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All Music Guide:
Uncle Dave Macon, beginning his professional musical career after the age of 50, brought musical and performance traditions of the 19th-century South to the radio shows and the recording catalogues of the early country music industry. In 1925, he became one of two charter members of the Grand Ole Opry, then called the WSM Barn Dance. A consummate showman on the banjo and a one-man repository of countless old songs and comic routines, Macon remained a well-loved icon of country music until and beyond his death in 1952.
Born David Harrison Macon in Smartt Station in middle Tennessee's Warren County, he was the son of a Confederate officer who owned a large farm. Macon heard the folk music of the area when he was young, but he was also a product of the urban South: after the family moved to Nashville and began operating a hotel, Macon hobnobbed with traveling vaudeville musicians who performed there. After his father was stabbed near the hotel, Macon left Nashville with the rest of his family. He worked on a farm and later operated a wagon freight line, performing music only at local parties and dances.
Macon's turn toward a musical second career was due partly to the advent of motorized trucks, for his wagon line fell on hard times in the early '20s after a competitor invested in the horseless novelties. In 1923, he struck up a few tunes in a Nashville barbershop with fiddler Sid Harkreader, and an agent from the Loew's theater chain happened to stop in. Soon Macon and Harkreader were touring as far a field as New England, and when George D. Hay began bringing together performers two years later for what would become the Opry, Macon was a natural choice. The tour also brought Macon the first of his many recording dates, held in New York for the Vocalion label in 1924. Macon would record prolifically through the 1930s (and occasionally up to 1950) for various labels, accompanied at different times by Harkreader, the brother duo of Sam & Kirk McGee, the Delmore Brothers, the young Roy Acuff, and other string players including a then-unknown Bill Monroe. For secular material, his backing band took the name of the Fruit Jar Drinkers.
Macon's recordings are richly enjoyable in themselves and are priceless historical documents, both for the large variety of banjo styles they preserve and for the window they afford on American song of the late 19th century. Macon performed musical-comic routines such as the "Uncle Dave's Travels" series, topical songs, often of his own composition ("Governor Al Smith"), playful folk songs ("I'll Tickle Nancy"), gospel with his Dixie Sacred Singers, blackface minstrel songs, unique proto-blues pieces that Macon learned from African-American freight workers ("Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy"), and songs of other types. Yet "the Dixie Dewdrop" was loved most of all for his presence as a live musician, captured not only on the weekly Opry broadcasts (which were broadcast nationally for a time in the 1930s) but also in the 1940 film Grand Ole Opry. Macon delivered what an 1880s southern vaudeville audience would have demanded for its hard-earned dollar: showmanship (he handled the banjo with Harlem Globetrotters-like trick dexterity), humor, political commentary (often of the incorrect variety by modern standards), and unflagging energy.
Macon continued to appear on the Opry almost until his death, gradually taking on the status of a great-hearted living link to country music's origins. He became the tenth member of the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966, and the revival of old time music that flourished as part of the folk movement focused the attention of younger listeners on his music. Yet Macon remains less well understood, and less present in the musical minds of country listeners, than Jimmie Rodgers or the Carter Family, even though he was nearly as well-known in his own day. Perhaps that's because he represents an older layer of American music-making than almost any other performer known to country audiences: modern hearers can easily connect with Rodgers' blues or the Carters' homespun sentiment, but Macon may require greater effort. Such effort, in any case, is well repaid by an acquaintance with his musical legacy.
Wikipedia:
Uncle Dave Macon (October 7, 1870 – March 22, 1952), born David Harrison Macon—also known as "The Dixie Dewdrop"—was an American banjo player, singer, songwriter, and comedian. Known for his chin whiskers, plug hat, gold teeth, and gates-ajar collar, he gained regional fame as a vaudeville performer in the early 1920s before going on to become the first star of the Grand Ole Opry in the latter half of the decade.
Macon's music is considered the ultimate bridge between 19th-century American folk and vaudeville music and the phonograph and radio-based music of the early 20th-century. Music historian Charles Wolfe wrote, "If people call yodelling Jimmie Rodgers 'the father of country music,' then Uncle Dave must certainly be 'the grandfather of country music'." Macon's polished stage presence and lively personality have made him one of the most enduring figures of early country music.
Early life
Macon was born in Smartt Station (about five miles south of McMinnville), Tennessee, the son of Confederate Captain John Macon and his wife Martha Ramsey. In 1884, when young David was 13 years old, his family moved to Nashville, Tennessee to run the Old Broadway Hotel, which they had purchased. The hotel became a center for Macon and his growing musical interests, as it was frequented by artists and troupers traveling along various vaudeville circuits and circus acts. In 1885, he learned to play the banjo with the assistance of a circus comedian called Joel Davidson. While in Nashville, he attended Hume-Fogg High School. A tragedy struck the Macon family when his father was murdered in 1886 outside the hotel. The hotel was sold and the family quickly moved to Readyville, Tennessee, where his mother ran a stagecoach stop. Macon began entertaining the passengers who arrived at the rest stop by playing the banjo from a homemade stage.
In 1889, Macon married Matilda Richardson and moved to a farm near Kittrell, Tennessee, where they in time raised six sons. Around 1900, Macon opened a freight line between Murfreesboro and Woodbury, Tennessee. It was called The Macon Midway Mule and Wagon Transportation Company. Often, when Macon was driving along with his mules, hauling freight and produce, he would entertain people by singing and playing the banjo at various stops along the way. In time, his sons became part of the company as they grew up. But the arrival of an automobile-based competitor threatened his mule company, and he was forced to close down in 1920.
