Texas

A.C. (Eck) Robertson

Sallie Gooden (Vi 18956)

Arkansas Traveler (Vi 18956)

The legendary fiddler Eck Robertson was born Alexander Campbell Robertson in Delany, Arkansas on November 20, 1887. When he was three, Robertson's family moved to the Texas panhandle and settled on a small farm outside Amarillo. In the nineteenth century his grandfather, father, and uncles often entered fiddlers' conventions.  Robertson decided to pursue a musical career and left home at age sixteen. He traveled with medicine shows, a major employer of country musicians at the time, through Native American territory. In 1906 he married Nettie Levy, a childhood friend.

The couple settled near Amarillo, where Robertson worked tuning pianos for the Total-Line Music Company. Pursuing his musical ambitions, he and Nettie performed in vaudeville theaters and fiddle contests in the southwestern states. As a son of a veteran, Robertson attended Old Confederate Soldiers' Reunions annually. In Richmond, Virginia, at the 1922 reunion, he met fiddler Henry C. Gilliland, and the two performed at the opening ceremony for over 4,000 veterans. Upon realizing their complementary talents, Gilliland and Robertson traveled to New York in an attempt to record with the Victor Talking Machine Company.

Gilliland utilized his contact, Martin W. Littleton, who enabled the two to record what most historians consider the first commercial recordings of country music, on June 30, 1922. The duets included the famous "Arkansas Traveler" and "Turkey in the Straw." The following day, Robertson returned to the studio without Gilliland and recorded six additional tracks solo, including "Sallie Gooden," as well as two tracks that were never released. The Victor Company issued a limited release of "Arkansas Traveler" and "Sallie Gooden" in September 1922, but not until April 1923 was the disc in wide circulation. Two other records were released later in 1923 and 1924. (Seeber, 2015)

East Texas Serenaders

Acorn Stomp (Br 282)

East Texas Serenaders was a musical group of four east Texans from Smith and Wood counties and was one of the most unusual bands of the 1920s and 1930s. Their rare left-handed fiddle player, Daniel Huggins Williams, won contests all over east and central Texas. Their guitarist, Cloet Hamman, was known for good bass runs and a faultless rhythm. On the group's first recordings Patrick Henry Bogan, Sr., played an upright bass, but later played a three-string cello with a bow, since the bass didn't travel well on top of a car in bad weather. John Munnerlyn played tenor banjo with a steady colorful style.

The Serenaders first recorded two pieces on December 2, 1927, in Dallas for Columbia Records. They subsequently recorded fourteen songs for Brunswick around 1928. Finally, in 1937 they recorded eight songs for Decca. Munnerlyn left the group around 1930 and was replaced by Shorty Lester, whose brother Henry played second fiddle on later recordings. The rags and breakdowns the group played were clear steps toward swing and string-band music; a departure from the standard fiddle-band tradition. Some critics have given the Serenaders credit for developing the style of western swing. Hamman, Bogan, and Munnerlyn made one of the most forceful rhythm sections in string-band history.

Many of the Serenaders' recorded pieces were written by Williams, including "Acorn Stomp," "East Texas Drag," and "Arizona Stomp." The group got "Shannon Waltz" and "Sweetest Flower Waltz" from a northern fiddler named Brigsley who taught Huggins to play several ragtime tunes as well. Hamman composed "Adeline Waltz," "Mineola Rag," and "Combination Rag," which include bits of other tunes. The Serenaders so refined their music that they set the stage for other western and Texas bands by relying on their ragtime, waltzes, and tin-pan-alley style, using syncopations, flatted notes, and a fast tempo. (Bogan, 2015)

The track featured here, "Acorn Stomp," is an impressive ragtime time piece in the key of F major.