Clarence “Tom” Ashley & Gwen Foster

Clarence Earl McCurry, who performed as Clarence “Tom” Ashley, was born in Bristol, Tennessee in 1895 and went out with medicine shows from around 1911, playing clawhammer banjo in a “sawmill” tuning he picked up from family. Gwen Foster, a Caldwell County, North Carolina harmonica and guitar player who had worked the textile mills alongside Dock Walsh of the Carolina Tar Heels, partnered him on record. Their “Rising Sun Blues” for Vocalion in September 1933 is the oldest known recording of the song. Ashley was rediscovered during the 1960s folk revival, thanks partly to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, and played Newport and Carnegie Hall with Doc Watson before his death in 1967.