The story of Moran L. “Dock” Boggs venturing from his home county of Wise, Virginia to the larger world of music is comparable to other rural Appalachian musicians who were discovered in the late-'20s and early-'30s. A few record executives from the Brunswick label had come to the Norton Hotel in Norton, Virginia to hold auditions, and Boggs was able to prove his musical talent that day, simply by playing a few songs that he had adapted for his particular vocal style and banjo-picking.
Largely (but not entirely) a product of imitating black blues musicians, Boggs' version of “Down South Blues” was defined by distinctive modal patterns of banjo accompaniment, affecting a backup to his vocals. When Boggs performed for the talent scouts in Norton, the banjo had not been a definitive musical instrument of the white rural folk musician for very long. (The banjo, in fact, was originally introduced to Anglo music worlds through Africans who brought it across the Atlantic.) Boggs, nonetheless, combined his banjo-picking with his voice in a somewhat unorthodox way, creating a complementary melodic style.
His picking style ultimately imitates the style used primarily by black blues musicians. Most old-time banjo players used the claw hammer style, what Boggs once referred to as the "knock down" style. One of the original banjo players, known as String Bean (who worked with Bill Monroe), used that style. Boggs instead used a one-finger-and-thumb style, just as different from the clawhammer style as it is from the Scruggs style that helped define bluegrass. But there is nothing bluegrass about Dock Boggs' music. His playing reflected so much about daily life in Southern Appalachia that his story is as much a story of an iconoclastic musician as it is a story about hard times in coal country.
Boggs was picked to travel to New York City and record some tracks for a series of 78 rpm records that were released between 1927 and 1928. Recording in New York City was a landmark in the life of a man who had never previously seen a streetcar. Venturing from Wise, VA to NYC in the '20s to record an album could very well be the equivalent of flying to the moon. “Down South Blues,” which he recorded for Brunswick in 1927, advises the singer himself:
Oh my mama told me/And my daddy told me too/
Don't you go off, honey/
Let those men make a fool out of you.”
If Boggs felt the fool in NYC, it isn't knowledge available for the internet researcher, but rest assured that Boggs returned to his home to remain. His experience was no Midnight Cowboy, no La Strada, and certainly no Forrest Gump.
----
----
The Virginia hills along the Kentucky border, Wise County in particular, have been a wild and rough place for a long time. The legacy of extraction industries, coal in particular, has been one of poverty, environmental destruction, and oppression. Like how inner-city populations of large urban centers have been subjected to discrimination and negative stereotypes, the populations of Southern Appalachia were characterized negatively by observers too.
Listening to the music of Dock Boggs can be an effective experiment in understanding the development of stereotypes of Appalachian mountain folk. With his eerie, foreign-sounding accent, Boggs embodies the challenge faced by individuals from outside Appalachia attempting to appreciate the rough and unschooled sound of "real" country music. These are areas where acoustic music developed as a necessary part of daily life, even past the advent of radio and electrified sound.
The emotion present in Boggs's work was intense to a degree that might prevent widespread enjoyment, but Boggs seemed to be making a decent living as a musician. Were it not for the Depression, perhaps he could have escaped the mines at an earlier age. But his attempts to make music a career were not met with universal approval. Many close to him, notably his wife Sara, didn't approve.
Indeed, the life of a musician at the time was necessarily transient, involving late nights drinking and fighting. Musicians often performed in venues like brothels and gambling halls that represented to many the deterioration of traditional life in Appalachia, which was happening as the coal companies and transportation improvements into the region were wrecking old institutions and forging new ones. It's clearly outlined in “Country Blues”:
In the bottom of the whisky glass,The lurking devil dwells.
It burns your breast to drink it, boys;
It'll send your soul to Hell.
