(bright banjo music) ♪ ♪ ♪ I'm going around the mountain charming Betsy ♪ Going around the mountain to leave ♪ If I never see you no more ♪ Do Lord, remember me (pan flute music) ♪ I'm going around the mountain charming Betsy ♪ Going around the mountain to leave ♪ If I never see you no more ♪ Do Lord, remember me ♪ Now, charming Betsy's going on down the line ♪ Wineglass in her hand ♪ Going after her old man ♪ Golly, despite of every word she said ♪ Oh, my baby, take me babe ♪ I've known the world, Lord, take me babe ♪ Sunday morning, home sweet home ♪ If you gonna call me, I'll be gone ♪ She turned around ♪ Two and three times ♪ Said me babe ♪ Take me babe ♪ Take me babe ♪ Oh my babe, take me babe ♪ Oh make me one pallet on your floor ♪ Make me one pallet on your floor ♪ Oh make a pallet soft and low ♪ Won't you make it so your man will never know ♪ Oh make it so your man will never know ♪ Make it so your man will never know ♪ Oh make a pallet soft and low ♪ Won't you make it so your man will never know - Don Flemmings along with Rihannon Giddons and Justin Robbins and started the Carolina Chocolate Drops in 2005 They met with huge success.

Now Dom is out on his own pursuing a solo career.

Those of who love traditional music feel like it's really important to research the background and historical styles.

And Dom really digs into the background of his songs and brings us a new take on old time music and blues and ragtime.

So Dom you call yourself an American songster.

What does that mean to you?

- When I was trying to define what I do as a musician.

I combine a lot of stuff in folk music and blues and early jazz and ragtime.

I just felt that songster was just a great term.

And not a lot of people using it at that time.

So I decide to just incorporate into my act.

Songster kinda reaches back to this early idea.

So before we had like blues singers and country singers and stuff, songsters were just a musician who played in the community and so I thought that was a great way to be able to bring all the different types of genres into one place.

- Mainly coming out of a Black tradition?

- Mainly out of a Black tradition but also before there were country singers, there were white songsters as well.

Like Henry Whitter, people like that that were early on but mostly out of a Black tradition.

People like Mance Lipscomb or Leadbelly.

- So what is it that inspires you about this music?

- Oh, I mean, how long you got David?

I mean, there's the literature of the music.

There's the stories of the music.

There's the history around the songs and then sometimes the places that the songs comes from even have their own interesting story to them.

Playing the different types of instruments, the styles.

I can go all day about it.

Listening to records.

Even of stuff that I might not even play but just to be able to hear this old type of music.

It's really just a treat all around and so for me I was fortunate.

I came up in an era when the 20s and 30s stuff were around but also the vast material that was collected and recorded in the 60s and the 70s going on so there was a lot of different types of folk music for me to listen to.

And I've just always been a student and a fan of all of it.

Keep on trucking Mamma.

Trucking my blues away!

- Yes sir.

- Oh yeah.

♪ I got a girl in New Orleans ♪ Yes I do ♪ I got a girl in New Orleans ♪ I got a girl in New Orleans ♪ She cooks hamhocks and collard greens ♪ Keep on truckin' mama ♪ Truckin' my blues away ♪ Oh yeah ♪ Truckin' my blues away is what I say ♪ Keep on truckin' mama ♪ Truckin' my blues away ♪ Keep on truckin' baby ♪ Every night and every day ♪ I got a gal that's little alone ♪ Said she love me but she don't no more ♪ Keep on truckin' mama ♪ Truckin' my blues away ♪ Oh yeah ♪ Trucking my blues away ♪ Go ahead Dave ♪ Yeah man (scatting) ♪ Keep on truckin' mama ♪ Truckin' my blues away ♪ Keep keep keep keep keep on baby ♪ Every night and day ♪ I got a gal that's little low ♪ Says she love me but she ♪ Keep on truckin' mama ♪ Truckin' my blues away ♪ Oh yeah ♪ Truckin' my blues away ♪ Let's get it one more time - Aww yeah.

- That was good.

Blind Boy Fuller.

- Absolutely.

But you know I learned that one actually from Blue Hanks originally.

I got to meet him though the Music Maker Lee Foundation in 2006.

