The Patton Brothers
with Raymond Swinney and Glen Neaves
“Now those boys knew how to play mountain music…”
from an interview with neighbor Gerald Shupe
The Swinney Farm has a long history as a center of old-time music in the Dell community near Fries. James Fletcher Swinney (1859-1940), youngest son of David and Mary (Wright) Swinney, was an accomplished fiddler and banjo player.....but it was ‘Fletch” Swinney's great-grandsons who were to have the most lasting impact on the musical heritage of Grayson County Virginia.
Nana Roosevelt Swinney was the daughter of Ira and Ada Swinney and Fletch Swinney's granddaughter. Nanna Swinney married John Muncy Patton of the Stevens Creek Community in 1917 when Nana was barely 15 years old and the Pattons had two sons, Everett and Wilbert (Bill) Patton. Not long after the birth of their second son in 1920, the couple separated and Nana and the boys moved back in with her parents in the ancestral log home on the side of Iron Mountain. Nana's grandfather, 'Fletch' Swinney, was still living and it was in this home that Everett and Bill Patton learned to play banjo and fiddle.1
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Nana Roosevelt Swinney |
In 1926, Nana birthed a third son, Raymond Lee. Being the youngest, Raymond Lee Swinney stayed home while his older brothers worked the farm with their grandfather. Raymond apparently used this time to learn to play banjo from his great-grandfather. Raymond at first played clawhammer style banjo like his grandfather and brothers. But by the time Raymond was in his early teens (somewhere around 1935), he had developed a quite different banjo style - a sophisticated three finger roll - and he was using that banjo style to accompany his brothers when they played for community dances. While several banjo players in Southwest Virginia were playing finger styles by this time, Raymond's playing was quite different from other banjo players in Southwest Virginia. It was a smooth fluid pattern with sophisticated hammer-ons and slides...all of the stuff popularized 10 years later in the commercial recordings of Earl Scruggs with Bill Monroe's band. The Swinney family farm was isolated, even by Grayson County standards, so it is really not clear where or how Raymond learned to play like this. Reid Robertson, a local musician well aquatinted with Raymond's playing, argues that Raymond's family never owned a vehicle, rarely left Iron Mountain, and that he likely developed that unique banjo style on his own. It's not even clear that he could have heard other Grayson County banjo players like Frank Jenkins of Galax who played a rudimentary finger style of banjo. Regardless of the original influence, Raymond's take on finger-style banjo was something entirely new for Grayson County. The earliest recording of Raymond's precocious banjo style was captured by Alan Lomax in the banjo contest of the 1941 Galax Fiddlers Convention and this allows us to hear this endemic Grayson County three finger banjo style before it was diluted by exposure to bluegrass music after 1947.
By 1935, Fletcher Swinney's log home at the head of Stevens Creek had become the community gathering place for dances on Saturday nights. The Patton Brothers and Raymond Swinney, provided the music and visiting community members provided food and the obligatory liquid refreshment that fueled these dances. Although the original log structure that housed these dances has fallen prey to years of neglect, older members of the community still remember them well. Belva Patton (Everett 's surviving wife) and Dan Wright who lives on the adjoining farm both remember a separate log structure next to the Swinney home place that was basically a large open room for music and dancing, a line of tables along the wall for food and drink, and large open windows that overlooked the wooded valley below. Gerald Shupe grew up on an adjoining farm and remembers going to those dances as a young boy: “Now those boys knew how to play mountain music…”.
With Raymond Swinney on banjo, Everett on guitar, and Bill on fiddle, this family band also began to venture off the Swinney Farm to play for dances in Spring Valley. When the 'Patton Brothers Band' competed in local fiddlers conventions they met fiddler Glen Neaves. Neaves had moved to Fries from Ashe County North Carolina to find work in the cotton mill (Washington Mills). He was a great old-time 'long-bow' fiddler, playing a smooth flowing style of fiddle that was distinct from the heavily punctuated short-bow style played by older Grayson County fiddlers. Neaves became a regular visitor to the Swinney Farm and soon joined the Patton Brothers Band. Bill Patton (who had played fiddle to this point) now moved to a second guitar. It is interesting that the band never featured two fiddles. This is likely due to the distinctly different fiddle styles of Glen Neaves and Bill Patton. It is also interesting that this band style of using two guitars to provide strong rhythm continued throughout the history of this band with many personnel changes and is now a common feature of 'Galax style' bands. Everett Patton left the band in 1948 to move to Michigan to find work and he was replaced on second guitar by Cecil Kinzer, another cotton mill employee. With the loss of Everett Patton, the band also adopted a new name: The Grayson County Band (or Grayson County Boys).
