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ADAM MANLY REECE: AN EARLY BANJO PLAYER OF GRAYSON COUNTY, VIRGINIA

Andy Cahan

Andy Cahan has done extensive fieldwork throughout the Blue Ridge and has produced and appeared on many albums of traditional music. He toured and recorded two albums with Tommy Jarrell and served as the banjo picker with Earnest East's Pine Ridge Boys from 1979 until East retired. During the 1980s, he also played and recorded with Carlie Marion of Elkin, North Carolina. The following essay originally appeared in the Galax Gazette newspaper of Galax, Virginia, in the weekend edition of August 11–13, 2000.

The evolution of the string band of the Blue Ridge has been the focus of many enthusiasts and scholars of mountain music. Most of the oldest players contended that the idea of a "band" originated when the guitar began to circulate and become intertwined with the older tradition of the banjo/fiddle combination. To this day, most fiddlers' conventions in the southern mountains require a bare minimum of a fiddle, a banjo, and a guitar as the instrumental requirement for bands competing in contests.

The historical circumstances surrounding the integration of the guitar into the mountain ensemble are relatively well understood. Industrialization and modernization in the early 1900s made factory-made and other non-local goods more accessible to people in the mountains. The way the guitar made it into the musical world of the Parishes of Coal Creek, for example, was not atypical. In the early 1980s, Leona Parish recollected:

Daddy was the first person in the whole country around to order from Sears and Roebuck, and he began ordering in early 1900. In the fall we would make out a freight order for the things we would need that winter, and two guitars were among the first things. The guitars were some of the first in the area that I know of.

Our understanding of the marriage of the banjo to the earlier fiddle tradition is less cut and dry. There has been a lot of speculation on just when the banjo arrived in the mountains, and under what circumstances. It is an accepted fact that the banjo, in its original form, came to America with the African slaves. It has been suggested that it arrived in the mountains due to direct contact between African Americans in the Piedmont South, and whites in the Piedmont and the mountains. The presence of black railroad laborers in the mountains after 1870 could have been a source of black/white musical exchange. It has also been suggested that the banjo and the clawhammer playing style came into the mountains with traveling blackface minstrel groups and tent and medicine-show entertainers. There are many potential answers to the question of how the banjo came to be paired up with the fiddle in mountain music, as the complex scenario of musical migration and interchange in the nineteenth century encompassed varied circumstances and individual experiences.

The facts surrounding at least one very early mountain banjo player, Adam Manly Reece (1830–1864), of the Grayson and Carrol counties area of Virginia, have surfaced. Information about Manly (the name he went by) had been retained and passed down through his family and was imparted to the author through Reece's great-nephew, Kahle Brewer (b.1903) of Galax, Virginia. Hailing from a family that virtually overflowed with musicians, Kahle himself was an old-time fiddler of the highest caliber. He had a strong and serious regard for the intricacies of both the music and its history. Kahle had a brief recording career in the 1920s, when he participated in the commercial recordings of Ernest Stoneman. His musical mentors were older fiddlers such as Emmett Lundy, Joe Hampton, Eck Dunford, Charlie Higgins, and others whose music was linked to that of the legendary fiddler Greenberry Leonard (1810–ca.1892).

Kahle Brewer was also a participant in an ongoing inter-family musical circle that spanned several generations. This community of musicians was loosely composed of members of the Leonard, Brewer, Reece, and Frost families, all of which were based in and around the Oldtown section near present-day Galax. The earliest musical partnership in this circle was banjoist Manly Reece and fiddler Greenberry Leonard. Their playing days date back to the 1850s, making them the earliest known specific banjo/fiddle combination traceable in the area. Manly Reece was Kahle Brewer's maternal great-uncle, and it seems he is the earliest nameable banjo player within the region. Most of what we know about Manly is due to the care that the Brewer family took to preserve the family history from generation to generation, as well as an exceptional collection of photographs and letters that were lovingly cared for. Perhaps the highlight of what was saved is the actual banjo that Manly built some time before 1849, when his family came to Virginia from North Carolina.

Most of what Kahle Brewer knew about Manly Reece was learned from his grandparents, Julia Reece Green (1842–1911) and her husband, Bill Green. Julia, Manly's sister, was herself an accomplished banjopicker, and also played the accordion. Bill played the banjo too. While growing up, Kahle had many occasions to hear about the old music and old ways from Julia and Bill.

