Category Archives: Vocals

Memories of the Hammons Family: Maggie Hammons Parker

Maggie Parker – Hammons Family Songs & Music – FRC713

by Wayne Howard

Article courtesy of the Old Time Herald, April-May 2010.

I had gotten well acquainted with Lee Hammons by the summer of 1970, but I still hadn’t met Dwight Diller, who had indirectly led me to Lee.  At the end of his school year at West Virginia University, Dwight came home.  By the time of Pioneer Days, in mid-July, we were fast friends; and Dwight was rapidly acquainting me and my wife, Barbara, with the “mountain music” scene. Continue reading →

Ola Belle Reed

Ola Belle Reed (FRC203)

by Thomas Polis (For further information go to www.olabellereed.com)

Ola Belle Reed was born Ola Wave Campbell on August 17, 1916, in Lansing, North Carolina.  She was one of thirteen children born to Arthur Harrison Campbell and Ella May Osborne Campbell.  The Campbell family ancestors had moved to the New River Valley of western North Carolina sometime around the 1760’s.  Arthur Harrison was an educated man who spent his life as a Continue reading →

Kilby Snow and His Influential Music Style

Kilby Snow (FRC205)

by Joe Riggs

Much has been written about the life and music of Kilby Snow, an autoharp player of the old tradition of playing below the chord bars. Most folks who know his music and style think first of his famous “drag notes,” a technique he developed to simulate a guitar slide or run on the autoharp, caused when he drags the pick upward from lower strings to higher strings. The first Continue reading →

The Dixie Hummingbirds

The Dixie Hummingbirds (FRC208)

by Jerry Zolten
Author, Great God A’Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds: Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music.
Oxford University Press

No group is more revered in the history of black gospel than the Dixie Hummingbirds. With a career spanning 75 years, the Birds truly embody the changes that defined the genre as it evolved across the decades of the 20th Century. From a cappella spirituals to guitar-driven gospel to mainstream pop – the Dixie Hummingbirds have always operated at the leading edge Continue reading →