Professional career
Although Macon had performed as an amateur for years, and was well known for his showmanship, Macon's first professional performance came in 1921 at a schoolhouse in Morrison, Tennessee as part of a Methodist church benefit show. In 1923, during a performance for the shriners in Nashville, he was spotted by Marcus Loew of Loews Theatres who offered Macon fifteen dollars if he was to perform at a theater in Alabama. Macon accepted and went to Alabama. After the show he was confronted by the manager of Loews Theatres in Birmingham who wanted to hire him to perform in Birmingham. Macon's salary was going to be several hundred dollars a week. This led to many offers from other theaters in the Loew's Vaudeville circuit. Thus, at age fifty, Macon became successful as an entertainer and his popularity increased. As a result a rival vaudeville circuit, the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation, tried to lure him away from the Loew's circuit but to no avail.
In 1923 he began a tour in the south-eastern United States together with fiddler Sid Harkreader and five other acts. By this time, the distributors of Vocalion Records, the Sterchi Brothers Furniture Company, had begun to notice Macon and they realised his potential as a successful recording artist. On July 8, 1924, Macon and Harkreader cut their first recordings for Vocalion in New York. In this first session which was extended over several days they recorded eighteen songs altogether. In 1925, Macon and Harkreader added a buck dancer to their act, "Dancing Bob" Bradford. Their continuing tours for the Loew's circuit included comedy, buck-dancing and old time music. In late 1925, Macon met the blacksmith and guitarist Sam McGee who was to become Macon's regular recording and performance partner. On November 6, 1925, Macon and Harkreader performed at the Ryman Auditorium—the future home of the Grand Ole Opry— for the benefit of the Nashville police force. The successful show took place only three weeks before WSM Grand Ole Opry was founded.
Macon was one of the first performers at the newly founded WSM radio station. It is not known exactly when he was hired but on December 26, 1925, Macon and fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson appeared together on the WSM Saturday night program. Macon's career at WSM lasted twenty-six years, but because he was constantly touring, he wasn't a regular performer during the first few years of WSM's Grand Ole Opry. In early 1927, Macon formed the Fruit Jar Drinkers, consisting of Macon, Sam McGee, Kirk McGee and Mazy Todd. The Fruit Jar Drinkers recorded for the first time on May 7, 1927. Although the group's repertoire mainly consisted of traditional songs and fiddle numbers, they would occasionally record sacred songs and when that occurred, Macon would temporarily alter the group's name to the Dixie Sacred Singers.
In December 1930, Macon recorded for Okeh Records and later in 1934 for Gennett Records. On January 22, 1935, he began recording for Bluebird Records with the Delmore Brothers and a few years later in 1938 he recorded with Glenn "Smoky Mountain" Stagner. Between 1930 and 1952, Macon was often accompanied by his son Dorris who played the guitar. In 1940 Macon— together with Opry founder George D. Hay, rising Opry star Roy Acuff, and Dorris Macon— received an invitation from Hollywood to take part in the Republic Pictures movie Grand Ole Opry. The film contains rare footage of Macon performing, including a memorable duet of "Take Me Back to My Carolina Home" with Dorris in which the 69-year old Macon jumps out of his seat and dances throughout the second half of the song. Although Macon toured with Bill Monroe in the late 1940s, he was neither impressed by the new bluegrass style nor by the banjo picking of Monroe's bandmate Earl Scruggs.
Aftermath
Macon continued to perform until March 1, 1952. He died three weeks later on March 22, 1952 at Rutherford County Hospital in Murfreesboro. His funeral was visited by more than five thousand people and his pallbearers were George D. Hay, Kirk McGee, Roy Acuff, and Bill Monroe. He was inducted posthumously into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966. A monument was erected near Woodbury. His son Dorris and several bandmates (often including Sam and Kirk McGee) made sporadic appearances on the Grand Ole Opry as the Fruit Jar Drinkers until the early 1980s.
During the second full weekend in July the town of Murfreesboro celebrates "Uncle Dave Macon Days." The event is held on the grounds of historic Cannonsburgh Village. This celebration hosts the national competitions for old- time clogging, buckdancing and old-time banjo.
Repertoire and style
While Uncle Dave Macon recorded over 170 songs between 1924 and 1938, in his day he was most notable for his polished and lively stage presence. Bandmate Kirk McGee later described Macon's personality as a never-ending performance— "All day long, from morning till midnight, it was a show." While playing, Macon would often kick and stomp, and shout sporadically, taxing the skills of WSM's early volume-control engineers. His performance style can be discerned to some extent from his early recordings, in which he whoops and hollers amidst relatively aggressive vocal deliveries.
Macon played an open-backed Gibson banjo on most of his recordings, and while contemporary musicians didn't consider him a particularly skillful banjo player, modern musicologists have identified no less than 19 picking styles on Macon's recordings. Macon's favorite tunes included "A Soldier's Joy", "Bully of the Town", The Arkansas Traveler, and "Sail Away, Ladies". Macon claimed to have learned the song "Rock About My Saro Jane" from black stevedores working along the Cumberland River in the 1880s. The song "Buddy Won't You Roll Down the Line" was inspired by the Coal Creek War, an East Tennessee labor uprising in the 1890s. In the song "From Earth to Heaven", Macon describes his days hauling goods between Woodbury and Murfreesboro for his shipping company. Macon's favorite hymn was "How Beautiful Heaven Must Be", which is inscribed on his monument near Woodbury.
