Clarence “tom” Ashley – The Music Of Clarence “Tom” Ashley, 1929-1933: Greenback Dollar
Clarence Ashley was a first-generation country music performer whose “Greenback Dollar” became one of the signature songs of the early-’60s folk boom. Born into a family of traditional musicians and singers from Shouns, near Mountain City in eastern Tennessee, he was playing banjo and guitar before he hit his teens. A popular recording artist in his day, he may be best-known for his role in the 1960 “discovery” of a young guitar player and singer by the name of Doc Watson.
Ashley’s early recording career, the focus of this CD, began when he was 33 and lasted just five years, cut short by the Great Depression. During that time he managed to record about 60 sides for five different labels. Among these, about of third of which appear on this CD, are some of the finest examples of Anglo-American ballad singing committed to wax in the early era of country music.
Six cuts here feature Ashley performing alone, accompanied only by his clawhammer banjo. Various ensembles he recorded with are also well-represented. The most prolific of these, the Carolina Tarheels, consisted of Ashley and Garley Foster on guitars, with Dock Walsh on banjo, playing in an early and distinct three-finger style. Both the Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers and Byrd Moore & His Hot Shots featured the smooth, bluesy, long-bow fiddling of Clarence Greene.
The virtuoso harmonica playing of both Garley Foster, with the Tarheels, and Gwen Foster, who played with the Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers and in a duo with Ashley, is another key component. Their presence serves as a reminder of just how important the harmonica was in defining the sound of hillbilly music.
While these ensembles played a few of the ballads that were the mainstays of Ashley’s solo work, they specialized in novelty and blues-tinged songs that provide evidence of a more than passing familiarity with black country music on the part of Ashley and his cohorts, if not direct interplay between black and white musicians. These influences are felt throughout this album, and help to infuse the music with a certain rough-and-ready quality.
In addition to being a highly skilled banjo picker and guitarist, Ashley had a unique voice, and sang in a clear, unornamented style well-suited for both the ancient ballads and more contemporary blues numbers that made up his repertory.
Included with the CD is an essay written by Joe Wilson, who grew up in Ashley’s neck of the woods and knew him well. In addition to providing information about Ashley’s life and musical career, Wilson touches on Ashley’s career as a blackface medicine show performer, a controversial element of Ashley’s life as a performer that is neither well-known nor well-documented.