Mike Seeger is a well-known folklorist and performer who has been active in recording and performing southern music since the mid-1950s. He has recorded dozens of albums for Folkways Records, many of which have become classics of traditional music. The following essay is based on the liner notes Seeger wrote to accompany the 1962 album Mountain Music Played on the Autoharp (Folkways 2365), which was reissued on CD in 1998 (Folkways F-02365).
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AUTOHARP
The autoharp was most likely invented in Germany in the 1870s and first produced in this country by Charles F. Zimmerman, a German musical instrument dealer, repairman, and innovator who had come to the United States in 1865. Its design was based on the zither, a well-known German instrument. Zimmerman was hoping to use the autoharp as a vehicle to establish his own system of musical notation. He patented it in 1881 and first produced it in Philadelphia in 1885. During the first three years of production, 50,000 autoharps were sold, their main attraction in that invention-happy era being an easy, novel way to make music at home.
In 1892, the C. F. Zimmerman Company was bought by piano maker Alfred Dolge and moved to Dolgeville, New York. Dolge launched an advertising campaign, and the autoharp soon became popular amongst parlor music makers. Autoharp clubs sprang up, a minor composer wrote a minuet for it, and "the world's greatest autoharp performer," Aldis Gery, who also worked for Dolge designing autoharps, toured with Victor Herbert's band from 1895 to 1897. By 1897 Dolge had produced nearly 300,000 autoharps in models ranging from the most basic three-chord-bar model to the concert grand model with forty-nine strings, six sliding bars, and ten shifters, capable of sixty chords.
By about 1900 the demand for autoharps had decreased, probably due to a variety of factors: the slackening of a fad, the advent of the talking machine, unwise management, and certainly, the inherent limitations of the instrument, including consumer discovery of the need for frequent, skilled tuning. In 1910 the production of autoharps was taken over by the Phonoharp Company of Boston, which produced a much more limited number of models. Around the turn of the century the instrument was introduced to rural southerners through mail-order houses and by door-to-door salesmen/teachers. It also came into use for music training in elementary schools and for music therapy in hospitals. In 1926 Phonoharp merged with Oscar Schmidt International, the present makers. The instrument was also manufactured over a long period of time in Germany.
Autoharp manufacture remained essentially the same until the late 1960s, when the instrument was totally redesigned to make it easier to produce with automated machinery and to hopefully make it more stable, requiring less frequent tuning.
In the mid-1990s, the instrument is being manufactured by Oscar Schmidt International at factories in the Far East. Another manufacturer that markets its instruments under the name "Chromaharp" also uses production facilities in the Orient to produce an instrument similar in general design to the pre-1960s autoharps. There are also a few makers that hand-build the high quality instruments that are used by most contemporary performers.
MY INVOLVEMENT WITH THE AUTOHARP
My mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, used the autoharp in her music education work and encouraged me to play it, which I did in the simplest strumming fashion from about age ten. I had pretty much laid it aside when I started playing fretted and bowed instruments in the early 1950s. I first saw "Pop" Stoneman play autoharp in a bluegrass/old-time band with his children at a spirited Gambrills, Maryland, music contest. He sat playing amplified autoharp on its case while some of his children exuberantly played music around him and others were out in the audience cheering. I was recording the event and asked him if I could come and visit him, as I had heard some of his early recordings.
At this time, in the early days of rock and roll, few people remembered or cared for the old-time music recordings, and "Pop" (as he was known around the Washington, D.C., area) was receptive. This began a series of many visits to his self-built home in the Washington suburbs with my recording machine, a heavy, primitive Magnecord, and one omnidirectional microphone. I proposed a Folkways recording, which we recorded in late 1956 and early 1957, which was issued as Folkways 2315. This was his first LP, and it included the first recording of an autoharp instrumental, "Stoney's Waltz." We recorded in the main room of his house, with his wife and some of his thirteen children circulating around. It was difficult to get things done. Pop joked later that he hadn't thought that I'd really put the record out, that he would have taken more care with it. He had made all of his previous recordings in studios under professional conditions, and I can now understand his mystification at the new Folkways recording method.
