While North Carolinians have been singing The Old North State as the state song since Gaston wrote it in 1835, the first known recording is a symphonic version played by the North Carolina Symphony conducted by Ben Swalin. You can hear it in the video below. While the video dates the performance as 1927, that date is questionable since Swalin became the conductor of the North Carolina Symphony only in 1939.
The video below shows the The Old North State as it is more normally heard, performed here by the students of Coltrane Webb Elementary in Concord, North Carolina.
At just about the same time that William Gaston and R. Culver were creating The Old North State, Gustave Blessner wrote a waltz for piano which he dedicated to Miss T. Neal of St. Marys Hall, North Carolina. He called the tune Carolina Waltz and it may be the earliest Carolina waltz of all. Not much is known of Mr. Blessner. The Petrucci Music Library, which has 26 of his compositions, reports that in 1869 he lived in Canandagua, NY and taught music at the Ontario Female Seminary. There is a copy of the original sheet music of his waltz in the digital library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can hear a computer generated rendition of the waltz in the video below.
The most famous Carolina waltz is clearly Carolina Moon by Joe Burke (music) and Benny Davis (lyrics). Does the "Carolina" in Carolina Moon refer to North Carolina or South Carolina? No one seems to know. In fact, both states claim the waltz celebrates their state. This blog will remain neutral and list the song (as well as other ambiguous Carolina waltzes) for both. Burke and Davis wrote the song in 1924 but it was not recorded until 1928.
It is widely reported that Gene Austin made the first recording of Carolina Moon on December 10, 1928. That was indeed the first released recording of Carolina Moon but the Discography of American Historical Recordings reveals that Andrew Lawrence recorded Carolina Moon, probably in the same studio, about two weeks earlier, on November 26th, but the recording was a test or audition, never meant to be released. Austin's recording was a big hit and remained at the top of the hit parade for fourteen weeks until it was displaced by another Joe Burke tune, Tiptoe through the Tulips. You can hear Austin's recording in the video below.
There were at least a dozen other versions of Carolina Moon released as recordings in the 1920's and early '30's but the song never went out of style. In the 1940's the song became famous as the radio show theme song for Irish tenor, Morton Downey. According to the Discography of Historic American Recordings Downey recorded Carolina Moon in a New York studio on October 5, 1931 for use in a United Artists movie and it was never released as a record. But you can still hear Downey's Carolina Moon from a November, 1945 radio broadcast of the NK Musical Showroom. You can hear that broadcast in the video below thanks to Keith Helsley's excellent Retro Radio Podcast.
One of the earliest known waltzes to specifically celebrate North Carolina is North Carolina Moon written and recorded by the Callahan Brothers (Homer and Walter, although they recorded as Bill and Joe, respectively) on January 3, 1934 on the Melotone label (13018 B). The brothers were from Madison county in western North Carolina. North Carolina Moon was recorded on their second recording session in the ARC studios in New York City (their first ever recording session was the day before in the same studio). The brothers remained active performers, even appearing in movies, into the 1950's.
Clint Alphin celebrates his North Carolina roots in North Carolina Waltz which appears on his most recent album, Postmodern Man, on his own ClinAlph label. There are two versions available on YouTube - one from a May, 2012 appearance at the Southeast Regional Folk Alliance conference in Montreat, NC and the other from his appearance on the TV show, Mountain Morning, on Park City TV from Park City, Utah which you can see below.
Bill Monroe is a recurring figure in state waltzes. He wrote the famous Kentucky Waltz. He wrote the not-so-famous Mississippi Waltz and he inspired the most famous of state waltzes, Tennessee Waltz. For North Carolina waltzes, he plays a different role. As a young, single mandolin player Monroe had an eye for the pretty girl and he met one, Ruby Elma Polk, after a concert in Norwood, North Carolina in 1943. Mutual attraction, opportunity and biology led nine months later to the birth Gloria Jean Polk. Gloria Jean showed early musical talent and grew up to become the bluegrass singer/songwriter known as Carolina Rose. She wrote about her life in the book The Road from Gloria Jean to Carolina Rose and according to the book Carolina Bluegrass: A High Lonesome History a movie of her life has been planned. You can find evidence of that movie (and an autobiographical song), which appears to be still in the funding stage here. In 2017 she was inducted into the Independent Country Gospel Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Fame, joining her famous father. She has recorded eleven albums, many of them contain autobiographical songs, including, perhaps, her own Waltz of North Carolina:
Joe Collins, from Shelby, North Carolina, is a pastor, a dulcimer builder/player/teacher and a singer/song writer. His Carolina Waltz is popular amongst dulcimer players. There are at least three versions of the tune on YouTube. A good example is the one played by Kevin Teague on an unusual dulcimer, a Gold Tone Dulciborn, in the video below. But in order to appreciate that the song is specific to North Carolina you need to hear the lyrics as sung by Joe Collins here.
