Uncle Dave Macon – Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy

“Now, why can’t their records sound as good as that show?” The question is instantly familiar to fans of every sort of down-home music, from old-timey to acoustic blues to thudding roots-rock — 134 years after the birth of Tennessee’s David Harrison Macon, the “uncle” of country music.

Of all the originators of commercial country, banjo-playing entertainer Uncle Dave Macon was the early superstar whose career and catalogue was most affected by that issue of live versus canned, and the one who made the greatest effort to find some workable answer to the question.

Macon wasn’t particularly willing to follow the rules determined by the constraints of recording techniques in the late 1920s. He would not sit quietly and over-enunciate carefully into the still fairly crude mikes, as artists were instructed. If that sometimes leaves the sound of vibrations caused by foot-stomping on his records, it also means he consistently sings in his own unrestrained, humphing, up-from-the-gut, declamatory style.

Uncle Dave, who didn’t even begin to record until he was nearly 50, and who’d grown up learning the ropes from traveling vaudevillians who stayed at his parents’ downtown Nashville hotel, didn’t believe a song pinned down in formaldehyde was going to entertain people. His records regularly begin with jokes or stage patter, offer up varied odd percentages of balance between instrument and voice, and generally mimic the idea of a mini-show rather than some production in its own right.

To the modern ear, the resulting liveliness and presence surprises, and can be utterly refreshing. Especially compared to artists of the ’20s who did what they were told, sat there well-behaved and careful, scared to run over the limited recording time of the records — only to wind up sounding artificially deadpan and alienated (and eventually taggable as artifact evidence of the supposed “old weird America” by critic Greil Marcus).

The producers and annotators of this all-encompassing box set — 248 musical cuts, including rare, privately recorded latter-day sessions and clean Grand Ole Opry airchecks, plus, on the DVD, the 1940 movie Grand Ole Opry — actively join in on the “how to present Uncle Dave so he can be appreciated” issue, and acquit themselves very well. The clean, clear, full transfers of Macon’s recordings for Vocalion, Brunswick, Okeh, Gennett and Victor allow each prologue, frisky lyric and vocal trick to be heard, to begin with, as well as the picking of Macon and, on some occasions, the crack groups behind him. The presence he fought to keep on those 78s is still right there.

There’s also a full CD of Opry performances at the Ryman aired on WSM between 1939 and 1946. Here we find a truly unleashed Uncle Dave with that big stage to work on, for numbers like “Way Out On The Mountain” and the greasy perennial which gives this box set its name. Macon is electrifying as he turns up the heat in musical give-and-take with his guitar-playing son Dorris; he responds to the audience’s enthusiasm and tosses in the extra sound effect or hand-clap on the spur of the moment.

The only step closer to the preservable truth of Uncle Dave is to get a look at him, and though we don’t see him live before an audience, the Hollywood Opry movie contains the banjo-twirling performance “Take-A Me Back To That Old Carolina Home” that you may have seen extracted as the most revealing clip of the man. As a bonus, there’s prime footage of his vaudevillian disciple (when in Crazy Tennessean mode, anyway) Roy Acuff, presenting his more updated style on “Wabash Cannonball” and “Great Speckled Bird”.

The bulk of the set is made up of a still astoundingly broad set of musical styles that was a living compendium of American popular song in the south not only for the 20th century, but the 19th as well — which would help define what might be included under the rubric “country music,” and sometimes stretch considerably beyond it. The first known song in which the singer identifies himself as being a hillbilly is here (“Hill Billie Blues”), as well as others that limn the unmistakably rural — “Litle Old Log Cabin In The Lane”, “Sourwood Mountain Meley”, “Braying Mule”.

But a substantial slab of Macon’s music here might have been handled by any smart vaudevillian. His frequent trips to New York to record seem only to have added to his interest in often semi-satirical — and tuneful — rural turns on big-city life, along the lines of “The Bowery” or “The All-Go-Hungry Hash House”. Present too are plenty of story-song ballads that would shape a different end of the country spectrum.

Macon comes up with a surprising amount of topical, even political songmaking that would be picked up on by Pete Seeger and the folk revival much later, including commentary on labor actions, poverty, and government scandals — and support for anti-Prohibition presidential candidate Al Smith.

And if a certain reserve (or even prudery) was to settle into official country music later on, Uncle Dave never received the memo. So there are some pretty frank looks at sex (euphemized sometimes as “tickling”) and courting, fussing and fighting. Dave also has a way with a gospel number when he gets to them from time to time, and he brings in a handful of outright country blues numbers.

Among his 19th-century song bag, too, are the inevitable, often blatantly racist “coon” songs commonly sung — even by some blacks — in his youth, and only rarely criticized in his day. Some are simply frank story songs that use the ugly “coon” word, some try to suggest the singer doesn’t mean anything bad by it, and some…well, you’ve been warned.

The general sense of Uncle Dave, and most old-timey music as a genre, is often shaped today by the disparaging comments of more musically sophisticated bluegrassers, much as early sound pictures tended to suggest that all silents had been “primitive.” But Macon displays varied and engaging musical talents, including some eighteen different banjo styles by the count of the authoritative author Charles Wolfe, who penned the 175-page book included in the box set. (A terrific bonus in the book, unusual for Bear Family releases, is a full set of lyrics to the songs — and even Dave’s patter.)

In 1928, in the face of rising success by country groups, Macon was joined by the ace guitarist of the day, Sam McGee, and his fiddling brother Kirk. The tunes and harmonies that resulted are as entertaining as you’ll find in the music of that time, or later. (Occasionally they turn into an effective gospel group as well, simply by changing their name from the Fruit Jar Drinkers to the Dixie Sacred Singers, predicting similar secular/sacred combos by bluegrass bands later on.)

If Macon is not credited as a father of domesticated country in the fashion of the Carters, or of “rough and rowdy” solo country a la Jimmie Rodgers, it could well be because he tackled so many themes and styles that his musical influence is so pervasive, it’s invisible.

But, come to think of it, when you hear someone disparage the entertaining — and visual — cut-ups of an alt-country band such as Southern Culture On The Skids on one hand, or a radio-country outfit such as Big & Rich on the other — you might think, just for a moment, of the banjo twirler who, when they said sit down, stood up. And shook things.