Backcountry Notes

The name "bogtrotter" is an Englishman's ethnic slur against the Irish. One wag's definition: "Slur directed against the Irish, mostly by jealous English bastards." Related to the use of the disparaging "bog Irish" to describe Irish commoners, and alternately rendered as "bog-trotter" or "bog trotter," the name came to America with the Scotch-Irish (along with another such ethnic slur -- "hillbilly"). The Scotch-Irish settlers' fine sense of irony led eventually to the naming of The Bogtrotters Band of Galax, Virginia.

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The epicentre of old-timey country music is Galax, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Plateau of Virginia. An independent city located between Carroll and Grayson counties, Galax hosts the grand-daddy of all mountain music events, the Old Fiddler's Convention. This gathering of musicians began in 1935 and in its early years featured one of the great mountain-music bands, The Bogtrotters Band.  During the late 1930s and early 1940s more than one hundred examples of the music of the Bogtrotters Band were recorded by John Lomax and Alan Lomax for preservation in the Library of Congress.  These recordings are a treasure-trove of old-timey music.

Handwritten on back of original Library of Congress print: "Bog Trotters Band; Galax, Va. 1937; Doc Davis--autoharp, Uncle Alec Dunford, Davy Crockett Ward--fiddles, Wade Ward--banjo, Fields Ward--guitar (behind)."

The story of The Bogtrotters Band is told by the Blue Ridge Music Center in Galax as follows:

The group was managed by Dr. W.P. Davis, who sometimes played autoharp, and neighbors Davy Crockett Ward and Alexander “Eck” Dunford were the fiddlers.  The droll-voiced Dunford told humorous stories, and gave the group its self-deprecating name. (A “bogtrotter” was once a term for an Ulster Irish immigrant, and Dunford was of that ancestry.) . . . Fields Ward, Crockett's son, played the guitar and did most of the singing, and Crockett's brother Wade Ward was usually the banjo player.  Wade 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.

"Uncle Wade" WardGrayson County also lays claim to The Blogtrotters Band and its most prominent member, "Uncle Wade" Ward, a native son who frequently performed at Jessie's Barber Shop in the town of Independence:

Independence and the surrounding area were home to several pioneers of ‘Old Time’. The most recognized and recorded is Uncle Wade Ward (1892-1971) who lived on Peachbottom Creek and operated a small farm. In the Smithsonian archives ‘A Memorial to Uncle Wade Ward, Old Time Virginia Banjo Picker’ by Eric Davidson and Jane Rigg states Uncle Wade ‘became famous as perhaps the greatest living exponent of the old time clawhammer banjo style. By the end of his life, his music had been distributed by major record companies, and interested people had come from all over the United States and England to see and hear him play. In 1937 Wade had been recorded with the Bogtrotters Band for the Library of Congress. Three decades after that, now known to all who valued and loved the string music, Wade was still going strong, and appeared in Washington DC for the Smithsonian Festival held that summer’.

The influence of The Bogtrotters Band remains strong in the field of old-timey music.  A contemporary Crockett Wardgroup, the New Ballards Branch Blogtrotters, was named in honor of the original band.

The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Music Heritage Trail passes through Galax and Independence on its winding path through the Blue Ridge Plateau and the Virginia Highlands.  The Crooked Road's Web site provides information on mountain music venues and events in Southwestern Virginia. The Blue Ridge Fields WardMusic Center Web site provides information on historic musicians and bands, including The Hill-Billies.

Recordings of The Bogtrotters Band and "Uncle Wade" Ward are available in the form of MP3 filed from download sites like Napster. You can listen to "Old Jimmy Sutton" here.