1980 St Stephens Alabama Sullivan Family Bluegrass Gospel 5-Page Vintage Article

Description

1980 St. Stephens Alabama Sullivan Family Bluegrass Gospel - 5-Page Vintage Article
Original, Vintage Magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
The Sullivan Family of St. Stephens,
Alabama, represent a synthesis of two
of the strongest and most vital American
musics: gospel and bluegrass. It is a
powerful combination, the melding of
these two musical styles, and the driving,
emotional music of the Sullivan Family is
no small part of its current growth in
popularity.
The nucleus of the Sullivan Family
begins early in this century, with a
logging contractor named J.B. Sullivan
and three of his musically oriented
children, Arthur, Jerry, and Suzie.
The group’s longtime spokesman,
Enoch Sullivan, recalls “My grandad on
my dad’s side, J.B. Sullivan, was one of
the finest drop-thumb banjo players; it
was the cleanest sound I’d ever heard. We
all used to play a lot of what we called
frolic music. We played a lot of dances
where you’d go over to somebody’s house
and take all the furniture out and have an
all night dance. But then my dad was
converted when I was very young, and
started into church work when I was
seven or eight years old, so due to
religious beliefs we never played anything
but gospel music after that.”
Arthur Sullivan’s conversion was the
result of a near-fatal illness in 1939, and
after his recovery he devoted his life to
the Pentecostal Church as a full-time
preacher and gospel singer. Arthur
played mandolin and guitar, and,
according to Enoch, “he was a good
singer, a hard singer, in that good old
fashioned hard style. Loud—he sung loud,
like Roy Acuff. Loud. He believed in good
time, kept good rhythm, and sung real
loud so people would enjoy it—and they
did!”
To this he added his younger brother
Jerry on guitar, his son Enoch on fiddle
(he'd learned from an earlier associate of
the family, Bud Hiram Lane), and the trio
became more and more popular. The
personnel fluctuated during the 1940s,
and from time to time included Suzie
Sullivan, another of Arthur’s brothers
J.B. and his wife, and the youngest
brother, Aubrey. Though their musical
inspiration was varied, Enoch claims the
Sullivan Family of that era sounded very
much like the Mainer’s Mountaineers, a
group they admired greatly.
The first major change—or perhaps
evolution—in the Sullivan Family sound
occurred when young Enoch married
Margie Brewster on December 16, 1949,
adding a distinct, unique, and fervent
voice to the Sullivan sound.
Born near Winnsboro, Louisiana,
Margie grew up in a musical family, and at
the age of thirteen began traveling as a
singer and guitarist with an evangelist
named Helen Chain. There was plenty of
music on the radio and in person in those
days as well: “There were so many great
artists featured on KWKH when I was
young; there was Hank Williams, Johnny
and Jack and Kitty Wells and the Bailes
Brothers...just so many of them, and you
could hear them three or four times a
week, or see them for $ .20 or $ .25 at little
country schools. Of course, I listened to
Bill Monroe on the radio, and Roy Acuff.
“Then, too, Molly O’Day and Kitty
Wells and Wilma Lee Cooper had an effect
on my style—I never tried to copy
anyone, but you can’t help but be
influenced. I just loved that mountain
style. Of course, back then it was pretty
well just called country music, not
necessarily bluegrass. But we didn’t get to
hear of people like the Stanley Brothers
until later on. We were in such a rural
area, and communication was not what it
is now.”
Though they had spent nearly a
decade preaching and playing, it was right
around this time that they mark the
beginning of their professional career, for
it was then that they obtained a radio
program. “That’s when we feel we truly
became a professional band,” says Enoch,
“because radio then was the going
thing—if you were on radio, you had it
made. We started our first radio work on
WRJW in Picayune, Mississippi, and at
that time the group was my dad, myself,
Aubrey, and Margie. That was the first
radio work we did as The Sullivan
Family.”
In the early 1950s the increasingly
popular Sullivan Family Gospel Singers
(as they were known then) were joined by
Enoch’s younger brother Emmett who
graduated from his grandfather’s five
string trailing style to three finger
Scruggs style playing. Learning to play
simply by listening to radio and records,
Emmett became a professional bluegrass
banjoist before he had ever seen one
played in that style.
His addition to the group moved them
from their semi-string band, semi-gospel
quartet sound squarely into the then-
emerging field of bluegrass. It was far...
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