And I came in as just a session musician so they were gonna have this new fella come in and play some songs.

And it happened to be Boo and he sat down and played three hours of wonderful music and I was just hanging on for the ride.

And he did his first record for Music Maker all in that one three-hour session.

- And he was basically a farmer from not far from here.

- Absolutely.

- And just played on his own.

He never really played for the public or anything like that.

He was discovered late in life in his 80s.

- That's right.

He was 79 when he made his first recording.

Yeah he just knew some people in the community and there was a fella who was a fan of what they were doing at Music Maker and just sent the word down.

"Hey, there's this old guy that maybe "you guys should try him out."

And that's the beauty of at that time, no even for Tim who had spent a lot of time recording different blues musicians.

He said, "Wow, I never though"-- - It's exciting to find him.

- Yeah like a really great song stylist.

- And he played that finger picking style like you're playing too.

- Yeah.

Like you know when I first started doing finger picking see, I'd learn like Elizabeth Cotton stuff, so kinda like... And so, and then I heard, like, Lightnin' Hopkins, and his sort of Texas shuffle which was more like...

I kinda call it Texas pinching.

And, uh, so Boo kinda did something that I heard, was something in between where he just, he had a really syncopated thumb on it.

- It's got a very ragtime-y feel, doesn't it?

- Absolutely, and that's the whole genre of styles, uh, ragtime blues.

And you find with, especially people like Blind Boy Fuller and all over North Carolina, you'll find a lot of those guys.

- They're important.

That's an incredible banjo, a six-string banjo.

Tell us about this thing.

- Well, this is, uh, this is my good friend Big-Head Joe.

- Yeah, I wonder why.

- And, uh, I picked this banjo up a few years back, it's a six-string banjo as you mentioned before, a guitar banjo, tuned like a guitar.

But this one happens to be a really big one.

- Yeah - And, uh, well, basically, see, I don't know the full story about why six-string banjos exist, except for the fact that they were a conduit between the guitar culture and the banjo culture that grew out of the 1880s and the 1890s as ragtime begun to explode into the American consciousness.

- I thought that they were, uh, mainly for the orchestras, the banjo orchestras.

- Well, that's a thing too.

So, that's a whole other, uh, uh, branch on the tree .

As it were, between the 1890s up to the 1920s, there were so many styles of music that were merging and coming together between, uh, the old minstrel shows, and, uh, there was also Hill-Billy music came around, ragtime music, vaudeville became a big thing.

And, this, this banjo, for me, since it's a, on the back there's a sticker that says "The Clef Club Deluxe Banjo".

And the only Clef Club Orchestra I know of was one that was led by James Reese Europe - Right.

- Who was, out of Harlem and he became a black orchestra leader that led a Carnegie Hall concert that featured hundreds of banjos.

- Quite famous, yeah.

- And including, including these here, so, I don't know if it's not directly connected to James Reese Europe, but I know it's from the fallout of that era of banjo playing, and so, a lot of times we think of the banjo as a very rural instrument which is true, there's a rural tradition, but there's also this other sophisticated, uptown, uh, middle-class, black, Broadway, vaudeville version of the banjo.

- Yeah - And this banjo kind of falls into that big tradition.

- Papa Charlie Jackson is known for playing a instrument like this.

- Well, that's the that's the thing is though these banjos seem to be extremely popular, there were only two or three people who recorded with them.

There was Sylvester Weaver, and then there was Johnny St. Cyr who played with Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five.

And then there was Papa Charlie Jackson who's probably the most recorded musician who used a six-string banjo.

And I've played one of Papa Charlie's songs for ages, one called "Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine."

- Oh, let's do it.

- Alright, let's do it.

We'll give it a shot here.

♪ Everybodys talkin' bout their sweetie nowadays ♪ I've got the one with the sweetest ways ♪ Your baby may roll the jelly fine ♪ But nobody's baby can roll it like mine ♪ Your baby ain't sweet like mine ♪ She bakes a jelly roll all the time ♪ And when I'm feelin' lonesome and blue ♪ My baby knows just what to do ♪ She even calls me honey ♪ She even lets me spend the money ♪ Never has my baby put my outdoors ♪ She even buys me all my clothes ♪ And I don't wanna brag I just wanna put you in line ♪ Your baby ain't sweet like mine no no ♪ Your baby ain't sweet like mine ♪ Your baby ain't sweet like mine ♪ She bakes me jelly rolls all the time ♪ And when I'm feelin' lonesome and blue ♪ My baby knows just what to do ♪ She even calls me honey ♪ She even lets me spend the money ♪ Never has my baby put me out doors ♪ She even buys me all my clothes ♪ I don't wanna brag just wanna put you in line ♪ Your baby ain't sweet like mine no no ♪ Your baby ain't sweet like mine ♪ Your baby ain't sweet like mine (laughing) - You grew up in Phoenix, Arizona.