We played music together and talked of the old times and of the autoharp. And he told me of Kilby Snow, something like: "If you really want to hear someone play the autoharp, you should find Kilby Snow. … He lives down near Fries [pronounced "freeze"], Virginia—freeze or fries, depending on the time of year." So in the summer of 1957, with almost no money and no job, while I was going to electronics school, I took off to visit Wade Ward, an outstanding Galax area banjo and fiddle player, and to try to find Kilby Snow.
He wasn't in Fries but "over near Galax" somewhere. After going to the post office and power company office and asking quite a few people, I found his house, and he was away at a construction job, over near Wade Ward's home. I asked Wade if it would be OK for Kilby to visit. They were acquainted and it was. I eventually found Kilby way out in the country where he was putting up a block outbuilding, and during our first conversation I especially remember his bemused wonderment at having to build from a drawing. It wasn't difficult to talk him into visiting awhile, talking very soon of autoharps, and pretty soon he had his worn old autoharp out of the back of his Henry J (an early 1950s economy car) with his knee propped up on the bumper playing a few tunes. After a few tunes more, he had to get back to work and agreed to come over to Wade's for a little while later in the day. Wade's house was full of music and appreciation for it. Wade's mother-in-law, Granny Porter, especially loved Kilby's music, and he had a good time playing to his audience. There was no thought of LP production, and I set the recording aside for a while.
Some Pioneering Autoharp Virtuosi
Please see Chapter 18 in this volume for biographical information on Mike Seeger. The following essay is based on the liner notes he wrote to accompany the 1962 album Mountain Music Played on the Autoharp (Folkways 2365), which was reissued on CD in 1998 (Folkways F-02365).
Ernest V. Stoneman
Ernest V. Stoneman was born in 1893 near Galax, Virginia. He started playing autoharp at about age eight and remembered his first tune as being "Molly Hare." He learned to tune the autoharp from a nearby school teacher. Several members of his family played or sang old-time songs, and he remembered his grandmother Bowers picking tunes on the autoharp in a very different fashion from his own style. When Mr. Stoneman demonstrated his grandmother's style, he picked a melody note and then strummed a chord after it without a regular rhythm. A couple of other autoharp players, one from southern Ohio and another from western North Carolina, also played in a similar manner, especially on religious songs.
Up to about the age of thirty-one, Mr. Stoneman worked mostly in the carpentry trade and played occasionally for dances and other gatherings, sometimes just playing mouth harp and autoharp by himself. In 1923 he heard the first recording of a country (then called hillbilly) singer and guitar player, Henry Whitter, and like many others, believed he could do better. He contacted the Okeh Company and went to New York City to record the first two country songs to be recorded with the autoharp, "The Titanic" and "The Face That Never Returned," on September 6, 1924. The Okeh recording director, Ralph Peer, was especially interested in the novelty of the autoharp but later favored the guitar as he said it was not so limited.
For about five years, Mr. Stoneman continued to record a great variety of old-time music for
nearly every phonograph company of that period, both solo and with other Galax-area musicians. He was accompanied on some of those discs by his wife, Hattie, who sang and played fiddle, banjo, and parlor organ, and who was still playing music with him occasionally in the 1960s. In the early 1930s the Stonemans moved to the Washington, D.C., area where they lived until they moved to Nashville in the 1960s. They had thirteen children, all of whom played music and most of whom joined their father at one time or another at Washington, D.C., area music contests, dances, theater shows (including Constitution Hall!), and occasional night clubs during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1957 I recorded a number of songs by "Pop" (as he came to be called) and his family, which were included on Folkways 2315, his first LP. In the 1960s he had a second career in music when the Stonemans had their own syndicated TV show, toured out of Nashville, Tennessee, and made LP recordings. They appeared on the Grand Ole Opry, country music shows, a number of folk festivals, concerts, and coffeehouses, some as far away as California, always presenting a lively mix of acoustic music combining Pop's old-time style with the bluegrass/country style of his children.