The Reece family of Manly's generation was native to Randolph County, North Carolina, and had migrated to Virginia. Manly's father, George, was a blacksmith, the trade that Manly assumed. Sometime just after 1845 the Reeces left Randolph County for reasons unexplained and headed northwest. The 1850 census shows that they had by then settled in Hillsville, Virginia, after stays in Christiansburg, Virginia, and Princeton, West Virginia. The Brewers offered a possible explanation for the Reece family's move to the Grayson/Carroll counties area: Manly's older sister Larthena had become the fiancée of one Garland Anderson, a substantial landowner there. Shortly after arriving in Hillsville, the family settled in the Oldtown section.

It is difficult to clearly understand the origin and character of Manly Reece's music so many years after his death, although some of the picture can be assembled. Kahle Brewer clearly remembered his grandmother Julia telling him that her brother Manly began learning to play while he was still a boy. From all accounts it seems that Manly had been playing long enough to have become proficient by the time the family left North Carolina, at which time he was sixteen to eighteen years old. Judging from his legendary high musical caliber he was likely to have become an accomplished player before the Reeces arrived in Virginia. Supporting this is the fact that the arduous traveling, settling, and resettling that the family undertook in the late 1840s would have provided less than ideal circumstances for sustained contact with other musicians. And there is no evidence that another banjo player was along for the trip. It is safe to assume, then, that Manly began playing the banjo while he was still living in North Carolina.

But from whom did he learn? In speculating on this we must consider the banjo's historical position in the 1840s. It was during this time that the minstrel show was beginning to emerge—the caricaturizing of blacks by whites was becoming an institution of performance entertainment. Banjo playing was integral to the minstrel show. Although the minstrel show eventually became a popular, mainstream entertainment form in itself, the early minstrel theater of this time still had substantial connections with the music that originally inspired it—that of the slaves. But both deliberate and subconscious musical alterations would eventually render these connections insignificant. The music was played primarily by whites who, by and large, had little concern for playing true to the forms of the blacks whose music inspired it. Most were more concerned with putting on a marketable show. The eventual drift from traditional forms, however, was only in its earliest stages during the time Manly would have been learning to play.

The possibility that Manly Reece learned to play the banjo from black musicians can only be speculated upon. The 1840 census shows no Reeces in Randolph County who were slaveowners, yet the overall number of slaves there was substantial.

While Manly Reece's specific early musical mentors are no longer known, there is a smattering of information about his family's musical interests, activities, and contacts. Kahle remembered his grandmother Julia

mentioning that her (and Manly's) father, George, played the fiddle. She herself learned to play the banjo from Manly, and as noted earlier, played the accordion as well. Family letters from the 1860s reflect the family's active involvement with rural religious singing schools that used both shape-note and round-note songbooks. The letters also reflect an interest in secular songs. Among the Reece letters are verses of songs of the era that were written down by Manly's younger siblings and friends from Christiansburg. Notable among these are the words to Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More," there titled "Hard Times."

When asked to recall the older family member's descriptions of Manly Reece and his music, Kahle and his wife, Edna, offered some fascinating images. These images suggest both the possibility that Manly had been exposed to popular musical forms of the time as well as a compatibility with the traditional music of his adopted home in Oldtown. Kahle noted that:

Grandma said he could play anything he ever heard…. [He was] a natural banjo picker…. He was a genius.

Manly was known to have been a great entertainer as well as a fine musician. A blacksmith by profession, he was also an accomplished ventriloquist and a natural showman. When asked what he knew about the specifics of Manly's music, Kahle allowed that he played "nearly all of the old tunes" and that he also played Stephen Foster songs. Kahle had been told that Manly played the banjo in the clawhammer style, as was common among both blacks and blackface minstrels of the time, and which later became the dominant style among whites in the mountains. Manly had apparently also learned to fingerpick, and Kahle specifically noted that he learned clawhammer style first.

We can speculate further on the nature of Manly's banjo music through the situations in which he seems to have done much of his playing. Kahle Brewer remembers hearing from the old people that Manly did indeed play with several fiddlers in and around Oldtown. The one fiddler in particular that Kahle could specify was Greenberry ("Green") Leonard. The combination of the two is the earliest specifically known example of a banjo/fiddle partnership in the region.