How did you get interested in folk music out there?

- I got hooked up with the local folk music community out there in Phoenix around 16 when I started playing guitar.

I started out on drums when I was in, uh, the school band and then evolved into the guitar and eventually banjo.

Well, the other thing that got me into it was a documentary called "The History of Rock 'n' Roll" and in one of the episodes it featured the early '60s folk revival, and that really got me interested in Bob Dylan's music, Lightnin' Hopkins, Phil Ochs, and uh, couple of other musicians.

So, I got into that, got into the Newport Folk Festival and I started a searching on all these players, you know, so I got into Mississippi John Hurt, Dock Boggs, Clarence Ashley, New York City Ramblers, and, it's like a, kinda like I read about the people in the '60s reading about these guys from the '30s.

It was the same thing for me, right?

All these people from this far-away place, Boston and New York City and all these places, they were playing this folk music.

So, that's how I started.

Uh, and then I got into poetry for a while, I learned to put my instrument down and perform with my body, and then I got back into music, so when I got back into music it was old-time-y music and so, that's when I really got into it, and that's what led me to the black banjo gathering in 2005.

It was all kind of a one-step after the other.

- That was a very important gathering, and, tell about who you met there.

- Oh, yeah, when I went out there I got to meet, Mike Seegar that was, he was the main person I got to meet and really got to know.

I also got to meet Joe Thompson who was a fiddler out there from North Carolina - A black fiddler?

- Yep, and I learned from watching, uh, Joe Thompson, all of a sudden I was able to connect people like Henry Thomas and Lead Belly to the blues tradition and to the music to preceded the blues tradition.

So, before songsters were kind of in their own little world of blues scholarship.

But seeing Joe Thompson's fiddling banjo music and what that represented, I saw the way that those two musical traditions put together, and for me that was a big moment.

I brought those things together, and when, uh, started the Carolina Chocolate Drops, that was something I brought into it and was thinking, I'd go, "how would Charlie Patton had played with a string band", or "how would someone like Lead Belly had played "with the Blind Lemon Jefferson", who, um, he talks about in his references saying, "Oh, I played with Blind Lemon.

"I'd play the low part, he'd play the high part", things like that.

And I start applying that to the music that I was playing in the string band.

So, that's where, that's where I got started out doing old-time music.

- Let's just talk for a second about, uh, Joe and Odell Thompson, 'Cause they were so important, and two of the last black string band players.

- I met, I didn't get ever to meet Odell but I did meet Joe at the black banjo gathering.

And he was part of the reason I came out to North Carolina because I had, um, I was finishing college at that time so, I went out to the gathering, came back, graduated from Northern Arizona University, and then I just decided to pack up all my stuff and go out to North Carolina because I knew Joe was there, I knew there was community of people who were interested in music that I was bound to put out there and just for an adventure, I had, I had nothing holding me back, so, I just-- - Did you learn some songs from him, or, basically just an attitude towards music?

- Oh, I learned, I learned all his family songs.

Um, I didn't learn them as a banjo player, I had to learn that later just on my own.

But, I still played, uh, "Cindy Gal" with the bones and the harmonica.

So, I kinda take the idea of, um, that Mike Seegar had on certain things of mixing up different instrumentation and I applied that to Joe's music.

- He must had been really surprised at the enthusiasm that the audience had for the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

- Oh, absolutely.

You know, I had been playing and basking out on the street for several years, maybe four or five years before, during the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

So, you know, any busker on the street you know that no one has to stop.

Nor do they have to appreciate what you do in any way.

So I learned that early on.

And then when we started doing the Chocolate Drops it was all of a sudden there was something bigger that was being, uh, represented, and put out, put forth to the audience that was beyond the music that we were playing.