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The Grayson County Boys |
Glen Neaves & Raymond Swinney |
The 'Patton Brothers' with Glen Neaves won second place in the Band Contest at the Galax Fiddler's Convention in 1939 and then first place in 1946 and 1947. In 1952, Glen Neaves brought the band into the studio of Rich-R'-Tone Records and the Grayson County Boys recorded two sides for Rich-R'-Tone's Folk Star custom label. Black Mountain Rag (Master No. 4786) and Old Swinging Bridge (Master No. 2674) were released as Folk Star 613 . The lyrics for Old Swinging Bridge were written by Glen Neaves and the recording featured vocals by Bill and Everett Patton and Glen and Jessie Neaves (Glenn's wife). Neaves later related: " (That record) sold good and played all over the country on juke boxes, but we never got a dime out of it ". Apparently they even had to go to Galax to Porter's Furniture Store to buy a copy for their personal use. 2
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Raymond Swinney's banjo playing in this band had a significant impact on banjo players in Grayson County. Although Fletcher, Everett, and even Raymond, played banjo in the clawhammer style, it was Raymond's use of three finger rolls that caught the ear of other musicians and brought a steady stream of folks to Spring Valley to learn his banjo style. Contemporary local musicians recollect that Raymond's style was "different, not like bluegrass banjo players today". Kyle Creed referred to this style as "a three-finger roll...not a bluegrass roll, but a three-finger roll back before bluegrass came in." While we will never know just how he developed this unique banjo style, his impact on the music of Grayson County was immediate and substantial.
The Patton Brothers with Raymond Swinney and Glen Neaves were a featured band on the 'Carroll-Grayson Hoedown', a live radio broadcast from WBOB in Galax which began in the early 1940s. Also featured on this broadcast was a local young clawhammer banjo player named Larry Richardson. After hearing the Patton Brothers Band, Larry learned to play 3-finger style from Raymond and seldom used the clawhammer style after that. Larry later played that style banjo with Bobby Osborne (1950-1951) and later with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys (1952-1953). The unique Grayson County rhythm can be heard in his banjo playing with both bands.
A young guitar player on the 'Carroll-Grayson Hoedown', Ted Lundy (then in his early teens), became fascinated with Raymond's banjo playing and began making regular trips to the Swinney Farm to learn to play Raymond's finger-style of banjo. Ted Lundy moved from Grayson County to Wilmington, Delaware and formed the Southern Mountain Boys, a traditional bluegrass band with firm roots in the traditional Galax band style. Ted Lundy was a regular winner of the Galax Fiddlers Convention banjo contest for many years and he continually credited Raymond as his banjo influence in interviews and liner notes to his records. Ted described the music he learned to play from Raymond as having the Galax Sound.
As the music of the 'Patton Brothers' became widely popular in Grayson County, a number of other bands began to copy this band format and the playing of both Raymond Swinney and Glen Neaves. The Mountain Ramblers of Galax are the clearest local proponent of the Patton Brothers' Galax Sound, and they used a nearly identical band format to that used by the Patton Brothers. Not only did the Mountain Ramblers feature 'Swinney Style' three finger banjo from the outset; Otis Burris, the outstanding original Mountain Ramblers fiddler, was clearly influenced by the playing style of Glenn Neaves.
The term Galax Sound has been described as old-time string band music “caught in transition”...old-time musicians trying to adapt to more commercially popular bluegrass instrumental styles after 1950. However, it is clear from this discussion that the Galax Sound actually developed long before bluegrass was heard in Grayson County. This endemic Grayson County band style originated on the Swinney Farm in Spring Valley and evolved under the influence of the amazingly talented musicians who populated the looms of Washington Mills. While this band style is still played by some older musicians in Grayson County, it has largely been ignored by both the old-time music revivalist community and younger musicians attracted to more modern sounds of professional bluegrass bands.
Raymond Swinney and his wife were the last occupants of the log home on the Swinney Farm. Raymond and Dorothy Bye (Swinnney) had 5 sons and two daughters before the family moved off the family homeplace to live first on Jerusalem Hill in Spring Valley, and then closer to Galax where Raymond worked in the Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Company. Raymond continued to play in his home, but rarely played in public after 1955. He stopped playing entirely in the early 1960s when he lost most of his right middle finger in an accident on the job at the furniture factory. This is ironic because Raymond had continually expressed concern to his family about hurting or losing a finger on this job and had actually developed the unique ability to alternately use the middle or ring finger of his right hand in his three finger roll so he could continue to play if he were to ever loose use of a finger.
Everett Patton , Bill Patton, and Raymond Patton are all buried in the Liberty Hill Cemetery along with their mother, Nana Roosevelt Patton.
1In the 1930 census, Bill, Everett,and Raymond are listed as sons of Ira Swinney. Ira Swinney is actually their maternal grandfather.
2Westin, Frank. Glen Neaves of Fries, Virginia: From an interview with Glenn Neaves and Jessie Neaves in 1980. The Old-Time Herald. Fall 2002: 15-19.