Many of them were attracted by the prospect of steady work provided by the Federal Government, though relatively few found such jobs during this difficult period. With them came an affinity for hillbilly music (what would more typically be called country music today). It exerted an increasingly firm hold locally as more people moved in from nearby rural areas. Throughout the 1930s, D.C. radio stations such as WRC, WMAL, and WJSV expanded their diet of live country-music broadcasts.
Information about these local mostly 15-minute or half-hour programs is sprinkled through the Washington Post coverage of these stations. In many parts of the United States, including Washington, D.C., hillbilly musical culture was often closely associated with cowboy singers and songs, the rural bumpkin, a lack of sophistication, simple country living, and stringed instruments like the banjo and filled. On December 14, 1935, an “On the Air” un-credited column appeared in the Washington Post. It noted that “Hillbilly Bill Bivens presents the second meeting of the clan tonight from WJSV at 11 when the Rolling Stones, Slim Hardy, Ernest Stoneman and others of the mounting [sic] folk get together for an hour of singin' and fun. . . Bivens says he believes that time is right for a 'home' setting for a hillbilly hour. He 'lows as how the air is filled with cheap imitations of the real thing—with all the participants actin' as though they was filled up to the adam's apple with hard cider. So—innovation in this type of entertainment. Emphasis on real harmonies, a few hymns, and the atmosphere of home. Among the others heard tonight are the Barnyard Revelers, hillbilly band; Virginians Quartet, singers of old-time songs and hymns, Originality Boys, novelty band; Efriam and Fuzzy, black-face comedians.”
The implications of this newspaper coverage are significant. DC was becoming increasingly sophisticated, urbane, as well as more relevant nationally and internationally, which is difficult to recognize from our twenty-first century perspective. Today Washington, D.C., is clearly perceived as a center of power and influence apart from its’ cultural roots. But in the era before WW II, the print media were acutely aware that many of their readers could hear, understand, and appreciate “authentic” hillbilly music and rural humor because they grew up engaged with and appreciating it first-hand. Furthermore, these listeners could easily discern the contrived from the “real thing” in a city where hillbilly music was very popular.
At the same time, this piece trades on stereotypes slightly different than those found in the April 1935 column. Never mind that much of North Carolina and Virginia consists of piedmont and coastal regions. Hillbilly music, it seems, was perceived as mountain music that should remind readers of old-time values and music from home. It's also a genre where one could hear “real harmonies” along with some music associated with churches. Another stereotype focuses on race--the black-face comedy of Efriam and Fuzzy, which calls to mind minstrelsy that began in the 1830s and still resonates today.
Washington D.C., and its musical preferences are at least partially shaped by its population. Between 1930 and 1950 when bluegrass was slowly fermenting and gradually emerging, the population of Washington, D.C. surged by some 40 percent. According to the 1950 census it reached its all-time high of 802,178. In 2015 the population was 672,228 but growing again rather quickly.
Much of this growth occurred via in-migration from nearby states, most notably Virginia and North Carolina, by men and women attracted by jobs and a high-quality school system, and by black citizens for less onerous segregation practices found further south. Many of these migrants stopped in smaller cities in Virginia, such as Lynchburg or Richmond, but tens of thousands of people continued north to Washington, D.C. During the same time the District of Columbia was very slowly evolving from a southern-leaning city that almost straddles the Mason-Dixon line to today's more cosmopolitan urban center that houses the World Bank, the White House, the Pentagon, several large universities, and the headquarters for several multinational corporations, as well as some of the most congested traffic in the United States.
The influx of southern-born servicemen during World War II helped to cement the District of Columbia's appreciation for hillbilly music. Many of these World War II era immigrants remained in or near Washington, DC. They brought their musical interests with them, most of which was satisfied through attending live performances on stages or at clubs and on radio and within five years, on television. The opportunities to hear hillbilly music owed a huge debt to Connie B. Gay who believed that Washington, D.C., provided him an opportunity to bring this music to the city. Gay's profound impact resonates at many points starting in the mid-1940s and most notably in booking, broadcasting, and recording country music until the early 1960s, when he permanently relocated to Nashville.
