Fiddlin' John Carson
"Fiddlin'" John Carson (March 23, 1868 – December 11, 1949) was an American old-time fiddler and singer who recorded what is widely considered to be the first country music song featuring vocals and lyrics.[1]
Fiddlin' John Carson
John Carson
March 23, 1868
Fannin County, Georgia, United States
December 11, 1949 (aged 81)
Atlanta, Georgia
Musician, singer
1920s – 1930s
Early life[edit]
Carson was born near McCaysville in Fannin County, Georgia. He moved to Cobb County in his youth. His father worked as a section foreman for the Western and Atlantic Railroad Company. In his teens, Carson learned to play the fiddle, using an old Stradivari-copy violin brought from Ireland in the early 18th century.[2][3] In his teens, he worked as a racehorse jockey.[2]
In 1894, Carson married, and a couple of years later, in 1900, he began working for the Exposition Cotton Mills in Atlanta, followed by work in other cotton mills of the Atlanta area for the next twenty years, eventually being promoted to foreman.[2][4] In 1911, Carson's family moved to Cabbagetown, Georgia, and he and his children began working for the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill.[5] Three[6] years later, in 1914, the workers of the cotton mill went on strike for their right to form a union, and Carson had nothing else to do but to perform for a living in the streets of North Atlanta.[4] In these days, he wrote many songs, and he used to print copies and sell them in the streets for a nickel or a dime. Some of the songs he wrote dealt with real-life drama, like the murder ballad "Mary Phagan". Because the governor of Georgia, John Marshall Slaton, commuted the death sentence of the wrongly convicted murderer of Mary Phagan to a life sentence, Carson, in outrage, wrote another version of "Mary Phagan" where he accused the governor of being paid a million dollars from a New York bank to change the verdict, causing him to be thrown in jail for slander.[7] The convicted killer, Leo Frank, was lynched.
On April 1, 1913, Carson performed at the first annual "Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention", held at the Municipal Auditorium in Atlanta,[8][9] where he came in fourth.[10] But between 1914 and 1922, he was proclaimed "Champion Fiddler of Georgia" seven times.[8] The governor of Tennessee, Robert L. Taylor, dubbed him "Fiddlin' John".[4] In 1919, Carson began touring, mostly the areas north of Atlanta, with his newly formed band the Cronies.[3][7] He became associated with many politicians of Georgia, like Tom Watson, Herman Talmadge, and Eugene Talmadge, relations that gave rise to new songs like "Tom Watson Special".[2] Carson and his daughter Rosa Lee began a series of performances for different political campaigns: for the Tom Watson U.S. Senate Campaign in 1920, for all of the Gene Talmadge campaigns, and for the Herman Talmadge for governor campaign.[3] On September 9, 1922, Carson made his radio debut at the Atlanta Journal's radio station WSB in Atlanta,[2][7] It was reported by the Atlanta Journal that Carson's fame quickly spread all over the United States following his broadcast at WSB.[11]
Views on race and evolution[edit]
Carson referred to the Ku Klux Klan in "There Ain't No Bugs on Me" ("The night was dark and driz'ly an' the air was full of sleet / m' ol' man join'd the Klu Klux an' ma she lost 'er sheet") and was a regular at Ku Klux Klan rallies. His "Ballad of Little Mary Phagan" helped to exacerbate the anti-semitism that was a major factor in the lynching of Mary's accused murderer, Leo Frank.
Carson made light of the evolution controversy in "There Ain't No Bugs on Me" when he said: "monkeys swing by the end o' thar tail an' jump from tree to tree thar may be monkey in some o' you guys, but thar ain't no monkey in me".[24]