Ernest Stoneman was the first person to record with an autoharp, the first to record an autoharp instrumental, and the only country music artist whose career included making recordings on acoustic disc and cylinder recordings, electric discs (including LPs), and videotape. Many of his early recordings are highly valued and remain in print for both their musical and historical value.
Ernest "Pop" Stoneman passed away in June 1968.
Stoneman's Music
Mr. Stoneman's style of melody playing consisted primarily of picking the melody string, usually in the top two octaves with the index finger (in a motion towards bass strings), and occasionally at the same time picking bass strings with the thumb (in a motion toward treble strings). This is a kind of "pinching motion" with thumb and first finger moving towards one another. Between most "pinch motion" melody notes the back (nail side) of his first finger and finger pick strummed a light "backlick" in the opposite direction, or upwards towards the higher pitched strings. This reverse motion with index finger was possible because of the special pick that Mr. Stoneman fashioned from a coil steel spring with an oval loop which fit very tightly on the flesh side of his finger and which protruded only a slight distance, like a fingernail.
Most of the sound you hear during his melody picking comes from the forward (towards bass) movement of his index finger followed quickly by a quieter "backlick" movement of his first finger (towards treble strings) with the thumb in the bass or middle strings on the first beat, and then with his index finger, a sweep downwards towards bass strings and quickly upwards, on the third and fourth beats. Like all traditional "lap" players, he picked between the bars and string anchors, on the wide end of the harp.
Mr. Stoneman's autoharp was a late 1950s Oscar Schmidt model with several of the seventh chords changed to straight major chords, enabling him to play in more keys. He also moved the chord bars to the left (towards the tuning pegs) to get more room to pick, and to allow him to pick closer to the middle of the strings, where the sound is more mellow. He also put some sound-deadening felt under the bar retainers to quiet bar action.
When playing Mr. Stoneman put the autoharp on top of a wooden case that he built for it, which gives it additional resonance. It was made of solid, good-sounding wood, not plywood. Since he sat down to play and couldn't move to a microphone, at shows he sometimes also used an electric contact pickup mounted on top of his autoharp.
Neriah and Kenneth Benfield
Neriah McCubbins Benfield, affectionately called "Mr. Cub" by his family, was born in 1893 in Catawba County, North Carolina. When he married he moved to Rowan County, North Carolina. He was a veteran of World War I and farmed much of his life. He passed away in February 1983. His son, Kenneth, wrote in 1961:
I was talking to dad the other day about the autoharp and he said the first one he remembered was when he was five years old. His seventy-seven-year-old brother who is living had it. Back then it didn't have a cover over the [right end of the] strings and you were always tearing up your fingers when you played it. When he was around twenty years old he said he could play pretty well. By that he meant pick like we did only without missing notes. He has always played by note [by earl and always played lead. He knew people who played but mostly by chords. Forty-five years ago they had a real string band.
Hubbert Mayes, his brother-inlaw, picked the five-string banjo. Dad's seventy-seven-year-old brother Robert "Bob" picked the five-string also. Dad played the autoharp. Hubbert said Dad's playing then beat anything he ever heard and I think he is about right. I can remember how he played thirty years ago and I thought the same. He would sit with his back to a wall [with his autoharp] flat on the floor and play under his right leg. That is the way Hubbert said it sounded so good. Can't you just picture that in your mind forty-five years ago?
As for the music they played then it is pieces like he still plays today. "Coming Around the Mountain," "Nelly Grey," "Wildwood Flower," "Katy Cline," "Weeping Willow," "Eller's Grave," "Idaho Girl" and tunes like we played when you were here….
Kenneth Lee Benfield was born in 1923 and has been playing the autoharp since he was about thirteen years old. He adds that he couldn't tune one until he was twenty-six. He first learned from his dad from whom he learned most of his older tunes. He learned a great number of songs after about 1950 from radio and records. He and his dad rarely sang with the autoharp, reserving it for instrumental music. In fact they shared one autoharp and one guitar, and the latter, in a reversal of roles, was used primarily for accompaniment of autoharp pieces.
