Dock Boggs
| Dock Boggs | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Moran Lee Boggs |
| Born |
February 7, 1898 Norton, Virginia, United States |
| Died | February 7, 1971 (aged 73) Needmore, Virginia, United States |
| Genres | Old-time |
| Instruments | Banjo |
| Years active | c. 1927–1929, 1963–1971 |
| Labels |
Brunswick Lonesome Ace Folkways |
Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs (February 7, 1898 – February 7, 1971) was an influential old-time singer, songwriter and banjo player. His style of banjo playing, as well as his singing, is considered a unique combination of Appalachian folk music and African-American blues. Contemporary folk musicians and performers consider him a seminal figure, at least in part because of the appearance of two of his recordings from the 1920s, "Sugar Baby" and "Country Blues", on Harry Smith's 1951 collection Anthology of American Folk Music. Boggs was first recorded in 1927 and again in 1929, although he worked primarily as a coal miner for most of his life. He was "rediscovered" during the folk music revival of the 1960s and spent much of his later life playing at folk music festivals and recording for Folkways Records.
Boggs was born in West Norton, Virginia, in 1898, the youngest of ten children. In the late 1890s, the arrival of railroads in central Appalachia brought large-scale coal mining to the region, and by the time Dock was born, the Boggs family had made the transition from subsistence farming to working for wages and living in mining towns. Dock's father, who worked as a carpenter and blacksmith, loved singing and could read sheet music. He taught his children to sing, and several of Dock's siblings learned to play the banjo.
In an interview with the folk musician Mike Seeger in the 1960s, Boggs recalled how, as a young child, he would follow an African-American guitarist named "Go Lightning" up and down the railroad tracks between Norton and Dorchester, hoping the guitarist would stop at street corners to play for change. Boggs's version of the ballad "John Henry" was based in part on the version he learned from Go Lightning during this period. He also recalled sneaking over to the African-American camps in Dorchester at night, where he first observed string bands playing at dances and parties. He was enamoured of the bands' banjo players' preference for picking, having previously been exposed only to the "frailing" style of his siblings.
...
Wikipedia