Dock Boggs, born and raised in the mountains of Wise County in far southwestern Virginia, was a unique, exceptional and seminally important banjo player and singer that most people do not know about. His music is a unique combination of old time mountain and blues. "I have never worked for pleasure, peace on earth I cannot find, the only thing I surely own is a worried and troubled mind," Boggs sings in "Old Rub Alcohol Blues."
Most historians of American Folk music agree that Boggs was incredibly skilled with the banjo, sometimes picking the melody on the third and fourth strings while he played an accompaniment on the first and second strings. He also used many unusual tunings, often playing on a different key than that to which the banjo was tuned. He was proud of his style of music, which was more of the straight, old style than the "knock down" style of the 1920s (which was the predecessor to bluegrass and formative musicians of the genre, such as Bill Monroe).
Born February 7, 1898, in West Norton, Virginia, Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs was the youngest of ten children. He was named after the town doctor, and his father started calling him "Dock" when he was a toddler. He made it through the seventh grade, and began working in the coal mines of Appalachia when he was twelve years old. Music historians agree that it was the time he spent in and around the mines that made his music what it is.
It was around 1910 that Dock became interested in playing music on the banjo. He eventually got one by trading his watch for a gun and then trading his gun for the banjo. During the next ten years, Dock was influenced by many banjo players, such as Homer Crawford (a banjo picker and singer), his brother-in-law Lee Hunsucker (a preacher), and his brothers and sisters (especially his brother Roscoe). He was married in 1918 to Sara, his wife for the rest of his life.
In 1920 Dock moved up to a Sears Roebuck Supertone banjo and began to hear blues music, which had a great effect on him. Particularly influential was black music that he heard from the men in the mines and those around the railroads. In 1927, one of his friends talked him into going to an audition nearby, in Bristol, TN, where two men from Brunswick records were listening to the local talent. After borrowing a banjo from the record store and drinking half a pint of moonshine to "calm his nerves," he went to audition.
After playing two or three songs, among them "Country Blues" and "Pretty Polly," Dock immediately was offered a contract to go to New York and record with the record company. He was one of the few people from the area to make a journey like that, and it made him a local hero. He recorded eight sides and was offered two more contracts to record twelve more records. He never recorded for the company again, though, because of problems at home. He quit and went back to the coal mines in Norton.
Dock discovered that he was quite popular in Virginia, though, and made about three to four hundred dollars a week with his band. However, at the end of 1928, the band broke up and Dock and Sara moved to Mayking, Kentucky, in Letcher County.
In 1929, Dock recorded four sides with a record company owned by W.E. Myers of Richlands, Virginia (Russell County), called "The Lonesome Ace." However, because of the Depression, people did not have the means to buy his records, so he was forced to sell them for next to nothing. He was also not established enough in the industry to make it as a radio commodity. In 1930, Dock went to Atlanta where he was offered a spot on the radio, but was barely able to perform because of fright.
In 1931 Dock was offered a recording date with RCA Victor but he could not raise enough money to make the trip. In 1933 Dock returned to Virginia, gave his banjo to a friend as collateral for a personal loan, and never got it back. He soon gave up all hopes of making a living playing the banjo.
In June of 1963, Mike Seeger, a scholar and musician, sought out and found Dock and they became immediate friends. Seeger recorded Dock performing eight songs in addition to several hours of interviews. From there, Dock went on to play at the American Folk Festival in Asheville, NC. His nighttime performance there of "Oh Death" while fog rolled off the western North Carolina mountains and across the stage is still the stuff of folk music legend. He continued to make many appearances throughout the sixties.
Dock died on February 7, 1971, after his health began to deteriorate. He had taken up drinking again, which had haunted him his whole life. Nevertheless, he made quite an impact on the people who know his music, such as Bob Dylan and Griel Marcus. In Marcus's book Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, Marcus says, "[Boggs] made primitive-modernist music about death . . . put together . . . out of junk you could find in anyone's yard, hand-me-down melodies, folk-lyric fragments, pieces of Child ballads...." (Marcus). Marcus, then, one of the finest rock music critics of the contemporary age, found Boggs a respected and talented musician. Bob Dylan also called him one of the truly great American Folk Musicians of the twentieth century. From average mountain men to prominent rock stars, Dock Boggs touched and influenced many lives. Fortunately, his legacy is carried on each year in Wise County during the Annual Dock Boggs Festival, started in 1968 by Wise County resident and then-Clinch Valley College student Jack Wright, who also went on to found JuneAppal Records, the music recording branch of Whitesburg, Kentucky's, well known film making studio and community action group, Appalshop.
Bio By Jennifer Peters
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