My second visit to the Benfields was two days after the Snows had recorded with double autoharps, which was the first time I had heard two traditional autoharpists play together. The Benfields tried it on my suggestion and played autoharp duets a good part of that night. When my Ampex recorder broke down, we probably heard "Weeping Willow Tree" for a half hour while I was trying to fix the machine. Each time they picked it better and more lively, each of them alternately picking in the upper and lower ranges, and none of us could tire of it.
Kenneth Benfield and his wife and daughter made their home near Mt. Ulla in central North Carolina. He has worked in nearby mills, raised cattle, and is now retired. He hasn't played the autoharp since the late 1980s and plays banjo for enjoyment.
Both Kenneth and Neriah Benfield played mostly around home for family and friends. In 1964, they appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, their only performance away from their home community.
The Benfields' Music
Both Neriah and Kenneth Benfield held the autoharp on their lap and picked in a similar manner, with a thumb pick and usually no pick on the first finger. In the late 1950s, Neriah had started using a pick on the back or nail side of his first finger. Most melody notes were played with the back of the first fingernail in a motion upwards towards the treble string similar to frailing a banjo. Additional notes were picked with the front or flesh side of he firs fingernail in a "back and foward" motion similar to flatpicking, and occasional chords were strummed with the thumb. They used a standard Oscar Schmidt instrument.
Kilby Snow
John Kilby Snow was born May 28, 1906, in hilly Grayson County in southwestern Virginia. By about the age of four he had started playing autoharp (his first tune, like Pop Stoneman's, was "Molly Hare") and at the age of five he beat his brother-in-law (from whom he had first learned) in a Winston Salem, North Carolina, contest. Although he played other instruments the autoharp was his first love. For a few years in the 1920s he traveled around playing wherever he could. He told me of spending a couple of days with the Carter Family and playing some music with them around Bristol, Virginia, probably in the late twenties. He worked mostly as a builder and carpenter and later for the highway department until his retirement and raised four children, two of whom play autoharp and other instruments.
Kilby Snow's Instrument and Music
Kilby Snow's autoharp, a forties or fifties Oscar Schmidt model, had ten considerably modified bars, and he was left-handed. He fashioned his thumb and finger picks out of brass sheet metal, usually from the headlamp reflectors of a Ford Model T. He wore the finger pick approximately parallel to his fingernail, on the front, flesh side of his index finger He slanted the last one quarter of an inch of the tip slightly so that it struck exactly perpendicular to the strings despite the fact that the motion of his finger was not at an angle of ninety degrees to the strings.
Most of Mr. Snow's melody and chord fills came from an upward (in pitch) movement of his first finger In watching and listening to him, I could never quite figure out how or how much he was using his thumb. It is possible that he picked both up and down with his finger as I heard and saw some evidence of this; he said several times that he only pulled upward (in pitch) with his finger, down with his thumb. He usually sat while playing, and like Stoneman, occasionally attached an electric pickup to his harp in the 1950s. Like Stoneman and the Benelds, he picked at the wide end of the harp.
The distinctive sound of Mr. Snow's style is due largely to his innovation of what he called "drag notes," which roughly approximate the slur of sliding from fret to fret or "hammering on" on a banjo or guitar string. The most usually slurred note is the third note of the scale, which the key of D, for instance, would be E-F-F-sharp. He would effect this slide by "dragging" his finger pick upwards (towards the higher pitched strings) on the E, F, and F-sharp strings. While playing the E and F strings he left the chord bar up, and then, when his pick reached the F-sharp string, he pressed down on the D-chord bar.
The "drag note" effect is easiest and most natural when the autoharp is played left-handed and the picking hand can be rested on the string anchor cover. Furthermore, to get this sound one must be very accurate, have a strong hand, and play on the wide end of the harp, between the bars and the string anchors. Mr. Snow did most of his playing with his index finger, even for the occasional chord strums between melody notes, and did not usually play plain chords behind his singing. Instead, he played the melody while singing, just as many solo old-time banjo pickers and guitar players did.
