Biography
During the period from 1939 to 1940, Dewey Bassett and his spouse Gassie laid down a run of old-time and mountain music sides for Bluebird at a moment when most labels had turned away from the style. Many of the traditional numbers they tackled received substantial rewrites or fresh arrangements from the couple, reflecting the wider move in country music away from purely folk sources toward original songcraft. The Bluebird dates materialized through Dewey’s sister Georgia Dell, born Adelle Bassett, who performed with the McClendon Brothers and Georgia Dell. Eleven discs in all were released, spotlighting Dewey’s guitar picking together with lead guitar passages supplied by his younger brother Jesse Bassett. A broken arm that had never been reset properly restricted Jesse’s playing, while his advice that Dewey adopt an unaccustomed approach further diminished the results. Both Dewey and Gassie came from Randolph County, the area lying between western Georgia and central eastern Alabama; they married in 1924 and soon began singing as a duo. Dewey appeared on radio outlets in Alabama and Georgia with the McLendon group, the Sunset Entertainers, Gid Tanner’s Skillet Lickers, and Charlie Mitchell. The Bluebird sessions proved to be the Bassetts’ final recordings; thereafter they adopted an exclusively gospel repertoire and performed at many sacred-music events in their later years.