Mazor, a music and business journalist and the author of a book about Rodgers, has given us a beautifully written portrait of an utterly fascinating man. Musicians know who Ralph Peer was, and now his life and contributions to our nation’s music are made available to all of us in Barry Mazor’s wonderful and absorbing biography, “Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music.”
It was a music entrepreneur named Ralph Peer who discovered them.
Ritchie and Orr discuss the now legendary 1927 Bristol Sessions in Tennessee, when the largely poor and unknown Carter Family, as well as the former railroad worker Jimmie Rodgers, first recorded their music. Also included is Jean Ritchie (no relation to the author), who came to New York from Viper, Ky., and became known as the “Mother of Folk.” Along with Ralph Rinzler, a member of the old-time-music group the Greenbriar Boys and a Smithsonian folklorist, she introduced Doc Watson to the Greenwich Village folk community, initiating his long and successful career. Interspersed throughout the book are sidebars from those who are still carrying on the traditions, like John Cohen, a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, who learned from musicians dating back to the 1920s, like Roscoe Holcomb, Dock Boggs and Fiddlin’ John Carson. These Scotch-Irish immigrants moved principally to Appalachia, where their traditions took new forms in classics like “Barbara Allen” and “Shady Grove.” As Dolly Parton writes in her introduction, “I grew up in the Smoky Mountains listening to these ancient ballads that had crossed oceans and valleys,” songs that became the basis for folk, bluegrass and country music. “Wayfaring Strangers” tells the story of how Scottish immigrants to Ulster in Northern Ireland merged their own musical traditions with those of the Irish before coming to America and adding their music to the American songbook. Fiona Ritchie, the host of NPR’s “The Thistle and Shamrock,” and Doug Orr, the founder of the Swannanoa Gathering music workshops, have put together a gorgeous holiday gift book, including a CD of various artists’ renditions of the songs whose origins the authors so beautifully recount. For lovers of American roots music, these two books are essential.
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