Musical Interlude: BF Shelton

When I walked into Ernest Tubb’s record store, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

This time we go deep in the Holler, way back to the Bristol recording sessions of 1927.

Many years ago, when a friend and I walked into that record store, I had never heard of these recordings (though my friend who has infinite knowledge of music had). I picked up a two CD sampling of them along with an anthology of bluegrass songs about coal mining. The store clerk informed me that with the Bristol Sessions selection, I had found the most “culturally important” item in the store. That was intriguing.

In 1927, the Victor Talking Machine folks travelled to several southern cities to make recordings. Bristol (which straddles the border of Tennessee and Virginia) was the spot deepest in the mountains and musicians from those two states as well as North Carolina and Kentucky made their way there in hopes of achieving commercial recording success. Artists Jimmie Rogers and The Carter Family did.

Many hail the Bristol Sessions as the birth of country music. These were not field recording; the artists who came there were at least aspiring commercial acts and given my preference for the raw and dirty, they sound a little polished to me. Something of an exception, and definitely my favorite performer on the recordings, is BF (Benjamin Frank) Shelton. As far as I can figure, the four tracks he laid down in Bristol are the only surviving recordings he made. Nevertheless, he is recognized as a master of the ‘mountain banjo’ style of playing and banjo pickers still study his technique. Further, though Shelton is often categorized as a bluegrass performer, he also gets labeled country blues: this is back in the day when those things were all cross-pollinating.

Shelton earned his living as a barber in Corbin, Kentucky. The first three songs have deep roots in Appalachian folk traditions and two of them trace back to England or Ireland. Shelton is credited with having written the final song. All are about women, loss, and longing. Enjoy.

Pretty Polly

Darling Cora

Oh Molly Dear

Cold Penitentiary Blues