By the early 1960s, Kilby Snow had started playing melodies with a flatted seventh note. By 1961 he had added "Muleskinner Blues" and "Ain't Going to Work Tomorrow" to his repertoire, both of which use a flatted seventh. His style moved more towards bluegrass in his choice of material, rhythmic drive, strong touch, and melodic sense. His use of drag notes certainly has been at the center of his adapting blues and modern country songs to his autoharp repertoire. He first drew his repertoire from family and community and later from commercial recordings by early country artists such as Blind Alfred Reed and the Carter Family. In the late fifties and sixties he picked up songs from Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and country singers like Carl Smith and Merle Haggard. He also composed several country-style songs of his own.
During the 1960s, Kilby began performing at concerts, on folk festivals, and in coffeehouses, helped a good deal by the efforts of Mike and Ellen Hudak. He was great fun to play music with and accompaniment seemed to spur him on. I especially remember a time in the early 1960s at Sunset Park near Oxford, Pennsylvania, where Bill Monroe was putting on a show. Kilby played autoharp while I backed him on guitar in one of the parking meadows, and a crowd gathered around to hear old favorites like "Budded Roses" as well as some of the more recent Bill Monroe songs like "Close By" or the Monroe classic, "Muleskinner Blues." It was exciting to feel the spark that came from his music at those times. Later in the decade I helped him record a solo Folkways recording (released in 1969 as Folkways 3902), and I arranged a concert tour for us on the West Coast where we recorded a few of his songs on videotape. Up to the late 1970s he played a few contests and festivals, most notably the Brandywine Mountain Music Convention, where he was a regular. At the time of his passing in March 1980, he was rarely playing any programs.
In the mid-1990s, Kilby's son Jim started working on his autoharp playing, encouraged by the autoharp community and especially by Joe Riggs and Mary Lou Orthey. His sound is remarkably close to Kilby's yet possess its own identity.
Mike Seeger
In 1961 I was recording the Union Grove Fiddler's Convention for a Folkways recording, and Annie Bird, a singer and oldtime music enthusiast, mentioned that she had spent some time listening to a really good autoharp player on the steps outside. That was Kenneth Benfield. After hearing him, I realized there was a lot of good music here that no one was aware of, and I knew there was a growing interest in the autoharp. So between music gigs and taking care of my family, I again tracked down Kilby, who was now living along Rt. 1 in southeastern Pennsylvania, to record a few more pieces by him and to record the rest of the music heard on the original Mountain Music Played on the Autoharp album.
Mr. Stoneman's and Neriah Benfield's styles were developed by the early twentieth century and were among the earliest southern rural melody playing on an instrument that had been invented just a few decades before. Kilby Snow's style was certainly a later development, as he was still evolving it into the early 1960s. This style was initiated and virtually disappeared during the lifetime of two of these players. Partly due to this recording but more to the efforts of a few urban players, the music played here had found new life and will continue to influence autoharp players everywhere.
AUTOHARP PLAYING IN THE SOUTH
Both Neriah Benfield and Pop Stoneman recall the autoharp being played in their communities during their childhood, around the turn of the century. The styles that Stoneman and Benfield's generation first heard surely varied as their elders began adapting their repertoire and current musical sounds to the new instrument. Early techniques included simple rhythmic or non-rhythmic strumming of chords; the picking of simple melodies on single strings, alternating with chords, which Pop Stoneman demonstrated for me as being his grandmother Bowers' style; or some very early rhythmic melody picking that would precede the styles heard on this recording. These techniques basically follow the suggestions of early 1890s autoharp self-teaching manuals: accompaniment with thumb and first finger, and simple melody picking with the first finger with occasional chord strums with thumb and first finger.
Based on my conversations with older musicians, I believe that most of the first generation of country autoharpists took a few tips either from a door-to-door salesman, or, less often for most play-by-ear rural musicians, from written instructions. Then they adapted those tips to their own way of playing, sometimes influenced by playing styles of instruments already in traditional use. There was certainly a fair amount of improvisation and experimentation, especially amongst those who had no models or instructions to follow. I believe that country musicians, especially in the South, brought a stronger rhythmic feel to the instrument than that which existed in parlor playing practice, probably due to the influence of fiddle, banjo, and dance traditions. In my estimation, Stoneman and Benfield are exemplary of the second generation of southern autoharp players. Kilby Snow's innovations were certainly a later development.
