Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas

Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas is released (5/6/2008)

Novello Festival Press is pleased to announce the release of its newest title, Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas, edited by Ann Wicker. The book is a lively, readable sampler of more than 50 essays, articles and recollections about the music and musicians with roots in the Carolinas – and how this musical legacy continues to grow and thrive today.

The region is famous for being home to musicians as diverse as James Taylor, James Brown, John Coltrane, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Nina Simone.

Here's my contribution:

Hotel Charlotte
One of the best musical secrets of Charlotte, North Carolina is the once glorious, then faded, then imploded, Hotel Charlotte. Located on West Trade Street, conveniently down the street from the old train station and more recently the Presto Grill, what’s left are the hundreds if not thousands of recordings made in the hotel’s upper floors during the 1930’s and 1940’s, during the heyday of the hotel and a corresponding golden age of American country, blues and gospel recordings.

In the 1930’s Charlotte was a major recording center for country, blues and gospel. Hundreds of sides were waxed in a suite of rooms on the Hotel Charlotte’s 10th floor. According to Tom Hanchett’s “Recording in the Charlotte Area 1927-1939”, “It is possible that the Charlotte area was America’s busiest recording center during the years immediately before World War II.”

By 1937, recording sessions in Charlotte were so frequent that RCA Victor needed a permanent studio. They took over three top-floor rooms of Charlotte’s then, most exclusive hotel. They knocked out walls and partitions, draped walls with heavy curtains and created one large recording area. Rooms 1050, 1052 and 1054 were located at the rear south corner of the hotel. Though primitive by today’s standards, it was a step up from Charlotte’s temporary warehouse studios of previous decades.

In 1936 the Monroe Brothers - Bill and Charlie – had already recorded their first songs,
“Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” and “What Would You Give in Exchange For Your Soul?” and had their first major country hit records. So, in 1937 and early 1938 they recorded additional songs at the Hotel Charlotte studios. These were their last recordings made as the Monroe Brothers. Later in 1938, the Monroe Brothers split up and Bill Monroe formed his now-famous Bluegrass Boys, becoming well known as the Father of Bluegrass.

Many other well-known groups of the day also recorded at the hotel. A partial list includes the Delmore Brothers, known for their harmonizing duets (Doc Watson often performs their “Deep River Blues”), Mainers Mountaineers and their various family offshoot bands and the Blue Sky Boys (“Are You from Dixie?”, “I’m Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail”). Banjo star of the day Uncle Dave Macon (and his Fruit Jar Drinkers) made last recordings here at the Hotel Charlotte, as did the era’s most influential fiddle player, Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith (no relation to Charlotte’s Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith, of “Dueling Banjos” fame). The Georgia Yellow Hammers, a well-known out-of-state string band also recorded here as did the Dixon Brothers. The Dixon’s “I Didn’t Hear Anybody Pray” became a monster smash for Roy Acuff retitled as “Wreck on the Highway”. Even the Carter Family, in Charlotte for their radio show on WBT, recorded at the hotel.

Local Charlotte stars such as Homer Sherrill and brothers Wiley and Zeke Morris recorded at the hotel as did Homer Briarhopper, Fred Kirby, Cliff and Bill Carlisle and various versions of the Briarhoppers, who were created by WBT radio’s Charles Crutchfeld. Also recorded at the hotel were the big band sounds of Bob Pope’s Hotel Charlotte Orchestra as well as numerous amateur and part-time musicians. As late as 1945, RCA Victor recorded Cecil Campbell’s Tennessee Ramblers and Claude Casey at the hotel studios.

One particular session from the Hotel Charlotte in August, 1937 even today remains a pivotal point of the early country music era. According to Tom Hanchett, J. E. Mainer’s session with Cleveland County (NC) banjo player Dewitt “Snuffy” Jenkins led directly to today’s bluegrass banjo sound, popularized by well-known Cleveland County legend Earl Scruggs. These sessions featured for the first time, Snuffy’s characteristic three-fingered banjo playing, which influenced Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys and of course Flatt and Scruggs and all else that followed.

Black Gospel groups were heavily recorded at the Hotel Charlotte. The most influential and widely copied group, the Golden Gate Quartet, began their recording careers at an August, 1937 RCA session. The following year they played New York’s Carnegie Hall as part of the significant “Spirituals to Swing Concert”. This legendary event combined big band stars of the 1930’s - Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Sidney Bechet, Meade “Lux” Lewis - along with blues and gospel musicians. It also led directly to the folk music revival, rhythm’n’blues and the birth of rock, decades later. Another popular gospel group recording at the hotel were the Heavenly Gospel Singers, an a cappella quartet rivaling the Monroe Brothers in record sales.

Quoting Hanchett again, from twenty or so years ago, “This historic (Hotel Charlotte) studio survives today, untouched… some metal component racks and microphone cables remain in place and there are bits of electronic debris – knobs, tubes, broken switches in the corners.” Actually, even less is visible today as Hanchett’s notes were written twenty years ago. As is the custom in Charlotte, this historic structure was torn down - imploded – and even less was saved. In its place now is the modernistic Carillon Building, a pleasant enough, luxury high rise, office building, whose lobby houses a spectacular Jean Tinguely kinetic sculpture, consciously incorporating former objects of the old hotel. If you look closely you can see the lion’s head a gargoyle that once graced the façade of the old hotel, now reduced to spouting water.

There were only a few other permanent recording studios in the American south in the 1920’s and 1930’s. These were in places like New Orleans, San Antonio and Atlanta. Most have long been demolished. The fact that the Hotel Charlotte survived so long – until the 1980’s – suggests that it was considered by many to be of unique historical importance.

All that is left today of Charlotte’s other early recording sites is a plaque commemorating the demolished Southern Radio Corporation building at 208 ½ South Tryon. This was an earlier temporary studio where Bill Monroe recorded his first hits and other country, blues and gospel performers first recorded in Charlotte. And there are still a few bits left of the old hotel in an upscale bar and restaurant, several miles distant called the Hotel Charlotte, where they’ve incorporated some original doors from the old hotel and still use half the hotel’s original old bar. They even store the original elevator cage in their basement along with other bits of memorabilia, like an old menu showing hamburgers at 15 cents. But like the earlier temporary studios, the Hotel Charlotte finally disappeared into dust and little remains but the ghosts and their fine, outstanding music.