I mean, being young, educated, black people, and of course, uh, the other members who were from the south originally.

So, that was very important to have all those elements coming together in one show.

And, uh, for me having been a fan of the music, I jumped right on it, said, "okay, who are the people who are in the history books now?"

And so, I started jumping on that, and where there would be blues scholarship, I'd make sure the little chapter before that about string band music or whatnot, and just kept doing that anytime someone had a college dissertation they wanted they wanted to write about string band music and black string band music, with the Chocolate Drops as a focal point.

I encourage that.

Interviewed with them, and did everything I could.

And after 10 years it's been, it's been nice to see that that's now part of the curriculum.

- You stayed with the Chocolate Drops for nine years and then you went out on your own as a solo performer.

What do you want to accomplish as a solo artist?

- I wanna help, you know, create new scholarship about the old-time music.

The other part, of course, I wanna, craft my own style which is something that's that goes back to every single person I've met in the south.

They've said that you, you can learn all the styles you want, but you do have to develop your own style after a certain point.

And so, I've just been kind of dipping my toe into, getting back into writing which is what something I did early in my, musical journey.

But coming back to writing again so, kinda doing half and half.

Doing original numbers, that are based on old songs, or, you know, sound like old songs.

And then there are the old songs themselves, and being able to either mix different parts of the traditions together or just doing really straight ahead.

'Cause I find that even, over my time of playing, there was a whole community of people who were playing this stuff when I came in.

And so, now, I've gotten to a spot having been in it 10 years to, that I have to be one of the people that become the storyteller that tells the stories of why things are the way they are.

- You're in your 30's now, where do you expect to be when you're in your 60's?

- Woah, gosh, I couldn't even tell you.

You know, I, I'd like to hit the road some more, of course.

You know, I feel like I got a lot of good years of performing live, because I really enjoy doing that.

- Yeah.

- But I'd also like to keep, uh, being a part of documentaries, uh, being an advocate for the stories that usually aren't told.

And, uh, to be able to also introduce people to the basics of the music again, just, you know, tell people who Muddy Waters is, 'cause there's even uh, you see someone like, uh, Buddy Guy or B.B.

King, they're you know, B.B.

King just passed away, Buddy Guy is getting older, and you know, we just need people that are talking about the true pioneers.

- That's true, mhmm.

Nice, the bones, now where did you learn to play the bones?

- Well, you know, I learned to play the bones, uh, the first time someone gave me a set of bones was at the Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention.

So, right after I moved out to North Carolina, first, uh, fiddlers convention I went to was out in Mount Airy, North Carolina 2006, and there was a woman that I met there an older woman who saw me playing the guitar, and she said, "you know, the way you play the guitar, "I think you gotta learn the bones, "'cause they're part of the tradition", and then she gave me a set of bones.

- I bet you were very explosive with the guitar, waving your hand around, yeah.

- Yeah.

And you know, and, uh, that was something that was, uh, you know, I took the bones and I started learning them and, uh, I got a lesson from, uh, Matt Kinman, great old-time musician.

Got a lesson, some lessons from, uh, Michael Baytop who was a bones player up in Washington D.C. And, uh, from there I just started kinda experimenting with different ideas of what rhythm could be in old-time music.

'Cause there's this, you know, there's a neat counter rhythm that can go with a lot of old-- - Counter and syncopated rhythm all the way through.

Did you know that bones were the first instrument I learned?

- Oh, yeah?

- When I was a kid, yeah.

My family was from North Carolina originally, and they had brought the bones from North Carolina to Texas where I grew up.

- Oh, wow!

- So, let's try it together.

Yeah!

- I got a, quite a fancy style as you do, you've got some great licks there, but we got the rhythm.

Let's just try a little bit of bones extravaganza here.

- Yeah, let's try to get it.

Let's get it going on.

So, you go ahead David.

♪ Well, I never went to college ♪ Never went to school ♪ But when I come to Buie, ♪ I'm an educated fool - Yeah, man!

- [Narrator] David Holt State of Music is available on DVD.

Music from the program is available on CD.

To order visit shopPBS.org or call 1800-PLAY-PBS.

- That'll leave 'em playing.

(laughing) [slide whistle and spring boing] ♪