Biography
Born Finley “Red” Belcher, the Kentucky banjoist whose nickname evoked a dyspeptic radical had already spent more than twenty years on the Appalachian circuit when he cut a handful of landmark early bluegrass sides with fiddler Tex Logan during the closing years of the 1940s. Those sessions represented only one of several alliances the player forged with accomplished fiddlers; among them was the decision to mentor young Jim Bowles, an emerging old-time and bluegrass fiddler still in his twenties, thereby offering the novice his initial immersion in professional music-making.
By the late 1920s Belcher and Bowles were already working steady engagements across southern and central Kentucky, appearing at dances, pie suppers, picnics, and rowdy gatherings alike. They also staged their own shows inside rural schoolhouses in communities such as Gamaliel and Fountain Run, renting the buildings themselves and spreading word only by mouth. In the late 1930s the Tuscola station WDZ, an early broadcaster of live country music, became the group’s principal platform, its signal reaching listeners throughout the lower Midwest and upper South and thereby connecting them to audiences far larger than any single self-promoted date could attract. The same program served as a regular berth for other pioneering hillbilly acts, among them the Carver Boys, Bluegrass Roy Freeman, Frank Dudgeon, Slim Miller, Gene Autry, and Smiley Burnette.
For these dawn broadcasts Belcher, Bowles, and Belcher’s younger brother Levy adopted the name Kentucky Coon Skinners, airing each morning before sunrise. Their sets blended venerable fiddle tunes and ballads with contemporary sentimental and novelty pieces, occasionally inserting a sacred number to maintain favor with local clergy. After the early-morning program the musicians typically drove to county fairs or picnics for nightly performances. Once that ensemble dissolved, the banjoist resettled in Illinois and sustained a thriving career that later encompassed radio work in Missouri, Chicago, and ultimately the influential WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia.
A 1952 automobile accident ended his life while he was leading the Kentucky Ridgerunners, a unit that at various times also featured the Lilly Brothers and Tex Logan. In 1948 the same aggregation waxed a frenetic reading of “Old Grey Goose” together with the elegiac “Kentucky Is Only a Dream” for Pennsylvania’s small Page label. The former track constitutes a high-spirited, nearly unhinged adaptation of the gospel standard “Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel,” illustrating the continual transformation of traditional material as it passes between styles.
By the late 1920s Belcher and Bowles were already working steady engagements across southern and central Kentucky, appearing at dances, pie suppers, picnics, and rowdy gatherings alike. They also staged their own shows inside rural schoolhouses in communities such as Gamaliel and Fountain Run, renting the buildings themselves and spreading word only by mouth. In the late 1930s the Tuscola station WDZ, an early broadcaster of live country music, became the group’s principal platform, its signal reaching listeners throughout the lower Midwest and upper South and thereby connecting them to audiences far larger than any single self-promoted date could attract. The same program served as a regular berth for other pioneering hillbilly acts, among them the Carver Boys, Bluegrass Roy Freeman, Frank Dudgeon, Slim Miller, Gene Autry, and Smiley Burnette.
For these dawn broadcasts Belcher, Bowles, and Belcher’s younger brother Levy adopted the name Kentucky Coon Skinners, airing each morning before sunrise. Their sets blended venerable fiddle tunes and ballads with contemporary sentimental and novelty pieces, occasionally inserting a sacred number to maintain favor with local clergy. After the early-morning program the musicians typically drove to county fairs or picnics for nightly performances. Once that ensemble dissolved, the banjoist resettled in Illinois and sustained a thriving career that later encompassed radio work in Missouri, Chicago, and ultimately the influential WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia.
A 1952 automobile accident ended his life while he was leading the Kentucky Ridgerunners, a unit that at various times also featured the Lilly Brothers and Tex Logan. In 1948 the same aggregation waxed a frenetic reading of “Old Grey Goose” together with the elegiac “Kentucky Is Only a Dream” for Pennsylvania’s small Page label. The former track constitutes a high-spirited, nearly unhinged adaptation of the gospel standard “Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel,” illustrating the continual transformation of traditional material as it passes between styles.