Wade Mainer

Wade Mainer (born April 21, 1907 in Weaverville , Buncombe County , North Carolina , † September 12, 2011 in Flint , Michigan ) was an American old-time and bluegrass musician. Mainer and his brother JE Mainer played a crucial role in the development of bluegrass.

Wade Mainer in the recent past

Life

Childhood and youth

Wade Mainer grew up on a farm near Weaverville. Mainer's bigger brother JE began playing fiddle as a teenager with her cousins ​​Roscoe and Will Banks performing on Barn Dances . Mainer began to play the banjo when he was about 12 years old, but developed his own 2-finger style, with which he plucked the strings and not, as was customary at the time, playing all the strings in chords in the "Clawhammer style".

Career

Beginnings

After brother JE moved to Concord to work in the local textile factories, Wade Mainer followed him. Together with Lester and Howard Lay they formed a band and played at events in the area. By 1934 they were so popular that they were hired for WBT's Crazy Barn Dance . Together with Zeke Morris and Daddy John Love they founded the Crazy Mountaineers , with whom they played on WBT in Charlotte and on WWNC in Asheville . On August 6, 1935, the Mountaineers held a session for Bluebird Records that included their hit Maple on the Hill / Take Me a Lifeboat .

After the Crazy Mountaineers left the Crazy Barn Dance, however, the group broke up. JE Mainer then played in a band with Snuffy Jenkins .

With the Morris Brothers

Mainer and Morris continued their musical partnership and continued to perform regularly on WWNC in Asheville and later on WPTF in Raleigh . While the duo was also accompanied by fiddlers such as Homer Sherrill , Tiny Dotson and Steve Ledford, only Mainer and Morris played on the first recordings for Bluebird in February 1936.

With the entry of Morris' little brother Wiley as singer and guitarist, the band expanded into a trio. Zeke Morris then switched to the mandolin . While at WPTF, Mainer and the Morris Brothers met Charlie and Bill Monroe , then known as the Monroe Brothers . The musicians quickly became friends and also performed together. While neither copied the styles of the others, it seems likely that Bill Monroe was heavily influenced by Mainer's banjo style. The formation of fiddle-guitar-banjo-mandolin would later be taken over by Monroe with his Bluegrass Boys .

With the Sons of the Mountaineers

Despite the successful partnership with the Morris Brothers, Mainer separated from them and in 1937 had already formed a new band, the Sons of the Mountaineers . He played with them on various radio stations in North Carolina and continued to record for Bluebird. The biggest hit from that time was Sparkling Blue Eyes . The first line-up of the new band consisted of Mainer, Jay Hugh Hall (brother of Roy Hall ), Clyde Moody and Steve Ledford - later Jack and Curly Shelton, Tidy Dotson, Red Rector and Fred Smith joined them.

The first session of the Sons of the Mountaineers took place on January 27, 1938, the last for the time being in September 1941.

No recordings were made during World War II and performances were only sporadic until they finally faded away completely. An exception was the concert by Mainer and his band in the White House in Washington, DC , which they gave at the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt , President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wife.

Later career

After the war, Mainer reorganized the Sons of the Mountaineers and received, like his brother JE, a recording contract with King Records from Cincinnati ( Ohio ); however, the success of these recordings could not match the success of earlier Bluebird records, as traditional old-time music was practically no longer available on the commercial music market.

1953 Mainer withdrew from the music business and moved with his wife to Flint ( Michigan ), where he at General Motors worked. He only returned to musical activities in the 1960s when country star Molly O'Day brought him into the studio as an accompanist for some country gospel albums. Since then, Mainer has been musically active again, performing at festivals, giving interviews in the trade press and recording several albums.

Mainer, who has been retired since 1973, performed sporadically until the end, despite his old age. Folk and bluegrass musicians such as Bill Monroe, Doc Watson and Ralph Stanley considered him influential for themselves.

Wade Mainer died on September 12, 2011 at the age of 104.

literature

• Wayne Peas: Rural Roots of Bluegrass: Songs, Stories and Histories (2003), 72-75; Mel Bay Publications, ISBN 0-7866-7134-3

Web links

• Wade Mainer on Hillbilly-Music.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wade Mainer Obituary: One of the last survivors of 'hillbilly' music's radio heyday of the 1930s, by Tony Russell, The Guardian, September 16, 2011