Women of Early Blues Guitar

The Southern Folklife Collection, along with UNC Libraries, is excited to present our upcoming event, Women of Early Blues Guitar, with a very special thanks to the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation for their support.

Join us on Wednesday, October 19th at 7PM Eastern for this evening of conversation and music, featuring Valerie Turner of the Piedmont Blūz Acoustic Duo.  This event will be virtual and is free of charge.

Register at this link to sign up for what promises to be an educational and fun program: go.unc.edu/piedmontbluz

Join the southern folklife collection for an evening of conversations and performances on Wednesday, October 19 2022. Featuring Valerie Turner and the Piedmont Bluz acoustic duo, 7 p.m.

The SFC is the home of a number of collections that contain a wealth of resources about the Piedmont Blues, a genre which is distinguished by its guitar picking style that uses the thumb to lay down the bass line (or the melody if you are doing it reverse left-handed like Elizabeth Cotten) with the player’s forefinger syncopating a melody above.

You can see and hear an example here from the Piedmont Blūz site of “Spanish Flang Dang,” from an arrangement by Cotten:

Among the many collections held by the SFC that relate to the history of the Piedmont Blues, the Folkstreams.net Collection (#20384) contains perhaps the definitive documentary on the style, Step It Up and Go, which features prominent women pickers in the style, North Carolina residents Etta Baker, Cora Phillips, and Algia Mae Hinton.  This film was produced by Glenn Hinson (#20045) and Susan Massengale (#20278), both of whose collections are held here and available for research.

The SFC also holds the collections of the two people co-credited with coining “Piedmont Blues,” folklorists Peter B. Lowry (Peter B. Lowry Collection, #20017) and Bruce Bastin (Bruce Bastin Collection, #20428), with many digitized audio examples in both collections.

The Music Maker Foundation has long supported the lives and legacies of many of these musicians, and the SFC holds the collection of the founder of the MMF, the Timothy Duffy Collection (#20044).

Other SFC collections to explore with many Piedmont Blues-related findings are the Nancy Kalow Collection (#20113), the North Carolina Folklife Institute Collection (#20210), the Kenny Dalsheimer Collection (#20320), and the Judith McWillie Videotapes Collection (#20455).

We hope you are able to join us October 19th for this program, and welcome you to explore these related collections to discover more on this subject.

Frank Hovington materials at the SFC

Frank Hovington posing in front of his Fenton, Delaware home in April of 1978
Frank Hovington posing in front of his Felton, Delaware home in April of 1978. A still image from the video “Frank Hovington at home, Felton, Del., 30 April 1978” (VT-20466/21) in the Robert D. Bethke Collection.

One of my personal favorites in the Robert D. Bethke Collection (20466) is a video recording (VT-20466/21) of Frank Hovington playing guitar and singing at his home in Felton, Deleware back in April of 1978.
The Bethke Collection contains several original analog audio and video recordings of Frank Hovington (1919-1982), an American blues musician who was known for playing his guitar in the Piedmont blues style.
It’s a fascinating story how Frank (aka Guitar Frank), a man who lived the majority of his life in the state of Delaware, began playing the Piedmont blues. Music was in his family (Frank’s grandfather belonged to a fife and drum corps and his paternal uncle played piano and organ), but it was Frank’s neighbor, Adam Greenfield, who influenced him the most. Greenfield was a former Pullman porter from New Bern, North Carolina, who eventually bought a farm and settled about three miles from the Hovington family’s farm. According to Frank,
“They used to have what they called parties on a Saturday night, house-hops, and I would go ’round with my father and sit and hear [Adam Greenfield] play…and that was when I was first inspired to play banjo and guitar through him…I was only around five or six years old and I used to love to get right near him and watch that guitar and watch his fingers when he was playing and my father used to let me go and stay and watch him, so every time he used to be around town, I’d always make it my way to find where he was and listen to that guitar.”*
Frank Hovington on stage holding a guitar and talking into a microphone
Frank Hovington talking to elementary school students in February of 1979. A still image from the video “Frank Hovington at George M. Gray Elementary School, Wilmington, Del., 23 February 1979: tape 1 of 2 ” (VT-20466/36) in the Robert D. Bethke Collection.

