| From Ballard Branch, Virginia came a talented
group of musicians that became known as the Bogtrotters.
Davey Crockett Ward and his neighbour Alec Dunford were the fiddlers,
Fields Ward, Crockett's son, played the guitar and did most of the singing,
and Crockett's brother Wade Ward usually was the banjo player.
Wade usually played a three finger style to complement the singing in
the band but he was to become one of the greatest clawhammer players,
and his renditions of many classics are still cherished. The
Ward's family doctor, Dr.W. P. Davis, who had suggested the band name
in reference to being "bogged-down" in the mud on the rough road to the
Wards, also occasionally played the autoharp but served mainly as their
manager.
The amiable and eccentric Uncle Eck Dunford, as he was
known, fiddled in a slow, deliberate sophisticated style that contrasted
with the more vigorous mountain breakdown pace of Crockett Ward. After
the many years of playing together however, they achieved a wonderful
balance and complemented each other remarkably well. Both men
were important influences on the younger Fields Ward, and he heeded
their advice well, such as never singing faster than you can talk and
enunciating each word carefully.
The Library of Congress preserved close to 200 recordings
of these men. Crockett played in an earlier band known as Crockett
Ward and His Boys, and Eck fiddled and sang on many of the Blue
Ridge Cornshuckers' recordings.
The following is in part
from Jane Keefer's Folk Song Database.
The Bogtrotters (Bog Trotters)
Appearance as principal performer
- Ain't That Trouble In Mind
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 4
- Barney McCoy
- Folk Music in America, Vol. 6, Songs of Migration
& Immigration, Library of Congress LBC-06 (1978), cut #
10
- California Cotillion
- Folk Music in America, Vol. 5, Dance Music,
Ragtime, Jazz, ..., Library of Congress LBC-05 (), cut # 5
- Cluck Old Hen
- Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward, Folkways FA 2363 (1962), cut # 25
- Cold Icy Floor
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 2
- Days Of Forty Nine
- Folk Music in America, Vol. 3, Dance Music,
Breakdowns & Waltzes, Library of Congress LBC-03 (), cut
# 7
- Deadheads and Suckers
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 13
- Fortune
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 12
- Jesse James
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 1
- John Henry (the Steel Driving
Man)
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut #9
- Make Me (Down) a Pallet on
the Floor
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 3
- Miss McCleod's Reel
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 10
- Old Jimmy Sutton
- Original Bogtrotters, Biographph RC 6003 (196?),
cut # 5
- Piney Woods Girl
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 14
- Shoo Fly
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 6
- Sugar Hill
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 7
- Waterbound
- Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward, Folkways FA 2363 (1962), cut # 26
- Western Country
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 11
- Who Broke the Lock (on the
Henhouse Door)
- Original Bogtrotters, Biograph RC 6003 (196?), cut # 8
Side Performer Appearance
Ward, Wade / Uncle Wade. A Memorial to Wade
Ward, Old Time Virginia Banjo, Folkways FA 2380 |