Gay heavily promoted country music and its bluegrass off-shoot in and around Washington, D.C. during the 1950s. Starting in the late 1940s he orchestrated large events in the DAR’s Constitution Hall, which often sold out. His hillbilly riverboat cruises on the Potomac River became popular events in the mid-1950s. These events were advertised in the Washington Post and the Evening Star as well as on radio—most notably Arlington’s WARL, which featured the most popular country-music DJ at the time, Don Owens. At the same time live country music shows were popular in the Mid-Atlantic, especially at stand-alone venues like New River Ranch and Sunset Park. Both outdoor venues were open from late spring into the fall and straddled the Maryland/Pennsylvania line, very close to the Delaware border. Each drew thousands of eager country music fans to hear weekly shows featuring talent ranging from Ray Price to Bill Monroe to the Stoneman Family.
However, the concept of a one-off or annual country music festival was not widespread until the 1960s. When bluegrass became more widely popular during this decade, bluegrass festivals (sometimes featuring more mainstream or older country acts) began springing up in the DMV. In fact, festivals thrived in the DMV in the late 1960s from southern Maryland to northern Virginia. The earliest all-day or multi-day gathering of bluegrass artists and audiences began in the early 1960s and grew tremendously starting in the mid-1960s. The earliest of these had their roots in the 1950s, for example, the Championship Country Music Contest described below morphed into a mostly bluegrass festival. Others, however, emerged during the flowering of local interest in bluegrass beginning in the 1960s and peaking some twenty years later.
Though it began in the early 1950s with strong roots in hillbilly music, by the late 1960s the Championship Country Music Contest was no longer promoted by Connie B. Gay (who had relocated to Nashville by then), and it moved from Warrenton Fairgrounds on the south side of the city to a spot at the Lake Whippoorwill Park, three miles northeast of Warrenton. This venue proved to be a better spot in many ways because its gently rolling and wooded hills invited campers, while its proximity to State Routes 29 & 15 permitted folks from Washington, D.C. easier access to the Contest. Though with distinctly less coverage by the press, the National Championship Country Music Contest lingered on in Warrenton till the late 1970s.
Lake Whippoorwill Park (now a housing subdivision just north of downtown Warrenton, Virginia) eventually hosted an early bluegrass festival, almost certainly the first to be held in the DMV. On July 10, 1966, “The First International Folk – Bluegrass Festival” took place at Lake Whippoorwill Park. The headline acts included Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Flatt & Scruggs, Mac Wiseman, The Osborne Brothers, Jim and Jesse & the Virginia Mountain Boys, and Bill Harrell's Virginians. This one-day event is noteworthy not only because it was marketed as a bluegrass festival, but also the use of the term “folk” in its title. It also seemed to only feature national acts. Local artists such as the County Gentlemen are absent from the printed program. The only local participant seems to have been radio personality Gary Henderson, who served as an emcee for the event.
The festival eventually morphed into the “Annual Warrenton Bluegrass Folk Festival,” which was held into the 1970s. In 1973, the eight annual edition featured Grateful Dead co-founder Jerry Garcia, who appeared as a member of his side-group, Old and in the Way. This acoustic super group included Garcia’s banjo and vocals, bassist John Kahn, vocalist and mandolin player David Grisman, fiddler Vassar Clements, and Peter Rowan singing and playing guitar. Their set included at least two bluegrass standards, “Mule Skinner Blues” and “The Willow Garden.”
In 1971 and 1972, local film maker Tom Davenport shot several hours of footage of the contest to make his engaging film “It Ain’t City Music.” Davenport, who grew up in nearby Delaplane (also in Fauquier County), has made nearly a dozen documentary films on a variety of topics, and started Folkstreams.net in 1999 to disseminate folklore films. “It Ain’t City Music” (his second film) looks at the folks who attended and performed at the National Championship Country Music Contest. Aside from the snippets of the almost entirely White attendees, the musical performances in the film underscore the fact that in the early 1970s, bluegrass dominated the informal campground picking.