Buddy Tresize (1933-2012) was the best country musician in Australia and hailed from Bendigo, Victoria according to his YouTube profile. He sings Carolina Waltz on a privately pressed CD. The version he sings was composed by Dick Roman and Lou Vickers in 1948. It is also known as Charlotte Belle (the lyrics mention "my Charlotte belle") which is the clue that makes this waltz specific to North Carolina. It is just a guess, but Tresize probably learned the song from a 1950 Australian recording by Tim McNamara (Rodeo Records 10-0021). In the U.S., the song has also been recorded by Dick Thomas and his Nashville Ramblers. Here is Tresize's version:
Caleb and Sara Davis from Mocksville, North Carolina perform as the folk/bluegrass duo His & Hers throughout the state of North Carolina. They perform their own original music and one of their best is Carolina Waltz. In a private communication, the Davis's confirm that their Carolina Waltz celebrates their home state of North Carolina. You can find it on their most recent album, Family Land or listen here. But, the live performance below, captured at the Muddy Creek Music Hall in Bethania, North Carolina in April, 2019, provides a better sense of the musicians themselves.
The absence of lyrics makes it difficult to know if a Carolina waltz relates to North or South Carolina but a private communication with composer Buck Brown made it clear that he was thinking of North Carolina when he wrote the waltz. Brown is not only a composer, he is a singer/songwriter and a well known jazz guitar educator who is responsible for 18 books/CD's in the Alfred Music catalog. Brown was a member of Nils Lofgren's band and acoustic duo in the 1990's and is currently an active performer in Nashville where he currently resides. His website has a full "CD" of his instrumental music which includes the version of his Carolina Waltz featured in the video below.
Moving into the category of waltzes which could be claimed by North or South Carolina, first by looking at some tin pan alley type waltzes which were most popular in the 1920's and 1930's. Many of these were popularized in piano sheet music as well as on the 78 rpm records which became affordable and common in that era.
1918 is not quite into the 1920's but it was in that year that Erwin R. Schmidt wrote what became a very popular waltz titled Carolina Sunshine. Lyrics to the song were provided by Walter Hirsch. Sheet music for the song can be seen here. It was recorded by at least four different performers in 1919 - an instrumental version by the Joseph C. Smith Orchestra on Victor 18646, Vernon Dalhart on Edison Disks (50595), the Six Brown Brothers on Emerson 1055, and on three different labels by the Sterling Trio (Albert Campbell, Henry Burr (aka Harry McClaskey) and John H. Meyer) - Victor (18612), Columbia (A2770) and Paramount (33019). You can hear a piano roll version here but the best way to appreciate the song is to listen to the performance by the Sterling trio in the video below.
Edwin R. Schmidt, composer of the Carolina Sunshine above, must have loved Carolina because he wrote a second Carolina waltz in 1925 titled Dreamy Carolina Moon. Evans Lloyd wrote the lyrics. Copies of the sheet music an occasionally be found on Amazon. It was recorded at least four times - by Carl Fenton's Orchestra on Brunswick (2938), by The Denza Dance Band (led by Ben Selvin) on Columbia (3781), by the Miami Marimba Band on Brunswick (A 303) and by vocalist Vernon Dalhart and the Cavaliers (also led by Ben Selvin) on Columbia (390 D). The latter has been captured on YouTube:
There are two waltzes that carry the title Carolina Sweetheart. The earliest (1925) was composed by Billy James and was recorded at least six times - by the B.F. Goodrich Silvertown Cord Orchestra with vocals by the Silver-Masked Tenor (Joseph M. White) on Victor (19798), by Bob Haring and his Orchestra on Cameo (739), by the Castlewood Marimba Band (this is exactly the same band as the Miami Marimba Band - they may have recorded under at least seven different names) on Brunswick (2986), by Jack Stillman's Orchestra on Edison (51638), by and for release in Australia a version by Wood and Turner on Grand Pree (18472). You can hear the B.F. Goodrich Silvertown Cord Orchestra version here and the Castlewood Marimba Band version here and for your listening pleasure, the six version which was recorded by Lanes Dance band (led by Bob Haring) on the Lincoln label (2366) can be viewed below.
