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That Muhlenberg Sound: Western Kentucky's
Unique Guitar Style, by Erika Brady, Western Kentucky University
The story goes something like this.
These are just two of the larger groups of new immigrant arrivals in Louisville.
Other immigrant groups include many from the former Yugoslavia, Latin America,
and Africa. Resettlement agencies and educators have learned from the past.
Immigrants are not encouraged to give up their old culture, as was the custom
in the old days of "melting pot" assimilation. Now the diversity
of these cultures is celebrated, preserved, and valued not only by the immigrants
themselves but also by those of us in the Louisville community who benefit
from their contributions.Around 1918, a young musician named Kennedy Jones
had played his thumb raw, hitting the bass notes on his guitar for hours while
playing a square dance. The next morning he went down to a Central City music
store and found a box of thumbpicks, at that time used exclusively for Hawaiian
music, then a fad. As he later recounted to musician and music historian Mike
Seeger, Jones told the owner, "Hand me down a guitar. I'm not gonna run
off with it. . . . So he handed it down to me, and I started pickin' with
it. . . . just a thumb and finger, that's all I used. I couldn't do a good
job with it to start with, but it gave me a good idea that I could. I bought
the whole box, turned the box up, and filled my pockets full with them. I
started pickin', and oh, in about a week or two, I was really rockin'. Oh,
I could just do it, and it would talk to you.
"That's how they relate the legend around Drakesboro, self-styled "Home of the Legends." That sore thumb was the irritation in the oyster that produced the pearl of thumbpicking as a regional, then national, and now a globally recognized style of guitar playing. And like many legends, it conveys an essential truth. The style Kennedy Jones shared with his buddies has an unusually specific and traceable genealogy, refined and passed on through such heroes of the Muhlenberg sound as Mose Rager, Ike Everly, and country music immortal Merle Travis, from Nashville to the world.
Still, it's the nature of a legend to simplify matters, and a closer look reveals a more complicated story. Kennedy Jones was already an accomplished guitarist by 1918, having learned a basic rolling thumb-and-finger style from his mother, Alice DeArmond Jones. What is more, the western coalfields of Kentucky provided an unusually rich combination of circumstances and influences shaping musicians of the early decades of this century. The origin of "the Muhlenberg sound" is more than just a Saturday morning chance encounter with a box of picks.
Navigable from the Ohio River to Bowling Green from 1828, the Green River linked early inhabitants of the region both commercially and culturally to a larger world. According to folklorist William E. Lightfoot, a steam-operated showboat plied its waters in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stopping along the way at small towns, bringing musical styles coming into prominence in the great urban musical centers of New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis. Nearness to great rivers also let local musicians try their hand at a traveling life, returning from time to time to share their new-found musical knowledge of ragtime, jazz, and Dixieland.
Lightfoot suggests that, defined by the economics of coal mining, the social
climate of the region allowed quite a bit of sharing between white and black
musicians, producing a unique combination of styles on both sides of the exchange.
History points in particular to the striking figure of Arnold Shultz, son
of former slaves, whose musicianship was legendary, influencing not only Kennedy
Jones and Ike Everly in his native county of Muhlenberg, but also shaping
the taste and style of a young Ohio countian who sometimes accompanied him
at dances by the name of Bill Monroe.
The on-again-off-again cycles of hiring and lay-off in the mining communities created periods when men had time on their hands, in which music provided welcome relaxation and distraction from the dangers and uncertainties of work underground, whether practicing alone at home, or sharing tricks and tunes with other pickers. "Travis-style" thumbpicking, as it's come to be called, reflects both the stubborn independence of inhabitants of the region, and their attraction to social forms of entertainment—although it can be played in an ensemble setting, it is essentially an individualist's style. The guitarist becomes a kind of "one-man orchestra" in which the player provides melody, harmony, rhythm, and bass—all with a swing and flair that makes it sound easy.
This was, in fact, the immense contribution Muhlenberg made to the development of instrumentation in country music. Up until the emergence of pickers such as Travis and Chet Atkins, the guitar had been primarily an accompaniment to melody carried either by the voice or by traditionally dominant instruments such as fiddle and mandolin. As "that Muhlenberg sound" captured the imagination of guitarists everywhere, the stage was set for the guitar as an instrument worthy of a solo break in an ensemble—or even a dominant role in itself.
The coal field setting of Muhlenberg County did more than provide social and historical surroundings for the development of this distinctive style of music—it infused the music with its very essence. Coal creates deep contradictions in the communities it dominates. It's a gift and a curse, a source of freedom and oppression, comradeship and terrible isolation—life and death. It's a way of life that is embraced and fled with the same passion, often by the same individuals. Merle Travis, Kennedy, Jones, and Ike Everly all made their homes elsewhere for significant periods of their lives—living out the paradox of the "pilgrim and stranger, traveling through a worrisome land," yearning always for a homeplace in the midst of self-imposed exile.
The jaunty, brisk polish of thumbpicking reflects a genuine delight in the pleasures of life, as do the sly, naughty lyrics Merle Travis gave some of his best known compositions ("So round, so firm, so fully packed—that's my gal!"), as well as songs of newer vintage by local writers such as Steve Rector. But just as much a part of the Muhlenberg sound is the dark vein of danger and sadness beneath the surface. Life is short ("Seek not your fortune way down in the mine."). Singer-songwriter John Prine immortalized the county's name in his much-recorded hit "Paradise," but his town of Paradise, of course, is a paradise lost, hauled away by "Mr. Peabody's coal train." Even Ike Everly's boys, Don and Phil, pop stars of the fifties and sixties then regarded as bright-faced boys-next-door, sang in their glorious tight harmonies over and over about dying from the ache of love, echoing the influence of the dour brother duets of the thirties with their grim old songs of passion gone wrong and violent death.
No wonder, then, that so many citizens of Muhlenberg County pay their musical legacy an almost religious respect. They are blessed with a peerless community scholar in Bobby Anderson, who devotedly documents the sound and keeps straight the endless "begats" of who influenced whom. They hold certain days as special, celebrating birthdays of Merle Travis, Odell Martin, and Mose Rager as opportunities for social gathering. They have their point of pilgrimage: Drakesboro, with its guitar-themed fountain, and roads named for Kennedy Jones, Ike Everly, Mose Rager, and Merle Travis. And in Drakesboro once a year they honor the greatest of their musical heroes and supporters with induction into the Thumbpickers Hall of Fame at an evening of ceremony that is as carefully planned as the Grammy awards, as rousing as a political rally, and as profoundly moving as a revival.
The technique and repertoire of the Muhlenberg sound is special; the virtuosity of its musicians both famous and unsung is a marvel; but perhaps the most remarkable thing about the music is the devotion of the community to honoring and maintaining it. It is an excellent thing that the commonwealth honors this region's musical tradition by showcasing the artistry of their musicians in this year's Festival—but it is even more heartening to know that they are honored at home, as well.
