One of Appalachian folk music’s most unjustly neglected virtuosos, Hobart Smith never achieved broad recognition beyond the audiences who caught his appearances at 1960s folk festivals or the young revivalists shaped by his propulsive banjo and guitar techniques, yet he stands among the most technically accomplished figures his style and period produced. Though reserved by nature, he relished performing, shifting into an exuberant stage presence whose vigorous numbers and richly detailed stories confirmed his deep roots to a generation seeking such authenticity. An exacting interpreter of his own elaborate settings of old-time material, he displayed remarkable range: rendering introspective country-blues on guitar, unleashing Earl Scruggs-inflected drive on densely textured banjo pieces, exploring starkly rhythmic fiddle melodies, or easing the atmosphere with buoyant piano numbers, all marked by an instinctive grasp of flowing melody and compelling rhythms.
Born in 1897 in Saltville, Virginia, Smith grew up steeped in a seven-generation Appalachian musical lineage. His father started him on banjo at seven, guitar at fourteen, and fiddle, mandolin, piano, and organ soon afterward. By 1915 he was working the minstrel-show circuit and had formed his own string band for events ranging from auctions to prison camps. At some later point the blues entered his vocabulary, permanently reshaping his approach to traditional songs. When he met Clarence Ashley in 1918, an artist he admired and whose influence he likely absorbed, Smith was already close to sustaining himself through music, though he still took work as a farmer, wagoner, house painter, and butcher. By 1936 he was also performing current popular material and had built enough regional stature that he and his sister, Texas Gladden, were asked to appear before Eleanor Roosevelt at the White Top Festival in Southwest Virginia; the First Lady was so impressed that she invited them to the White House.
In 1942 Smith cut forty sides for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress, capturing English ballads, banjo, fiddle, and guitar pieces, and Virginia murder ballads; the sessions also began a lasting association with Lomax that would open further doors. Lomax eventually introduced him to Moses Asch, yielding an album for Asch’s pre-Folkways label that soon went out of print yet exerted strong influence on the rising folk-revival circles in New York City, prompting Smith to concentrate exclusively on his traditional repertoire. Over the following years Lomax kept recording him, booking festival appearances, and gathering extensive interviews that documented the breadth of his legacy. During the 1960s folk-festival surge, performers such as the New Lost City Ramblers’ Tom Paley, John Cohen, and Mike Seeger, along with Jody Stecher, Hank Bradley, and Fleming Brown, absorbed his sets; Smith was at last recognized as the master he was and returned to the studio for Folk Legacy, indulging his affection for rare traditional material. Just as he appeared poised to reap wider recognition, his health declined. In 1965, his stature as a pillar of traditional music still growing with every performance, he died without fully enjoying the fruits of his gifts. Although musicians he had inspired continued to carry his influence forward, fresh attention produced the valuable Blue Ridge Legacy collection in 2001.