Parallel in time to those tin pan alley Carolina waltzes but quite different in style were hillbilly or country waltzes which were recorded but rarely distributed as sheet music. There was some national distribution of the records and some airplay on powerful country radio stations but most of these waltzes were created and stayed in the deep South.
A first example is the second waltz titled Carolina Waltz which was recorded in 1936 by the Callahan Brothers - the same Callahan Brothers who recorded North Carolina Moon in 1934 (see above). They probably wrote the song also since no composer is credited on the record. You may find references on the web that suggest this song was sung by the Dixon Brothers. Those are just wrong - the result of mis-identification from a compilation record that included both the Dixon and Callahan Brothers.
The Georgia Yellow Hammers (note: Yellowhammers are woodpeckers native to Georgia) were a quartet of musicians from Gordon county Georgia in the 1920's. They wrote much of their own music and recorded 36 songs on the Victor label. They are recognized today as a foundation band of the "old time" sound. There is even a current Georgia Yellow Hammers band which has honored them by resurrecting their name and performing much of their old music . Two of the members of the original Yellow Hammers, Charles Earnest Moody, Jr. and Bud Landress, wrote a waltz titled My Carolina Girl which was released on the Victor (20943) label in 1927. That record was their best selling record ever (although it may have been due to the song on the flip side, The Picture on the Wall). You can hear it below.
In 1927, Clayton "Pappy" McMichen wrote a waltz titled My Carolina Home. McMichen was a contest winning fiddler and extremely versatile musician. If you have never heard of him, go back two sentences and click that link on his name. Then stop and thank another remarkable musician, Richard L. Matteson, Jr., for preserving the memory of McMichen and so many other early bluegrass musicians in his Bluegrass Messenger website. At the age of 18, McMichen formed his first band, the Lick the Skillet band, in Atlanta, Georgia. A young guitarist, Riley Puckett, was one of the four members of that band. The band was a local success and made some local recordings but it wasn't
until 1926 that McMichen got a big break when Columbia records invited McMichen and Puckett to record in their Atlanta studios. Recording under the name of Bob Nichols (probably to avoid a contract problem with a local record company) McMichen and Puckett recorded My Carolina Home. You can hear that original recording in the video below.
You may note that both of the two above waltzes celebrating Carolina come from Georgia - so does this next one. The Scottdale String Band was created in Scottdale, Georgia by four musicians - Barney Pritchard, Marvin Head, Belvie Freeman and Charlie Simmons - who all worked in a cotton mill in that town. The band usually performed as a trio with guitarists Pritchard and Freeman being constants joined either by Freeman or Simmons on mandolin-banjo. Many of the tunes they recorded were novelty numbers but Carolina Glide, which was originally recorded in 1927 on Okeh (45142) is a straight forward waltz which is still played today by groups such as this Dutch ukulele duo and the late Jon Bekoff and his protege Nate Paine in the video below which is shared to make sure you do not miss the perfect harmony this well-matched pair creates once they get going.
You can find the original Carolina Glide in the wonderful Arhooley LP reissue of the Scottdale String Bands recordings titled Old Folks Better Go To Bed. And you can hear it now in the YouTube video below.
Moving on to waltzes celebrating the Carolinas from the mid-20th century to current times ...
Clyde Moody was known as the Hillbilly Waltz King. Some of his best known waltzes were Whispering Pines, Tennessee Rose, Shenandoah Waltz (his only million seller), Dark Midnight and Carolina Waltz. Moody was born in Cherokee, North Carolina and is a member of the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. It is a good bet than his Carolina Waltz, recorded in 1948 on King (706) refers to North Carolina but listen to the lyrics below and decide if think it refers to North or South Carolina.
Another Carolina Waltz that would good make a good North Carolina bet is the one by banjo player Andrew Eversole since he is from Greensboro, North Carolina. You will find the bluegrassy tune on his 2008 album, Creature. Over the next ten years, Eversole has moved into a Ry Cooder stage and has taken his banjo around the world and melded his blue grass chops with world music to produce some very fine music through his Banjo Earth project. But his Carolina Waltz is very much local, not world music.
