Crowe on the Banjo: The Music Life of J.D. Crowe

2. I Just Wanted to Pick

chapter 2 i just wanted to pick “How I got with Esco Hankins, for the very first time,” J.D. said, “they used to put on amateur contests. As an aspiring picker, everybody goes through that phase—at least back then they did—and so I entered the contest, and I happened to win. The prize—the big prize—was you got to appear on his radio show, which he had every Saturday night from six to seven, and it was live, and the studio [WLAP], only held about thirty-five or forty people, so it was usually full.”1 For J.D. it was a good experience. “It wasn’t very many people, but enough to make you nervous. I thought it was kind of neat.”2 Tennessee singer and guitar player William Esco Hankins, known for the similarity of his singing style to that of Roy Acuff, had been active in the Knoxville country music scene from the late 1930s and had recorded for King Records after World War II.3 In his band the Crazy Tennesseans when he moved to Lexington in 1949 was Dobro player Burkett “Buck” Graves, called “Uncle Josh,” in a comedy routine with bass player English P. “Junior” Tullock Jr., known as “Cousin Jake.”4 After joining Flatt and Scruggs in the mid-1950s, they resumed their comedy act as well as playing and singing as part of the Foggy Mountain Boys. i-xviii_1-240_Godb.indd 18 8/3/11 9:27 AM I Just Wanted to Pick 19 Hankins soon became a regular member of the Kentucky Mountain Barn Dance. The Crazy was dropped from the band’s name in 1950, resulting in “the Tennesseans.”5 As a band leader, disc jockey, and record shop owner, Esco Hankins would remain a radio presence in Lexington until his death in 1990.6 “Old Esco,” J.D. said, “boy, he was a good old fellow!7 The period that I worked with him [about 1951–52] was a real good learning period. You know, I was very fortunate; I never really had to work with amateur musicians. I never had to do that. I think that helped me a lot, because I was working with professional people. You can learn a lot more from people that know more than you do. Esco had been in business for a long time; [Andrew Tipton] ‘Tip’ Sharp was in the band, and a fellow named Dean Faulkner—they called him ‘Spike’—who played mandolin, and sang, and [Harold] ‘Red’ Stanley played fiddle.”8 J.D.’s sister, Rosa, said, “I embarrassed [J.D.] one time at WLAP. I think I was about six, and they were doing a live thing, and J.D. was looking up to watch the guy signal for them to start, and I hollered out ‘Pick it, Crowe!’ just as he was about to kick it off. I was proud because he was my brother, and I was just a kid. Oh, he got kind of got aggravated with me, and I think Mom and Dad said something to me too, if I recollect right. It embarrassed him, but he got over it, I guess.”9 “Esco was a fine fellow,” Mrs. Crowe said. “He would come to my house maybe once or twice a week, and J.D. played over WLAP with him as long as Esco was there. I guess J.D. was thirteen or so when Esco wanted him to go play show dates.”10 “After I had won the amateur contest that Esco put on,” J.D. said, “he asked my mom and dad if he could take me on some shows. Well, that started it, right there, as long as I could get back in time to go to school. We’d probably go in a hundred-mile radius, which back then was quite a bit. I know a lot of times we’d get back at two or three o’clock in the morning, and I’d have to get up and go to school—which I did.”11 They played anyplace that could accommodate an audience. “We played schools, theaters, and courthouses on weeknights—probably more schoolhouses than anything. Back then, the courthouse had the biggest auditorium in some small towns, and they weren’t really all that big.”12 i-xviii_1-240_Godb.indd 19 8/3/11 9:27 AM 20 chapter 2...