Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies

Chapter 20. You Can Hear The Old Folks Sing: Curly Dan and Wilma Ann

271 Chapter 20 You Can Hear the Old Folks Sing Curly Dan andWilmaAnn I’m from a family of twelve kids. We didn’t even have a radio in the house when we were growing up.You talk about poor folks, we was that! . . . I always said, if I ever get married, I’m gonna marry a man that played the guitar. And I did. —­Wilma Ann Holcomb1 A Southeast Michigan legend tells that folks back home in Kentucky once taught their kids a variation of the three R’s: Readin’, Ritin’, and Route 23. With a steady stream of workers headed north, U.S. Route 23 brought traditions and values of Southern people to Michigan’s industrial cities during the twentieth century. Curly Dan and Wilma Ann drove Route 23 north from West Virginia to Hazel Park, Michigan, in 1952. From the late 1950s through 1984, the duo remained a fixture of area bluegrass events. Fame took the Holcombs by surprise in 1963, after the Happy Hearts label issued their song“South On 23.” Its success in the Midwest and parts of the South turned heads in Nashville, Tennessee, where Curly Dan and Wilma Ann recorded a second version for Starday Records subsidiary label Nashville. They also made a guest appearance on the WSM Grand Ole Opry. Curly Dan and Wilma Ann cut more than a dozen singles for Detroit labels such as Fortune, Clix, Happy Hearts, and Dearborn. During the 1960s and 1970s, they cut three albums for Old Homestead Records. 272 / Detroit Country Music South on 23 Densile Holcomb, a.k.a. Curly Dan, was born in 1923, in Clay, West Virginia .Wilma Ann Lowers was born in Charleston,West Virginia,the following year. In 1936 at age thirteen, Curly played mandolin for country gospel trio Cap, Andy, and Flip at WCHS Charleston, West Virginia.2 The couple met in Maryland, where both had moved seeking work in 1941. They wed Christmas Eve 1942 and returned to West Virginia, where Curly worked in a coal mine for ten years. In 1952 they moved to Michigan. Curly took a job in a Chrysler factory, but after a couple of years he was laid off.“He knew he’d be off for a long time,” said Wilma Ann,“and we had to bring our daughter up to Henry Ford Hospital. She had a serious illness. So he went to the school board.”Curly accepted a job as a stationary engineer at Royal Oak public schools, which he kept through retirement. They invited local musicians to their house for picking sessions, often meeting new talent such as mandolinist Bill Napier.When they found longtime collaborator Jim Maynard, “he was sitting in his backyard playing a banjo,” said Wilma Ann,“and we stopped and met him.” Within a few years after moving to Michigan, Curly assembled the Danville Mountain Trio. “He never cared that much for a fiddle,” said Wilma Ann.“We used a fiddle a lot at the festivals, just pickup guys, you know, that wanted to play. We had two fiddle players, good ones, in our time, and that was it.” During the 1950s, the Danville Mountain Trio (Curly Dan, Napier, and Maynard) played mainly at the All States bar, at Michigan and Cass in Detroit.They also appeared as occasional guests at Casey Clark’s barn dances. In 1956 Curly Dan’s first record,“Sleep, Darling” backed with“My Little Rose” (including Napier and Maynard), on Detroit’s Fortune label, reintroduced American music uncompromising in its acoustic folk influences to Detroit’s music scene.3 As Curly made the rounds of Detroit nightclubs, he sometimes jammed with local mandolin players such as Wandell “Wendy” Smith and Frank Wakefield, who lived in town for a couple of years.4 “Curly played in the bars with Frank Wakefield,” said Wilma Ann. “But I didn’t play any with him. You Can Hear the Old Folks Sing: Curly Dan and Wilma Ann / 273 [Wakefield] was always gonna come to our house and eat [laughs]. He never did come. Curly said that every time he’d go on stage he’d say,‘I’m gonna go home with Curly and eat!’” Working all day and playing music at night started getting old for Curly, who missed spending time with his wife and family. Eventually he convinced his wife to pick up an instrument and join him on stage. I didn...