Jim Hardin appears to be from South Carolina according to the minimal available information about him found by the usual search engines. He may or may not be part of a band once known as Jim Hardin and the Musical Erupters. He may or may not have been part of a the gospel quartet known as the Bluegrass Statesman and he is definitely not the tragic folksinger figure, Tim Hardin. But, his 2008 album Bluegrass on the Bayou definitely contains a nice song titled Carolina Waltz:
Chuck "Coyote" Larson, lead singer for the Snake Oil Cowboys lives on the outer banks of North Carolina but has roots in Oklahoma and has spent almost as many years at sea as he has on land. In the 60's he was a rock musician with a number of bands that almost made it big. He sang and played guitar for those bands but his contribution was song writing - something he still does well. After rock, he spent more than twenty years rolling on the seas with the merchant marine before retiring to the beach in North Carolina where he rejoined old friend Robbie Vernon to form the Snake Oil Cowboys. Today he owns the Swampworks Recording Studio in Kitty Hawk, NC and runs the Blind Weasel record company. The video below captures Larson and Vernon along with Muskrat Reams on the pedal steel playing Larson's Carolina Waltz at a 2015 concert for the Tidewater Friends of Acoustic Music in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
The information on Brent Stewart was encyclopedic compared to the information on the next creator/singer of the next Carolina Waltz. His YouTube name is "B", he likes horses (based on the photos with his songs) and he is a singer/songwriter with a home studio. Here is his Carolina Waltz:
There is one more YouTube video which carries the title Carolina Waltz although the lyrics do not seem to relate to the title. Probably written by Melissa Hyman since she sings it in three different videos - the easiest-to-listen-to version is here.
There are three additional instrumental versions of Carolina Waltz, none of which seem to refer specifically to North or South Carolina. The first was written by Roger Campbell and is played by Canadian fiddler, Bruce Osborne. You will find quite a collection of fiddle tunes played by Osborne on his YouTube Channel. He plays viola in this video and the graphics recognize both North and South Carolina.
The Oklahoma country star, Johnny Bond, will be encountered later in this blog because he wrote and performed a hit song titled Oklahoma Waltz but he also wrote a tune titled Carolina Waltz. He recorded Carolina Waltz on the a Columbia 45 rpm record (cat. 4-21424) in 1955. A digital copy has not been found to share on this blog but curiously, a Danish trumpet player, Arne Lamberth, has recorded a big band version of Carolina Waltz, which the liner notes say was composed by Johnny Bond. Could it be the same song? Until a copy of the Bond original is found, all we can do is listen to the Lamberth version below and wonder.
A number of waltzes celebrating the Carolina's have been recorded but no digital version of the recordings are currently available. These include:
In 1951, Uncle Harve's Ragtime Wranglers recorded North Carolina Waltz written by Harve Spivey and Harold (Lazy) Donelson on Cardinal (1014). Donelson also provided vocals on the record. The Ragtime Wranglers were located in Miami and provided western swing music to the south Florida area from the 1940's to the 1960's.
In 1952, Cliffie Stone and his Orchestra recorded Carolina Waltz written by David Coleman on Capitol (1960).
Sometime in the late 1980's Morgan Ruppe of Clover, South Carolina wrote and sang Carolina Waltz on what appears to be his own record label, Hummingbird of Clover (MC-111).
In the late 1960's, Rural Rhythms issued two collections of waltzes featuring Clarence "Tater" Tate, a well known bluegrass fiddler, and other musicians: Beautiful Waltzes (RRBW203) and More Favorite Waltzes (RRCT-220). Both of those records contained Carolina Waltz although it is unknown whose version of Carolina Waltz was covered. No evidence was found that the Carolina Waltz versions had been previously released as singles.
The Library of Congress contains the sheet music for La Carolina Waltz by J. Dodsley Humphreys, published by John F. Nunns, New York in 1843. There is no hint if it relates to North or South Carolina but if it were to be described as a state waltz it would have to relate to South Carolina since North Carolina did not become a state until 1879 - it was still a colony in 1843.
A search using the Internet Archive showed the following issued copyrights which apparently never recorded.
1921, Carolina, waltz. son, words and melody by V.J. Brando.
1924, Dreams of Carolina, waltz. Words and melody to John Arthur Mills
1926, Take me back to dear old Carolina, waltz. Words and music by A. L. Allred
1930, Dreamy Carolina, waltz. Words and music by Irving Knight and Julian Dey
1935, When it's raining down in Carolina, waltz. Words by P. Preslar and S. Adelman and melody by B. Adelman.
1935, Dear old Carolina, waltz. Words to Anna M. Whelan. Music to J. Schatenstein and A.M. Whelan
1951, (Last night they played the) Carolina Waltz. Words and music to Jimmy Melvin Dall
1960, The Carolina Waltz. Words to Patricia Rathbone. Words to George Leddy
1977, Carolina Waltz. D.B. Johnson
There is one recorded waltz which was not included here just because it doesn't really sound like a waltz: Carolina Sunday Waltz by Adrian Legg.
And finally, a musical score of the official North Carolina state song (which happens to be a waltz although it is rarely performed that way), The Old North State.
The above score is from Glogster.
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