Taken from Wikipedia:
Moran Lee “Dock” Boggs was an influential old-time singer, songwriter and banjo player. His style of banjo playing, as well as his singing, is considered a unique combination of Appalachian folk music and African-American blues. Contemporary folk musicians and performers consider him a seminal figure, at least in part because of the appearance of two of his recordings from the 1920s, “Sugar Baby” and “Country Blues”, on Harry Smith’s 1951 Anthology of American Folk Music collection. Boggs was initially recorded in 1927 and again in 1929, although he worked primarily as a coal miner for most of his life.
Boggs was born in West Norton, Virginia in 1898, the youngest of ten children. In the late 1890s, the arrival of railroads in Central Appalachia brought large-scale coal mining to the region, and by the time Dock was born, the Boggs family had transistioned from a susbsistence farming family to a wage-earning family living in mining towns. Dock’s father, who worked as a carpenter and blacksmith, loved singing and could read sheet music. He taught his children to sing, and several of Dock’s siblings had learned to play banjo. Around the time he began working in coal mines, Dock began playing music more often and more seriously. He learned much of his technique during this period from his brother Roscoe and an itinerant musician named Homer Crawford, both of whom shared Dock’s preference for picking. Crawford taught Dock “Hustlin’ Gambler,” which was the basis for Dock’s “Country Blues.”
In the mid-1920s, various record companies sent representatives to Southern Appalachia to hold auditions in hopes of finding new sources of talent. Around late 1926 or early 1927, Dock tried out at one such audition held by Brunswick Records at the Norton Hotel. Although he played on a banjo borrowed from a local music store and needed whiskey to calm his nerves, he played well enough to gain a contract to record several sides in New York later that year. Dock’s records sold moderately well, and Dock returned to the mining areas of Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, where he began to play at parties, gatherings, and mining camps. By 1928, Dock was making enough money to quit working in coal mines and focus exclusively on music. While Dock was experiencing a moderate amount of success, the life of a travelling musician often left him at odds with his religious neighbors, who considered such a life sinful. His wife, Sara, whom he had married in 1918, despised secular music and was opposed to Dock earning a living by playing music. The constantly moving mining camps were wrought with excess and violence, and Dock was consistently engaging in drunken brawls that often left him or an opponent badly injured. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression hit the Southern Appalachian region particularly hard, and few people had spare change to pay musicians to play at gatherings or buy records.
In 1929, Dock travelled to Chicago to record four sides for Lonesome Ace Records. However, with the onset of the Great Depression, he was unable to profit from these recordings. In 1930, Dock travelled to Atlanta, where OKeh Records had set up a live audition on radio station WSB. Due to stage fright, however, Dock performed poorly. Dock was offered several other recording auditions over the next three years, but he could not raise enough money to cover the necessary travel expenses. He eventually pawned his banjo, and gave up hopes of making a living playing music. In June of 1963, at the height of the folk music revival in the United States, folk music scholar Mike Seeger sought out and found Dock at his home near Needmore, Virginia. Seeger was delighted to learn that Dock had recently repurchased his banjo and had been practicing the instrument for several months before his arrival. He convinced Dock to play at the American Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina later that year, and with Seeger’s help, Dock began recording again, eventually recording three albums for Folkways Records. In the early 1970s, Dock’s health began to deteriorate, and he died on his 73rd birthday.
Dock Boggs
Country Blues: Complete Early Recordings
MediaFire DL Link
Tracklist:
01. Sugar Baby
02. Down South Blues
03. Country Blues
04. Sammie, Where Have You Been So Long?
05. Danville Girl
06. Pretty Polly
07. New Prisoner’s Song
08. Hard Luck Blues
09. Lost Love Blues
10. Will Sweethearts Know Each Other There?
11. Old Rub Alcohol Blues
12. False Hearted Lover’s Blues
13. Lost Love Blues [Unissued Alternate Take #1]
14. Will Sweethearts Know Each Other There? [Unissued Alternate Take #1]
15. Old Rub Alcohol Blues [Sole Unissued Alternate Take]
16. Lost Love Blues [Unissued Take #2]
17. Will Sweethearts Know Each Other There? [Unissued Alternate Take #2]
18. Peddler And His Wife [Hayes Shepherd]
19. Hard For To Love [Hayes Shepherd]
20. Bound Steel Blues [Bill Shepherd]
21. Aunt Jane Blues [Bill Shepherd]
