Da Costa Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters

In 1927, Da Costa Woltz — mayor of Galax, VA, along with a promoter of patent medicines — met up a string band of regional musicians for any three-day recording session in Richmond, IN. Billing themselves relatively cumbersomely as Da Costa Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters, the group presented Frank Jenkins on banjo and occasionally fiddle, Woltz on second banjo, Ben Jarrell on fiddle, along with a 12-year-old Cost Goodson on ukulele and harmonica; the youthful Goodson presumably functioned just as much as a novelty and gimmick like a musician, carrying out on just three of the edges. From the 18 items recorded, only 1 actually included the complete ensemble: the rest of the songs featured users of the group divided into solos, duets, and trios. Such variance of staff amounted to a good degree of variety within the entire output, supplying a mixture of instrumental music and old-time Southern melodies (mainly sentimental ditties such as “Consider Me Back again to the Nice Sunny South”). The documenting program particularly offered as a car for Jenkins’ exact, quick-trickling banjo playing as well as for Jarrell’s raspy fiddling and vocals, possibly the most unifying part of the edges. Regardless of the group’s name, the Southern Broadcasters by no means in fact ventured into radio broadcasting , nor do they, despite their skills in the 18 monitors trim in Richmond, go back to the documenting studio room. Of the group, just Jenkins recorded once again, joined up with in 1929 by his kid Oscar as well as the prolific Ernest Stoneman beneath the name of Frank Jenkins’ Pilot Mountaineers. The musical legacy from the Broadcasters do a minimum of survive, meanwhile, with the bloodlines of a number of the first outfit’s associates: A lot more than three years following the Pilot Mountaineers program, banjoist Oscar Jenkins came back to documenting in the 1960s and ’70s, while Jarrell’s kid Tommy was perhaps one of the most emulated fiddlers of this era’s old-time revival.