Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith & His Dixieliners – Self-Titled

Old-time fiddling is the foundation upon which country music was built — at least as far as the Grand Ole Opry is concerned. For the Opry’s first decade, fiddlers and string bands playing hoedowns outnumbered all other types of performers combined. Among these pioneering string band musicians was a young fiddler from Humphreys County, Tennessee, just west of Nashville, named Arthur Smith.

In the mid-1920s, Smith was a maintenance worker on the Dixie Line who fiddled in the bunk car at night to pass the time. A chance meeting with another railroad employee, Harry Stone — who happened to work as a part-time announcer on WSM, the newest radio station in Nashville — led to Smith’s appearance on the Opry, beginning in 1927. Though he first played solo, Smith was soon appearing with his cousin, Homer Smith, billed as the Smith Brothers. The duo was quite popular, but for some reason were not among the Nashville musicians who managed to gain the attention of the record companies in the late 1920s.

When the duo disbanded in 1932, Arthur teamed up with Sam and Kirk McGee to form what must have been one of the great string bands of all time. However, this band never was recorded at the time (and wouldn’t be until the late 1950s), perhaps because the bottom had dropped out of the record business amid the Depression.

Smith made his first records — and arguably his best — a couple years later when he hooked up with another popular Opry act, the Delmore Brothers. Most of the material on this collection comes from various sessions Smith did with the Delmores between 1935 and 1938. Other songs come from sessions with members of the Tennessee Valley Boys, and still others from a 1940 session with members of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys.

From the beginning it was apparent that Smith was anything but your average old-time fiddle player. Though he was a solid traditional musician, Smith reconfigured old-time fiddling with his long-bow style, infusing it with a sophistication and sense of showmanship that seemed light years away from the old-fashioned hoedowns of early Opry fiddlers such as Uncle Jimmy Thompson or Henry Bandy.

This disc provides a good cross-section of Smith’s music. His fiddling is certainly the focus, with the emphasis on inventiveness and versatility. Examples of his dance fiddling are represented by “Straw Breakdown” (Smith’s version of “Turkey In The Straw”) and “Going To Town” (a version of “Katy Hill”). Smith had a penchant for the blues, revealed in “Dickson County Blues” and “Fiddler’s Blues”, the latter a great example of his long-bow fiddling.

The vocal numbers here include several Smith originals, plus a couple of traditional songs. Though he wasn’t a great singer, Smith nonetheless delivers his vocal numbers with a certain charm and a complete lack of self-consciousness. It doesn’t hurt that Alton and Rabon Delmore are his primary backup singers and guitarists.

As usual, County has done a remarkable job transferring and remastering the music from the original 78s. The booklet, with notes by Charles Wolfe and featuring photos from various periods in Smith’s life, is engaging in itself. The selections on this compilation make up about half of Smith’s output for Bluebird Records. We can only hope that County someday releases the rest.