Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
Death noted: Banjo picker Doug Dillard, at age 75 in Nashville. Although Dillard wasn’t a North Carolinian — he was born in Salem, Mo. — the one he played on TV played a key part in the bluegrass music revival of the 1960s.
Dillard was a founder of the band bearing his surname — except on “The Andy Griffith Show,” where they became the mute but musical Darlings.
One of the Darlings’ songs mentioned but apparently not played was “Tow Sack Full of Love.”
“In my opinion, the way I see it, and I heard it all back then, there was bluegrass before Bill Monroe ever got into bluegrass. There are several tunes we recorded where the banjo sounds like bluegrass. The Morris Brothers also were playin’ like that.
“Bill Monroe wasn’t doin’ any good, let me tell you, until he added a banjo into his group. Then his name was ‘Blue Grass Boys,’ and the name stuck for his music. I give credit to Bill. He probably was the man who made the music faster. But some people say he started it, and some people say we started it.”
— Wade Mainer in a 2000 interview with Tom and Lucy Warlick, authors of “The WBT Briarhoppers: Eight Decades of a Bluegrass Band Made for Radio” (2008)
Mainer, a Weaverville native who recorded prolifically during Charlotte’s heyday as a hub of country music, died Monday at age 104.
— The case against pardoning Gov. Holden.
— How “Chicken” Stephens was named and claimed.
— Pine, ‘shine and the decline of Buffalo City.
— Avett Brothers on Flatt and Scruggs: “We wouldn’t even recognize their music.”
— Mary Ann McQueen, Lucy Bryant and the tangled skein of racial identify.