Boggs seemed drawn to these songs of hardship, not out of a desire to proselytize, but out of a need to share his troubles through music. (However, it begs to be observed that Boggs didn't really write any songs -- the tunes he performed are almost all traditional, from the public mind and commonly held.) When coal-mining could not adequately meet his needs, he turned to the illegal liquor trade. The bootlegger's life was one full of violence; murder and law enforcement acted as constant threats. Perfect fodder for heartfelt country banjo blues.
In the end, Boggs spent over 40 years of his life as a coal mine worker. Posterior to recording at Lonesome Ace, he had received offers for recording contracts, but refused them at the behest of his wife. When the reality of the Depression met the necessity of music, he chose food over art and pawned his banjo in order to prevent starvation. That began his 30-year absence from making music, a period of time where he neither sang nor picked.
----
----
What revived Boggs's career was the intense interest generated during the '60s by ethnographers like Alan Lomax and Mike Seeger in the old recordings put out on labels like Brunswick and Okeh of Appalachian musicians. Boggs does not play with the slick refinement seen in the musicians of the Grand Ole Opry or commercial radio. Preserved in the early Brunswick recordings is a style that was being lost, as the influence of popular culture penetrated even the darkest hollers of the South. In fact, that scratchy sound that often accompanies digital re-recordings of old 78s lends an even creepier tone to Boggs's work, in such a way that must be appreciated as part of the larger whole.
Alan Lomax remarked to Dock that he was the only person in the world who played with his particular style. Mike Seeger said that "his singing style is a highly individualistic synthesis of old mountain and blues styles, usually accompanied by the outline of the melody played on the banjo which often practically affects a duet with the voice rather than as an accompaniment." Boggs' compositions were written in a modal style which is unadorned and almost droning. Modal songs don't typically climax or switch time, but they revolve through cycles of tension that seem as though they could never end.
Although Boggs's style is often described as inscrutable, eerie, or otherworldly, much of that smoke seems to be derived from an inability of the casual listener or critic to discern or understand the precedent for Boggs' playing. For those who have delved extensively in folk music like that which is documented in Harry Smith's 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, known to many as The Anthology, Boggs voice is not terribly weird compared to Hazel Dickens or a cajun woman wailing away. Or try sitting through an entire album of Italian folk ballads. These are songs attributed to anonymous women, often recorded in the field, capturing music made in the moment for what it's worth and nothing expected beyond gratification for the singer as pleasant accompaniment to a daily chore.
Imagine the mountain life, where time moves slower and staving off boredom is often as simple as gathering on the porch or around the wood stove and playing some tunes. To have songs that can seemingly go on forever is as much a matter of helping fill the time as it is perhaps a natural result of the synthesis of musical styles that helped create the distinctive one of Appalachia. Or think of it this way: you'd have to know 60 different two-minute songs if you wanted to play music continuously for two hours.
Rambling, straight deliveries and spooky modal patterns aren't eerie on purpose, they just don't compare with the slick production of modern bluegrass, the three-chord satisfaction of rock, or the efficient delivery of jazz. That's not meant to be a qualitative comparison, but rather a simple truth of American popular music. Fitting Appalachian music from the '20s and '30s into a box with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dean Martin just doesn't happen. And then there are the vocals. Dock Boggs' voice is certainly a defining feature. Understanding his voice can go a long way to deepening one's appreciation for his music and style, shattering the thin veneer of idle curiosity or tittering wonderment at the voice of a supposed ancient mountain geezer.
Traditional vocalists for multi-piece acoustic bands had to be able to sing and be heard above the other instruments without voice amplification. Singing to be heard, straining to an audible point, yet matching the tone of your instruments, a vocal pattern can develop that, when paired with a microphone and a recording studio, suddenly becomes painfully intimate. Yet, it seems like paying too much attention to Dock Boggs as weird or Dock Boggs as esoteric or Dock Boggs as bones (all various interpretations offered by critics) is a slight. Unlike many artists who have done things to make their music sound intentionally weird, Boggs sang not out of a need to unsettle, but from an organic desire to make music.