Nowadays, there is no one left who can relate firsthand information about the state of the region's music in the nineteenth century. It is generally still acknowledged, however, that the most renowned fiddler of the period was Green Leonard. Even more than a century after his death, he has remained a legendary figure to whom much of the area's fiddle style and repertory can be traced. By all accounts, it seems that in the days of Leonard's youth (the 1820s and 1830s), the fiddle was not played with the banjo, which almost certainly had not arrived in the area by that time. Thus, the changes in tune repertory, rhythm, and tuning that came about through the integration with the banjo had not yet evolved.

The recordings of Galax-area fiddler Emmett Lundy (1864–1953) are the best available examples of music learned directly from Green Leonard. The sound of the music and the tunes is strongly "old world" in nature. There is a stately, almost elegant feel to the fiddling, and it seems to stand as complete on its own as it does with accompaniment. It is, truly, music from another era. Looking into the origins of Green Leonard's music, almost no information remains as to who his teachers and early contacts were. It has been discovered, though, that Leonard's great-grandfather, Thomas Blair, had a fiddle listed among the items in his estate. Blair was a native of Scotland who settled in Grayson County.

The musical combination of Green Leonard and Manly Reece was probably experimental in a way. It may have taken more adjustment on the part of Leonard, as he was most likely at least forty years old when he met twenty-year-old Reece and was steeped in the oldest solo-fiddle tradition in the region. In contrast, Reece was from an area over one hundred miles away and played an instrument that presumably was new to Grayson County and not yet firmly established as a white person's instrument. Despite the contrasts, information that has been passed down suggests not only that Leonard accepted but admired Reece's music.

Otie Leonard (1901–1985) of Oldtown was Green Leonard's great-grandson, and he had heard a great deal about his locally famous ancestor. To Otie, the musical combination of Green and Manly Reece was a solidly remembered milestone within his very musical family. During my visits with Otie in 1983 and 1984, he spoke of the two musicians and recounted that Green was said to have held Manly's music in great esteem.

Several letters written to Manly Reece during his period of service in the Confederate Army underscore the legendary reverence bestowed upon his music. The following is an excerpt from a letter dated August 13,1863, and was written by Louisa Leonard (1826-?), Green Leonard's younger sister:

Amos Ballard wrote you had been to see them and said to tell me you was well and could pick the banjo yet. I wish you would pick my favorite tune for me and just imagine I was listening, for I think you could almost see my spirit hovering around. I have not heard the banjo for so long. When you see Lee, Amos, and Ellis give them my love and tell them their folks is all well….

Louisa's letter reveals much more than her delight in Manly's music. The Amos Ballard she cites was remembered by fiddler Luther Davis (1887–1986) as one of the early fiddlers of the area. Kahle Brewer recalled his grandfather speaking of him as well. The "Ellis" Louisa refers to was Green Leonard's son (1840-?), Otie Leonard's grandfather, who was also a fiddler. Ellis served in the war at the same time as Manly. These references to Manly's social contact with other fiddlers provide the possibility of his musical involvement with them as well.

Another significant point in Louisa's letter is when she mentions, "I have not heard the banjo for so long." This suggests the scarcity of the instrument in the area at the time, possibly intensified by the potential number of banjo players called off to war. An earlier letter to Manly dates from August 9, 1861, and was written by Elizabeth Kegley, also of Grayson County:

… whichever side is a'goin to win I wish they would hurry and do it for I am getting tired of it. I used to see pleasure but I don't see no pleasure. No, I didn't know how much pleasure I was a'seeing when I used to go to singing school. I hope the time is not far. Listen, when you can, come home and sing and pick the banjo. I have often thought of past times, and wish that times was like they once was.

The heartache and destruction that accompanied the Civil War occasionally gave way to at least some relief through music. Generals Jeb Stuart and Robert E. Lee were particularly noted for their interest in music, for their own enjoyment and that of the troops. In her book Robert E. Lee: The Complete Man (1861–1870), Margaret Sanborn writes:

Evenings at the camp were often made lively by the company of ladies and the fun-loving Jeb Stuart, who always brought with him his court minstrels—Sam Sweeney, the banjo player; Taliaferro, the fiddler; Bob, a mulatto boy who worked the bones; a guitarist; and several staff members who, like Stuart, had excellent voices.

