January 2015
Storytelling is an Appalachian art form. Before the Internet, before television, before telephones and radio, before even newspapers made the scene, storytelling was one of the best forms of entertainment. People huddled together on the front porch, around a wood stove, at the general store or anywhere a few people could congregate to hear someone tell a fresh tale.
Gary Ray grew up in Weaverville, North Carolina, the son of a tobacco farmer and local builder. His daddy, Frederick Prince “Dan” Ray, had a hand in many of the buildings that grace the Appalachian city of Asheville. Gary was the middle son of three children who lived a stone’s throw away from his grandparents and spent weekends and holidays with a slew of relatives on both sides.
The art of darning, particularly popular with thick, woolen socks, has rapidly deteriorated over the centuries. Now that cheap, easily replaced socks are widely available, one doesn’t need to spend hours recreating the original curved toes of a sock or reinforcing the rapidly thinning swerve of a heel. Instead, we just go buy new ones when a hole appears.
Appalachian Bluesman
The northern hills of Georgia, shining bright with the blue ridges of the southernmost tips of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is not necessarily known as a hotbed of blues music. But in its day, Macon and other Georgia towns were just that. And no one delivers the blues from the Blue Ridge better than Georgia native Robert Lee Coleman.
Classic Blues Meet the Mountains