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353:", "Little Black Train", "Prodigal Son", and "Calvary". Along with "Turkey in the Straw" and "John Henry", he learned songs such as "Banjo Clog" and "Down South Blues" from African-American blues musicians. The song "Wise County Jail", written by Boggs in 1928, was inspired by an incident in which he had to flee to Kentucky, after attacking a lawman who tried to break up a party at which he was playing.
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style, or "frailing", he typically played in a style known as up-picking, which involves picking upwards on the first two strings and playing one of the other three strings with the thumb. He played several songs in a lower D-modal tuning. His technique, which Seeger considered "a style possessed by
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In June 1963, at the height of the folk music revival in the United States, the folk music scholar Mike Seeger sought out and found Boggs at his home near
Needmore, Virginia. Seeger was delighted to learn that Boggs had recently repurchased a banjo and had been practicing the instrument for several
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While Dock was experiencing a moderate amount of success, the life of a travelling musician often left him at odds with his religious neighbors, who considered such a life sinful. His wife, Sarah, whom he had married in 1918, despised secular music and was opposed to his earning a living by playing
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Around the time he began working in coal mines, Boggs began playing music more often and more seriously. He learned much of his technique during this period from his brother Roscoe and an itinerant musician named Homer
Crawford, both of whom shared Dock's preference for picking. Crawford taught him
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had set up a live audition on radio station WSB. Because of stage fright, however, he performed poorly. He was offered several other recording auditions over the next three years, but he could not raise enough money to cover his travel expenses. He eventually pawned his banjo and gave up hopes of
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at the Norton Hotel. Although he played on a banjo borrowed from a local music store and needed whiskey to calm his nerves, he played well enough to gain a contract to record several sides in New York later that year. He recorded only eight sides for
Brunswick, however, as he deemed their payment
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preacher and singer, began teaching him religious songs from the
Holiness and Baptist traditions. Boggs also learned a large number of songs from listening to Hansucker's vast record collection. By 1928, he was making enough money to quit working in coal mines and focus exclusively on music. He
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In the early 1970s, Boggs's health began to deteriorate, and he died on his 73rd birthday. In 1968, his protégé Jack Wright started the Dock Boggs
Festival, which is still held annually in Boggs's hometown of Norton, although it is now known as the Dock Boggs &
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Boggs's records sold moderately well, and he returned to the mining areas of southwestern
Virginia and eastern Kentucky, where he began to play at parties, gatherings, and mining camps. Around this time, his brother-in-law Lee Hansucker, who was a
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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.
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music. The constantly moving mining camps were fraught with excess and violence, and Boggs was consistently engaging in drunken brawls that often left him or an opponent badly injured. The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent
207:, 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
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months before his arrival. He persuaded Boggs to play at the
American Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, later that year. With Seeger's help, Boggs began recording again, eventually recording three albums for
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In the mid-1920s, various record companies sent representatives to southern
Appalachia to hold auditions in hopes of finding new talents. Around late 1926 or early 1927, Boggs tried out at one such audition, held by
165:. 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
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Boggs learned traditional mountain songs from his siblings, including, "Sugar Baby," from his brother John; "Danville Girl," which he learned from his brother Roscoe; and "
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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
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to record four sides for
Lonesome Ace Records. However, with the onset of the Great Depression, he was unable to profit from these recordings. In 1930, he travelled to
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bought a new banjo and formed a band known as "Dock Boggs and His Cumberland Mountain Entertainers". At one point, he was earning three to four hundred dollars a week.
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playing at dances and parties. He was enamoured of the bands' banjo players' preference for picking, having previously been exposed only to the "
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hit southern Appalachia particularly hard, and few people had the means to pay musicians to play at gatherings or buy records.
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player. His style of banjo playing, as well as his singing, is considered a unique combination of
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of the 1960s and spent much of his later life playing at folk music festivals and recording for
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no other recorded player," was adapted to fit previously unaccompanied mountain ballads.
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451:"Dock Boggs & Kate Peters Sturgill Festival | Norton, VA - Official Website"
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The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music
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Seeger, Mike (1998). "Some Personal Notes." CD liner notes for
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149:(February 7, 1898 – February 7, 1971) was an American
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401:". Extended version of essay in CD liner notes for
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399:Down a Lonesome Road: Dock Boggs' Life in Music
373:. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 42–43.
403:Dock Boggs: His Folkways Recordings, 1963–1968
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438:Dock Boggs: His Folkways Years, 1963–1968
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369:Marcus, Greil (1998). "Dock Boggs."
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519:American country singer-songwriters
329:He was buried in Norton, Virginia.
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440:. pp. 19–32. Smithsonian Folkways.
337:While Boggs was familiar with the
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416:The Encyclopedia of Popular Music
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544:Singer-songwriters from Virginia
172:Anthology of American Folk Music
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179:for most of his life.
159:Appalachian folk music
147:Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs
38:Background information
524:American folk singers
316:Newport Folk Festival
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215:In an interview with
205:West Norton, Virginia
161:and African-American
324:Kate Peters Sturgill
489:Dock Boggs Festival
397:O'Connell, Barry. "
244:Turkey in the Straw
209:subsistence farming
169:'s 1952 collection
539:Old-time musicians
529:American banjoists
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203:Boggs was born in
184:folk music revival
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461:on August 3, 2021
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217:Mike Seeger
167:Harry Smith
121:, 1963–1971
503:Categories
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339:clawhammer
326:Festival.
228:John Henry
221:Dorchester
199:Early life
177:coal miner
100:Instrument
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44:Birth name
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333:Technique
194:Biography
130:Brunswick
288:, where
266:Holiness
236:frailing
151:old-time
136:Folkways
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405:, 1998.
351:O Death
286:Atlanta
282:Chicago
126:Labels
90:Genres
85:, U.S.
68:, U.S.
163:blues
155:banjo
104:Banjo
467:2021
73:Died
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