{"id":1062,"date":"2011-09-25T20:00:37","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T00:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2011-09-26T21:39:17","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T01:39:17","slug":"a-legend-of-america%e2%80%99s-music-and-god%e2%80%99s-passes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/25\/a-legend-of-america%e2%80%99s-music-and-god%e2%80%99s-passes\/","title":{"rendered":"A Legend of America\u2019s Music, and God\u2019s, Passes"},"content":{"rendered":"

9-26-11<\/p>\n

Wade Mainer died last week. He was 104 years old. Born when Theodore Roosevelt was president and only four years after the Wright Brothers first flew, he was just about old enough to vote when sound came to movies, Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, and Babe Ruth hit 60 homers. He was only 22 when the first Great Depression fell\u2026 but things actually didn\u2019t change much for the worse in those hard-scrapple hills of Buncombe County, North Carolina, where he was reared. Music was one of the few “releases” folks had, a type of salvation.<\/p>\n

But Wade was not notable because he lived longer than is allotted to most of us. Among his plaudits is the fact that he followed his brother J E Mainer into playing music. J E was a fiddle player; Wade got interested in the banjo, which then, in black and white rural Southern music, was strummed (or played \u201cclaw hammer\u201d style). Wade experimented, following his own curiosity and taste, and started plucking the strings. He used only two fingers \u2013 his own style.<\/p>\n

It was a distinctive style of playing, and a sound that fit well with the guitar and fiddle of mountain music. Other local banjo players were influenced; one of them was Smith Hammett, who influenced a few more, one of them being a cousin named Earl Scruggs. Earl \u201cadded\u201d a finger to the right-hand picking, learned to slide and bend the strings a little bit on the neck, and the famous \u201csound\u201d of the Bluegrass banjo was born.<\/p>\n

Wade Mainer began that musical thread, but was modest about his role, and in fact never played in the Scruggs style, and firmly declined the Bluegrass label. When I would call his music \u201cmountain\u201d music, he liked that best. Yes, I had the privilege to know Wade.<\/p>\n

I had written several books on country music, and written about the Mainers, without knowing he was still alive; or dreaming that I would meet him; or guessing that we would become friends. I had moved from San Diego to mid-Michigan to be close to my daughter who took a job as a youth pastor. A local radio station announced a 97th birthday party concert for Wade Mainer \u2013 could it be? \u2013 and I met him, wound up joining his church, and becoming friends with him and his wife Julia, whose own stage name in the 1930s was \u201cHillbilly Lillie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back to the 1930s. The ensemble \u201cMainer\u2019s Mountaineers\u201d became a major act, and recorded for RCA Victor Records. In the early 1940s Wade played in a Broadway revue, The Old Chisolm Trail<\/em>, with Woodie Guthrie and Burl Ives. He performed at the White House for President Franklin D Roosevelt. Then came World War II, a postwar recession, and a public\u2019s taste that veered away from traditional mountain songs. Wade could no longer support his family with the banjo. The auto industry was booming, and he took a factory job with General Motors in Flint, Michigan.<\/p>\n

At that period of his life, a renewed commitment to God coincided with laying the banjo down. He considered that playing country music \u2013 anything that didn\u2019t serve God \u2013 should be avoided. He stopped recording, touring, even playing locally. It was only later, when the legendary Molly O\u2019Day, also born again, persuaded him that he should serve God through his music, that he began to sing, play, and record again.(Molly O’Day was one who discovered a young Hank Williams.) Latter-day albums were released by John Morris\u2019s Old Homestead Records.<\/p>\n

Until near the end, Wade played a lively banjo, had a great sense of humor on the stage and in his living room\u2026 and loved to testify. He would punctuate his monologues with everyday talk about Heaven and Jesus. And Julia, 94, who still plays a great flattop guitar in the style of Riley Puckett and Mother Maybelle Carter, can break out in spontaneous, anointed prayer that can sweep the hearts of everyone in a room.<\/p>\n

I wanted to tip my hat to a legend I was blessed to know (a painting I did of Wade and Julia performing is attached to this message) \u2013 but also to share the story of a man who was responsible for starting a major trend in American music, but was uncomfortable discussing it; who scaled the heights of show business for a time, but was totally modest about his acclaim; and \u2013 most of all \u2013 who followed his Christian conscience in forsaking the music business, or returning strictly to gospel music, despite many pleas to hit the road and club venues again. Those are rare traits these days, but Wade Mainer was a rare type of man.<\/p>\n

\n
\nPainting of Wade Mainer\n<\/div>\n

\n+ + +<\/p>\n

The video accompanying this message is a portion of an interview with Wade conducted by David Holt \u2013 this generation\u2019s John or Alan Lomax, seeking out pioneers of American music. Wade and Julia perform his gospel classics Sit Down<\/em> (\u201cI just got to Heaven and I got to walk around\u201d) and Take Me in Your Lifeboat.<\/em><\/p>\n

Click: Wade Mainer Gospel<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9-26-11 Wade Mainer died last week. He was 104 years old. Born when Theodore Roosevelt was president and only four years after the Wright Brothers first flew, he was just about old enough to vote when sound came to movies, Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, and Babe Ruth hit 60 homers. He was only 22 when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[461,463,462,460,464,459,457,458,456],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalministry","tag-banjo","tag-bluegrass-music","tag-clawhammer-style","tag-david-holt","tag-earl-scruggs","tag-gospel-music","tag-julia-mainer","tag-mountain-music","tag-wade-mainer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1bRYz-h8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1085,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions\/1085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mondayministry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}