Another video (VT-20466/36VT-20466/37) in the Bethke Collection documents Frank telling his Piedmont blues origin story to a group of elementary school students. I highly recommend checking this footage out. Not only do you get to see Frank tell his own story, but you also get to hear Frank play his songs to an enthusiastic audience of children, whose little voices and rowdy responses add a really special element to the video.
Now back to the 1978 footage of Frank I mentioned above. Robert D. Bethke, a folklorist who taught courses at the University of Delaware from 1977 to 2000, shot this particular video on portapak, a portable analog video tape recording system introduced in 1967 that made it possible to shoot and record video outside of a studio.
the front cover and inside of the 1/2" open reel video shot by Robert D. Bethke in 1978
the front cover (left) and a peek inside (right) of the original 1/2″ open reel video (VT-20466/21) shot by Robert D. Bethke in 1978

The video features Frank playing such traditional songs as “Railroad Blues” and “John Henry”. We also catch a glimpse of his home and property, on what looks like a nice, sunny spring day.
Thanks to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, this particular video (+ over 80 audio and video recordings found in the Bethke Collection!) have been preserved and are now accessible through the Bethke Collection finding aid (streaming access to the collection’s audio and video materials is limited to the UNC campus at this time). For your enjoyment, we’ve edited this short clip that features Frank playing “John Henry” :

"John Henry" lyrics transcribed from video recording VT-20466/21:

John asked his captain,
When are you goin' to town?
If you bring me a twenty pound hammer,
Beat a little steel back on down, hey gal
Beat a little steel back on
Beat a little steel back on down
Well, who been here since I been gone?
Well, who gonna kiss your rosy cheeks?
Well, who gonna shoe your cozy feet?
John Henry's woman, she talked so fair
Get my shoes from a steel-drivin' man
Kisses from a millionaire, hey gal
Kisses from a millionaire
Kisses from a millionaire
John Henry asked his captain,
When are you goin' to town?
If you bring me a twenty pound hammer,
Beat a little steel back on down
Beat a little steel back on
Beat a little steel back on down
Early in the morning, 'bout the break of day
Heard a voice in the wilderness, cryin,
Well, my side givin' away
Well, my left side givin' away
Well, my left side givin' away
Well, Who been here since I been gone?
Well, who gonna kiss your rosy cheeks?
Who's gonna be your man?
Who's gonna be your man?
John Henry's woman, well, she talked so fair
Get my shoes from a steel-drivin' man
Kisses from a millionaire, hey gal
Kisses from a millionaire
Kisses from a millionaire
Well, who been here since I been gone?
John Henry's woman, name was Polly Ann
Day she heard John Henry died
She drove steel like a man, hey gal
She drove steel like a man
She drove steel like a man

Frank may be best known for his album Lonesome Road Blues, which like the video clip above, features intimate home recordings of Hovington, but this time on guitar, vocals, AND banjo. Folklorist, Bruce Bastin, and musicologist, Dick Spottswood, made the album recordings at Frank’s home over a July weekend in 1975, just three years before Bethke made his way to the same address. The album was released by Bastin’s label, Flyright Records, in 1976 (FLY LP 522) and then again by Rounder Records in 1979 (Rounder Records 2017).

LP covers of Lonesome Road Blues by Frank Hovington
FLY LP 522 (left) and Rounder Records 2017 (right)

The Southern Folklife Collection has copies of both of these releases (pictured above), as well as materials relating to the Flyright release in the Bruce Bastin Collection (20428). We invite you to dig through all of these materials across SFC’s collections to get to know Frank Hovington and his music. A good start may be Bastin’s impressive liner notes on Lonesome Road Blues, as well as the subject files and images of Frank found in the Robert D. Bethke Collection. Happy sleuthing.
*Frank Hovington quote taken from Bruce Bastin’s liner notes to Frank Hovington: Lonesome Road Blues.- Flyright FLYLP 522 (1976)