Friday, September 16, 2011

Wade Mainer, R.I.P.



Country music pioneer Wade Mainer died at his home in Flint on Monday at the age of 104. Joe DePriest of The Telegraph reports:
As a professional singer and banjo player, he would introduce that music to audiences throughout the nation and also pass it on to new generations of performers.

Mainer, one of the most popular and influential figures in early country music, died Monday at his home in Flint, Mich. He was 104.

Some called him “the godfather of North Carolina country music” and “the grandfather of bluegrass.”

He performed in the White House for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and in New York City with folk legend Woody Guthrie.

“He was one of the most remarkable musicians of his era,” said music historian Dick Spottswood, author of “Banjo on the Mountain: Wade Mainer’s First Hundred Years,” published in 2010 by the University Press of Mississippi.



1 comment:

  1. Thanks for posting this. Though I found many other country music icons have lived along US-23, I missed Wade.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.