Around the turn of the century, the songs played or accompanied with autoharp included almost every type to be found in the southern mountain areas: old hymns, recently composed religious songs, waltzes, sentimental songs, folksongs, and instrumental tunes. The autoharp also brought with it some of the current urban popular songs of the day.
Blues were not generally suited to either accompaniment or melody-picking on the autoharp, which was a detriment to the popularity of the instrument in the blues-happy twenties and beyond. The limitations of the instrument, its quietness, frequent tuning, lack of expression due to fixed strings, and the usual seated position while playing kept the instrument in the home with a small repertoire, and it didn't venture forth very much with the louder, brasher banjo, expressive fiddle, and more versatile guitar. The primary attractions of the autoharp were its novelty, initial ease for playing, and its playing of chords, then a new idea to musicians familiar mostly with banjo or the lap dulcimer. In some ways it paralleled and sometimes took over the role of the lap dulcimer, also a quiet instrument with northern European roots. The dulcimer played only melody and drone and lent its sparse sound to the older songs and tunes, especially the "modal" ones, but the harmonically rich sound of the autoharp could accompany the newer popular songs and mix with the equally new sounds of the guitar. Contrary to its brief life as a fad up North, it took hold in the South and established a modest, home-based place for itself in early twentieth-century old-time music tradition.
As far as I can tell, there were a fair number of men and women playing the autoharp until homemade music traditions started winding down in the late thirties, due to the influence of radio and records. One man of about seventy, living in western North Carolina, played a dozen tunes for me, mostly waltzes, on his amplified autoharp in the early 1960s. He had a clean, clear style and told me of a couple of other players nearby. Another man of about the same age that I met in the early sixties in Chicago played tunes such as "Red Wing" and "Little Brown Jug." When he was a teenager in Ohio, an autoharp teacher/salesman had sold him and his sister autoharps, taught them how to play, hired a local school auditorium for them to perform in, and then took orders for more autoharps at their performance.
Mrs. Elizabeth White, of Greenville, South Carolina (mother of Josh White, the blues singer), sang me several religious songs to the accompaniment of the autoharp, which she strummed with a clothespin. Her grandson, age about eighteen, sang some of Josh White's more modem songs which he accompanied with autoharp. A Mr. Peaslee and Mrs. Waterman, both of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, played autoharp duets, one picking, the other chording, from about 1895 until Mr. Peaslee's death in 1963. Their repertoire consisted primarily of hymns and popular songs current in the Northeast around 1900, and they played at home and in churches and hospitals. Tex Isley, who played and recorded with early country singers Tom Ashley and Charlie Monroe, was a good autoharp player.
Home craftsmen also made a variety of their own versions of the instrument, some of them quite elaborate, similar to hammer dulcimers. I visited one such man in Goshen, Indiana, and heard of another in southwestern North Carolina.
Until the 1950s, the autoharp's role on phonograph recordings was almost always as accompaniment. The first recording of autoharp was by Ernest V. Stoneman in 1924. On that recording he used the autoharp for accompaniment while he sings or plays the melody on the harmonica. He soon laid the autoharp aside for the more versatile and tunable guitar. (He once told me, "People were lost when [their autoharps] went out of tune. I bet there are thousands of them up in garrets for that reason.")
A few groups that performed old-time music on early 78 rpm records used autoharp for accompaniment as well, most notably the Carter Family of southwestern Virginia. Collectors of recorded folk music were rarely interest in the instrument. Exceptions were recordings of the Bog Trotters Band of Galax, Virginia, which used it only as accompaniment, and some exceptional autoharp melody picking by J. B. Easter, recorded by E. C. Kirkland in 1937. One song of Mr. Easter's is on "The Kirkland Recordings" released by the Tennessee Folklore Society on LP # TFS-106 in 1984.
