Not all historians intend to be. Sometimes it happens by accident. Such is the case with Ralph and Kelly Epperson, Mark Brown, and others at WPAQ and the Mount Airy Bluegrass and Old-Time Fiddlers Convention.
For 48 years the Mount Airy units of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars have sponsored the fiddler’s convention and WPAQ has been recording and broadcasting portions of the performances. Those recordings constitute a tremendous archive of Bluegrass and Old-Time music, and performers that is unmatched and irreplaceable.
And this year, when the event had to be cancelled for public health concerns in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, they allowed the show to go on.
Mark Brown, who does news and special events for the radio station, has helped with the stage and sound set up and broadcast of the festival for 25 years. When organizers made the decision to cancel, Brown hatched a plan and Kelly Epperson, son of station founder Ralph Epperson and current station manager, loved the idea.
“Mark said, ‘Let’s have one anyway! We’ll do a virtual fiddler’s convention. Hopefully it will be the only one, but we’ll still have one,’ and we were all excited,” Epperson recalled. “We look forward to [the fiddler’s convention],” he added. “It’s a lot of work but we just love it and couldn’t stand the idea of it not happening.”
Brown has hundreds of hours of recorded performances and jam sessions that have never been broadcast, recordings he’s painstakingly cleaned up, removing dead air and sound checks so listeners will hear long-time emcee Clyde Johnson introduce the act, a pause, and then the performance.
Epperson decided to air the virtual convention the same hours they would traditionally carry the real thing, Friday from 7 p.m.-10 p.m. and Saturday, 3 p.m.-10 p.m. This is not the first time he’s shared audible history with his audience. The station rebroadcast Mount Airy’s 1948 state football championship game against Laurinburg on Thanksgiving in 2018. He hopes this is as well-received.
“Who knows what it’ll be like,” he wondered last week. “One thing’s for sure, we’re going to hear a lot of great music.”
Ronald Golden Frazier Collins, who served in the US Army during WWII, is the acknowledged father of the event which is sponsored by the two veterans’ organizations that own the park. The first fiddler’s convention was held June 2-3, 1972. It’s been held the first Friday and Saturday of June ever since, attracting some of the finest performers, amateur and professional, from across the nation and many other countries.
Ralph Epperson, whose love of old-time music was perfectly paired with his passion for broadcast radio, was involved from the beginning. At first the senior Epperson helped with equipment and recorded performances, broadcasting some as time permitted. By the mid-1970s he and his family and staff were intrinsically involved in creating the stage, setting up the sound system and broadcasting the majority of the event.
Organizers pride themselves on maintaining a family-friendly atmosphere where alcohol, profanity, and rough behavior are not tolerated and children are welcome. Attendance has shown the audiences appreciate the effort as it’s grown from a few hundred people in the early years to several thousand now. Some estimate attendance topped 6,000 by 2005. Campers start arriving more than a week before the event begins because the festival has a strong core community of people who simply enjoy sharing the music and visiting with other fans.
Many come to compete in one of the 25 judged categories. In the early years a few hundred registered for the best bluegrass or old-time band or for individual ribbons as best fiddler, banjo, mandolin, guitar, dance, or song in age and genre categories. By 2001, the 30th convention, 738 individuals, 126 old time bands and 44 bluegrass bands registered to compete.
This year no champions were crowned and no campers set up but people still got to hear their favorite music because a few accidental historians have collected the sounds from history and shared them with everyone.
Today is the second anniversary of this column. We’ve explored an unexpected range of topics looking at the history of this region and I’ve enjoyed learning those stories and sharing them with you all. It is a privilege I look forward to continuing with you as we move into this 250th anniversary year of Surry County’s creation. Thank you for the opportunity.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com