Guitarist and
singer Paul
Sutphin,
a central figure
in the Round Peak
music community
who later became
a sunny presence
in the wider old-time
music world, died
at his home in
Mount Airy, NC
on August 26, 2004
after an extended
illness. He was
84. He leaves his
wife, Magdalene
Phillips Sutphin,
a sister, a son,
two daughters and
six grandchildren.
Photo
by
Stanley R. Shapin
Paul was born on October 1, 1918 on Round Peak Mountain in North
Carolina’s Surry County. There he lived in a log cabin with
his parents, W.P. and Ada Golding Sutphin, eight sisters and three
brothers. Surrounded by the intense music of banjoist Charlie
Lowe, fiddlers Ben, Tommy and Charlie Jarrell, Fred Cockerham
and others, he decided to add to the community din by taking up
the guitar. Later in life he loved telling the tale of spending
three weeks clearing a creek bank for a neighbor when he was thirteen,
and using four of the five dollars he earned to buy his first
guitar. The remaining dollar, he would proudly proclaim, he gave
to his father, who he recalled was skeptical of his desire to
be a musician. Happily undeterred, Paul took guitar cues from
Oscar Jarrell, and devised a unique syncopated two-finger backup
style that helped propel his bands to fame and fiddlers’ convention
wins from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Paul played with all the Round Peak musicians at one time or
another, but his greatest accomplishments may have been with the
Camp Creek Boys and the Smokey Valley Boys. In the 1960s, the
Camp Creek Boys established a driving, stylish sound in old-time
music that inspired thousands of younger musicians from far away
while also denying hot local bluegrass groups many a contest trophy.
Along with the outstanding fiddling of Fred Cockerham, Earnest
East, Benton Flippen or Kyle Creed, and the distinctive Round
Peak clawhammer banjo playing of Fred or Kyle, Paul’s energetic
guitar work was critical to the Camp Creek Boys’ supercharged
sound. His guitar’s interaction with Verlen Clifton’s
mandolin provided a rhythmic understructure other bands couldn’t
match. His singing soared with joy. The Camp Creek Boys’ 1967
LP, reissued on CD (County 2719, The Camp Creek Boys), is a modern
classic of old-time music.
The original Camp Creek Boys broke up by 1970. Earnest East formed
the Pine Ridge Boys, and Paul organized the Smokey Valley Boys
with fiddler Benton Flippen. The Smokey Valley Boys set out on
a blazing path of contest wins, taking first place seven times
at Union Grove and countless trophies at other conventions in
the South. The band appeared twice at the Brandywine Mountain
Music Convention, and performed at the University of Chicago Folk
Festival, the National Folk Festival, the 1982 Knoxville World’s
Fair and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. At home, the Smokey Valley
Boys played regularly on Radio Station WPAQ’s Merry-Go-Round
program, and provided music for local square dances and community
functions.
In the 1980s Paul started moving farther afield, appearing most
frequently with Benton Flippen and me at music festivals and camps
around the country. He played and sang at the Festival of American
Fiddle Tunes, Pinewoods, the Swannanoa Gathering, Augusta, and
Ashokan. Irrepressibly sociable, Paul loved traveling to share
his music, and people loved him for it. When I stopped in at his
home, he would almost invariably ask, “Reckon when we’ll
make our next trip?” If I told him a camp or festival had
called for the coming summer, he’d answer, “I’m
ready. We’ll leave in the morning!”
Playing in a band with Paul was a unique experience to say the
least. I had the good fortune to stand right next to him - my
spot assigned by him – frequently in the Smokey Valley Boys
during the 1980s and ‘90s. He would often choose the songs
and tunes as we went along. He would call out breaks if he wanted
us to take them. But more than anything else, he would infuse
the performance with focused energy, intensity and happiness that
drove the rest of us to play harder and better than we thought
we could. “Now boys, push Benton. Push him!”he’d
say to Verlen, guitarist Frank Bode and me as we went on stage.
With his 1950s Martin D-28 strung up with heavy gauge strings,
its desperate bridge held on with glue and wing nuts, triple pick
guards installed for added protection from his massive, kneading
right hand, his foot stomping on the stage, he would tear into
each tune as if there would never be another chance to play it.
Halfway through, he might suddenly shout “Whooh!” as
if whipping us on to still greater speed and intensity. He’d
look to his right, to his left, alternately grinning and serious,
keeping us all in line, and then out to the audience with a huge
grin. He’d suddenly look over to me and the banjo, grin
again and say, “Pick it, boy!” And great heavens,
when he opened his mouth to sing, he could fry the circuits in
the sound board. Over the years, I saw more than one startled
engineer jump in his seat and lunge for the faders as Paul launched
into his first verse.
Some people define what they do, and Paul was one of those people.
He never claimed to be the greatest technical wizard on the guitar
or the most refined singer on the planet, or to have the greatest
repertoire of songs. He never aspired to be a professional musician,
instead making his living and supporting his family with his own
home improvement business. He simply lived well with what he had:
a remarkable sense of rhythm, a deep natural understanding of
melody and how to bend a note, a fantastic ear for a good song,
and an unfettered enthusiasm for making music with other people.
With these tools, he defined a style of old time string band playing.
Beyond that, he had an overpowering spirit of goodwill and happiness,
a capacity to make the most of life, whatever the circumstance.
Showing up on any scene, he defined joy and friendship, lifting
the spirits of everyone around him.
At the funeral home visitation, the community repaid his family.
People lined up into the parking lot for four hours, waiting to
get in. And there were remarkably few tears, because when Paul
came to mind, so inevitably would a story and a smile. Apparently
his example had stuck.