Sam Sweeney was, in fact, a professional minstrel who became a rebel soldier in the Civil War. He was a brother of Joel Walker Sweeney, one of the most celebrated of the early backface minstrels. In War Years with Jeb Stuart, W. W. Blackford notes:

Stuart would have an eye, not only to the reliability of the man and horse, but sometimes to the man's accomplishments in the line of enlivening a march, or beguiling the time around a campfire…. In this way he collected around him a number of experts…. Sweeney and his banjo and his negroe melodies were the favorites; and Sweeney always carried his instrument slung at his back on marches. The life of the men was restored by its tinkle.

Kahle Brewer's descriptions of Manly Reece's experiences during the Civil War are in ways similar to the descriptions of Sweeney. While his service in the Confederate Army deprived Grayson County of a significant musician, it provided the troops with some relief from the hardships of war. This is the other of Manly's main musical contexts of which we are aware. A provost guard in Pickett's division, Manly is said to have been given special treatment on account of his musical talents. Indeed, a letter written in 1863 by Manly's sister Larthena to her mother and sister attests to this:

I have heard from Manly and he was well…has escaped once more unharmed. Manly is one of the Provost guard … does not have to go into battle. He has quite an easy time if there is anything he has it and has choice of clothing.

Family information from the Brewers asserts that Manly had also been recognized by Lee and Stuart, who on several occasions personally invited him to entertain the troops. Kahle specifically noted that Manly brought with him to war a four-string banjo that he had previously converted to a five-string. Kahle also recollected a letter within the family collection that mentioned Lee and Stuart's intentions of introducing Manly to one of the Sweeney boys. The meeting, however, was destined never to take place.

Manly's musical activity during the war, and Lee and Stuart's enthrallment with him, would seem to imply that his music had an accessible, popular character. The idea of bringing him together with Sweeney also points to the possibility that Manly's music was oriented toward the minstrel music of the period, as well as being compatible with the age-old fiddle tunes he had accompanied Green Leonard on back home.

The recognition Manly gained for his music during his military years certainly must have earned him a more bearable existence. It could not, however, completely insulate him from the perils of war. His untimely death came in March 1864—not in battle, but while traveling with a group of soldiers atop a troop train near Petersburg, Virginia. Smoke from the locomotive blinded them as the train approached a tunnel. On March 10, 1864, Larthena wrote:

Dear Mother and Sister

I received your letter by to days mail. I had heard the sad news before your letter came…. Let's bare [sic] it as well as we can. All our grief will do no good…. we can change nothing that has happened. If so it would not be as it is tonight. Dear Mother I know you are troubling yourself very much. Please think of it, it will not bring him back.

Manly Reece lived and played music in the Grayson/Carroll counties area for barely over a decade. But considering the status he held among a small circle of distinguished local musicians, it seems that he may have ended up becoming a strongly influential player had he lived to return from the war. The extent of the influence he already wielded is hard to measure and makes one wonder again about the characteristics of other banjo players in the area at that time. There are hints as to the answers: Manly had taught his sister Julia to play, and Kahle Brewer remembered her as having been a fine clawhammer banjo player. Julia taught her husband, Bill Green, to play, and the couple had several children who themselves became noteworthy old-time musicians.

Kahle also recollected his grandfather, Bill Green, telling him about the music of local slaves, who played tunes such as "'Sheep Shell Corn,' 'Sourwood Mountain,' all them tunes like that" on the banjo, in the clawhammer style, and that there was at least one black fiddler among them.

And finally, we know without doubt that Manly was not the only banjo player from the area that went into the Confederate Army. Among the letters saved by Julia Reece was one written by a soldier named A. R. Frashure. Other information about Frashure is unknown at this time, and there are no clues as to why the letter was among the others that the Brewers saved. Its purpose, however, is unmistakable:

Dear Sir,

I take the pleasure this morning of dropping you a small note to inform you that the boys are well in camp…. My intention of sending this note to you is to inform you that I am very much in need of some music. I wish you would be so kind as to send me my banjo by the next opportunity by someone who is coming down this way or unless send it by express to which I will pay the carriage….

And you will oblige your friend

A. R. Frashure