The first appearances on record of anything approaching melody picking on the autoharp were by several different old-time music groups about 1930. The Yellow Jackets (also known as the Shady Grove Wood Choppers) recorded an autoharp instrumental medley for the Gennett labels. About halfway through the recording a mouth-harp joins in playing the melody, and towards the end of the disc a slide whistle appears, also playing melody. This could best be described as a rural novelty recording. The Thrasher Family and the Blue Ridge Mountain Singers were vocal groups that used guitar and autoharp for accompaniment and occasional melodic lead. The autoharp playing on their recordings was similar and complemented the rather stiff singing. These were groups with which Frank Walker, A&R man for Columbia, was trying to compete against the Victor Company's Carter Family.
A couple of recordings by the Lee Brothers for the Brunswick label were much looser and more driving. It is possible that these last three groups, all from the same area in northern Georgia, used the same autoharp player. Charles Wolfe writes that Archer Lee Chumbler definitely recorded with the Chumbler Family (another old-time singing group similar to the Thrashers) and the Lee Brothers Trio. Wolfe says Chumbler was from around Gainesville, Georgia, that he learned from his mother, and that his family believes he recorded with the Thrasher Family. Except for some of the Carter Family discs, use of the autoharp in recording diminished in the 1930s and 1940s.
The most important popularizer of autoharp melody picking in the 1950s was Maybelle Carter, the guitar picker and harmony singer of the original Carter Family. She took a few clear autoharp breaks on at least two early 1950s recordings with her daughters, the Carter Sisters, "Fair and Tender Ladies" and "I Never Will Marry" (Columbia 4–20920 and 4–20974). The autoharp remained relatively obscure until a 1956 recording by the Wilbum Brothers, "Go 'Way with Me" (Decca 9–30087), featuring Maybelle Carter's autoharp playing. This recording did very well on the country music charts and brought considerable attention to the autoharp as a melody instrument. Maybelle Carter's influence was felt among her fellow country music professionals of Nashville, Tennessee; one of the Wilburn Brothers learned to play autoharp, and another performer, Cecil Null, played and built a few. And away from Nashville, Maybelle Carter's autoharp playing influenced many to take up the instrument who had never heard it before, as well as some like myself, who had just strummed it and had never thought of playing melody on it. Maybelle had played the instrument as a child and had usually tuned the instrument used by Sara in Carter Family programs, but didn't start playing melody until the late 1930s. I asked her how and why she took up playing melody on the instrument and she said something like, "I just started." One of the first tunes she played was "San Antonio Rose," which remained a favorite of hers on her Grand Ole Opry performances.
Maybelle Carter is also the person who evolved the style of holding the autoharp vertically against her chest so that she could stand and work a microphone just like other instrumentalists and vocalists. Until this time autoharp players had always played the instrument on their lap. In the 1950s, many performing autoharp players, including Ernest Stoneman, were experimenting with contact pickups and amplifiers for their instruments in an effort to stay seated with the instrument on their lap in the usual way, yet still be heard on public address systems, which, at the time, usually used only one microphone. Maybelle Carter's innovation changed all that. Now her style of holding the instrument is used by nearly everyone.
The folk revival of the 1960s inspired many more musicians to play the autoharp, usually influenced by the styles of Maybelle Carter, Ernest Stoneman, or those influenced by them, like myself. A few makers experimented with building better instruments, with mixed success. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, playing of the autoharp increased exponentially due to a new style evolved by Bryan Bowers in the early 1970s. His is a virtuoso style, built less on the driving 2/4 rhythms heard in traditional performances and more on slower phrase patterns or rapidly picked melody notes, played on an instrument tuned to one diatonically tuned key. Repertoire amongst the new players has broadened to include classical, jazz, and show tunes with all their harmonic complexities. At present most performance players' styles are based in this general area, and many evolve their own tunings to get the effects they desire. The number of autoharp makers has also increased though not in proportion to the number of players. There are autoharp minifestivals around the country, two autoharp magazines, autoharp classes one may attend at a variety of levels, and a great number of recordings by the dozen or two top players.
