Biography
George "Smoke" Dawson led an existence defined by constant movement as a fiddle and bagpipe musician shuttling between New York and the West Coast over many decades, frequently in financial straits, while occasionally earning income as a commercial fisherman, wrestler, aerial photographer, and in various other roles; music nevertheless traced the central thread of his path. Born June 5, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York, he took up the banjo in the mid-1950s and in 1960 joined the string band trio MacGrundy's Old-Timey Wool Thumpers on that instrument alongside Peter Stampfel, later a member of the Holy Modal Rounders. He soon turned to the fiddle, shaping a raw and untamed Appalachian approach on the instrument. Beginning in 1960 he made his home for roughly eight years at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York, performing odd jobs at the venue when not occupied with music. He later undertook an extended Southern journey that placed him for periods in North Carolina and Virginia, where encounters with Doc Watson and Wade Ward occurred. An eccentric presence within the experimental cultural currents of the 1960s, Dawson next relocated to Florida and performed as a street musician on fiddle and bagpipes before moving on to California at the decade's end, where he appeared with the collective Golden Toad, a group that once opened for the Grateful Dead. He remained chiefly in California until 1992, when, after a cancer diagnosis, he established residence in Spokane, Washington. Along the way he had been arrested and held in Sausalito for playing bagpipes in public before being instructed to depart the town. His only recording, the privately pressed 1971 album Fiddle issued in an edition of 750 copies, later attained cult standing in hippie and folk circles. The set of vigorous, unrefined pre-bluegrass Appalachian fiddle instrumentals was reissued on CD in 2014 by Tompkins Square Records. George "Smoke" Dawson died in October 2017 at the age of 82.
Albums