Born in North Carolina in 1907, Wade Mainer performed professionally beginning in 1932. He began performing with Mainer’s Mountaineers, his brother’s band, and later continued with his own group, The Sons of the Mountaineers. His heyday was during the popularity of “hillbilly music” in the 1930s and 1940s. Between 1935 and 1941, various Mainer brother combinations recorded more than 165 songs for RCA Victor, making them some of the most heavily recorded country artists of that era. But Wade left music to work for General Motors in 1953, along with many Appalachians of his generation. Since then, he has recorded a few gospel albums, and, during the 1970s, with the renewal of interest in old-time music, and with some persuasion from fans who were familiar with his early recordings, Wade began to perform in public again, accompanied by his wife, Julia Mae, a guitarist and a fine traditional singer.Wade’s music has always been noted for its traditional repertoire and for his distinctive melodic two-finger banjo picking style, which was a personal trademark. This style became the basis for the three-finger banjo styles developed by Snuffy Jenkins and Earl Scruggs. His music is an antecedent of modern bluegrass. In 1987, Wade was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment of the Arts.
Mainer became a popular recording and radio personality who influenced generations of great musicians, including Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson. Mainer was an influential figure whose innovative two-fingered picking technique expanded the traditional clawhammer style of banjo playing. With his singing and precise two-finger banjo style, Mainer and his band created a distinct sound that bridged the gap between old-time mountain music and bluegrass.
“I was raised in the mountains back then and didn’t go out too much…but what there were of musicians, I would pay attention to them,” said Mainer. “I was interested in the sound of the banjo and when they’d lay their banjos down at the square dance…I’d go over and pick it up and play.”David Holt Interviews old time banjo player Wade Mainer about his life and innovative two finger banjo style. They play tunes "Shoot that Turkey Buzzard, Lonesome Road Blues, Run Mountain.
In addition to working in local mills during the 1930s, Mainer was employed at various local radio stations early in his career. There, he recorded now-classic songs “Maple on the Hill” and “Take Me in the Lifeboat” with his brother J.E. Mainer and their group Mainer’s Mountaineers. In 1937, he married singer/guitarist Julia Brown, a pioneering female vocalist who would later join her husband for performances on the road.
Wade Mainer has received many honors and awards during his more than 60-year career in music, including the National Heritage Fellowship in 1987 from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Michigan Heritage Award and the Michigan Country Music Association and Services’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996; and North Carolina’s Surry Arts Council Lifetime Achievement in 1998. The Mainers were also inducted into the Michigan Country Music Hall of Fame in 1998.
Along with his popular recordings Wade and his brother J.E. reached a wide audience with live radio programs sponsored by a patent medicine laxative called “Crazy Water Crystals.” Wade performed at Radio Stations WBT in Charlotte; WPTF in Raleigh; WNOX in Knoxville; and WPAQ in Mount Airy, among others. The sponsor kept him working but was notoriously stingy with pay causing Wade to part ways with both the sponsor and the Mainer Mountaineers.
From: Banjo On The Mountain: Wade Mainer's First Hundred Years
By By Dick Spottswood
University Press of Mississippi, 134 pages, $30 paperbackReviewed by John Lupton, October 2010
For North Carolina teenager Wade Mainer and his older brother J.E. (Joseph Emmett), the nascent country music business was their ticket out of a lifetime of drudgery working in the mills. Mostly self-taught, Wade developed a signature two-finger banjo style that perfectly complemented his brother's driving fiddle style and made them among the most in-demand musicians for dances and hoedowns.
Teaming up with Zeke Morris and "Daddy John" Love as Mainer's Mountaineers, they moved effortlessly to radio and soon became favorites on stations across the South. In those days, radio and personal appearances were the performers' "bread and butter" with record sales considered nearly an afterthought.
Nonetheless, as the heyday of the 1930s progressed, the Mainer Brothers managed to cut a number of enduring recordings. Eventually they split, amicably, with Wade forming his own band, the Sons of the Mountaineers. The success continued - his 1935 recording of Maple On The Hill was among the decade's best sellers, and Wade remained a popular act through the war years.
The subtitle of this book is no exaggeration, and this is no memorial. Born in April, 1907, Wade Mainer is still very much with us, and albeit on a limited scale, is still pickin' and singin' at the age of 103. He is, to put it bluntly, the last remaining great pioneer of the country music business. His legacy is not only the body of recordings made over the years (including the 1990s), but also the fact of his having been an important bridge to bluegrass, an signal influence on countless banjo pickers - Ralph Stanley included.
That Wade Mainer is not more widely known today is partly his own doing. In the early 1950s he walked away from the secular country music business, by his own account putting his banjo "under the bed," moved to Michigan and went to work for General Motors. A decade later he was convinced to get back into music by his close friends, legendary singer Molly O'Day and her husband Lynn Davis. When "old time" music experienced a revival in the 1970s, Wade once again became a beloved and in-demand "source" musician and remains so to this day.
Unmentioned above, but nonetheless essential to Wade's story is his wife of nearly 75 years, Julia. Herself a popular radio performer at the time they met and married, she took on the duties of not only raising a large family, but managing the band's business as well. From the 70s revival years to today, she has been Wade's duet partner, a powerful singer in her own right.
The charm of Spottswood's recounting of their lives and careers is that, for the most part, he lets them both tell the story in their own words. Most of the book, in fact, consists of reproductions of publicity shots, posters, sheet music, family photos and more that tell not only the personal story of two treasures of American music, but also provide an entertaining and insightful window back to the rough-and-tumble country music business that made them famous.
Source: http://www.countrystandardtime.com/d/bookreview.asp?xid=57
Multimedia presentation in honor of Wade Mainer's 100th birthday (via Mlive.com)
Banjo on the Mountain: Wade Mainer's First Hundred Years (book released last year by music scholar Dick Spottswood)
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