Samantha Bumgarner
Samantha Bumgarner | |
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Background information | |
Also known as | Aunt Samantha Bumgarner |
Born | October 31, 1878 |
Origin | Dillsboro, North Carolina, U.S. |
Died | December 24, 1960 | (aged 82)
Genres | Old-time music, country music |
Occupation(s) | country music performer and pioneer |
Instrument(s) | Banjo, fiddle, vocals |
Years active | 1920s – 1960 |
Labels | Columbia Records |
"Aunt" Samantha Bumgarner (October 31, 1878 - December 24, 1960) was an American early country and folk music performer and singer from
Folksinger Pete Seeger attended Lunsford's festival in 1935 at the age of 16 in the company of his father, musicologist and composer Charles Seeger, then working for the music division of the WPA, and his stepmother, noted modernist composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, and would have heard Bumgarner perform there. Seeger has credited Bumgarner as his inspiration for wanting to learn the five-string banjo. "He learned (he says) to play the banjo after first hearing one played by a mountain girl named Samantha Bumgarten [sic]—came from the Great Smokies" [2]
Royal command performance
Bumgarner was also among the artists Lunsford assembled to play before
First female Country recording artist
Bumgarner and her friend, Eva Davis, recorded[1] the same year as another female country singer, Roba Stanley.[4] Stanley, whose recordings were made in July, 1924, is believed by many to have been the first female to record country music, but Bumgarner and Davis' recordings were made three months earlier, in April.[4] The pair recorded both in duet and as singer and accompanist and thus qualify for the distinction of having been the first female country solo recording artists.[4]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-89659-868-3, page 320.
- ^ Quoted in liner notes to original 78 album produced for the BBC, The Martins and The Coys [c. 1944], Columbia Recording Corporation.
- ^ Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 257.
- ^ a b c Women in early Country Music: A Tribute to the First Female Recording Artists Archived 2012-10-18 at the Wayback Machine