Lawrence Elmer “Smiley” Davidson,
92, died on February 7 in Wytheville, Virginia. The
following is from a interview with Smiley by his
friend George Wells.
Though Smiley was “relatively
unknown . . . he was a giant to those who knew him,” recalls
artist Willard Gayheart, of Woodlawn, Virginia. Smiley
was an extraordinary guitarist and musician—a
valued sideman who had played with and had the respect
of many well-known old-time country musicians such
as Molly O’Day, Martha Carson, the Stoneman
Family, Jack Reedy, and the Holdren brothers.
Through the years Smiley traveled extensively throughout
the United States, playing music and performing various
odd jobs. “As a teenager,” Smiley says, “a
fellow had to get into what [work] he could in a
small town.” After graduating from Ivanhoe
High School, he worked for the Upland Land and Coal
Company, near Bluefield, West Virginia. Staying at
boarding houses with musical buddies who were also
working for the mining company, Smiley managed to
continue playing music regularly. Throughout his
life, even during his six years in the Army, Smiley
always carried his guitar with him.
Smiley took to music naturally at an early age.
At age 12 he purchased a guitar from Montgomery Ward
for $7.00, and started a Hawaiian band with his cousins.
Though he eventually became fluent in many styles
of popular music, Smiley’s early influences
were the old-timers in his family and community,
particularly his uncles Gene Pearman, George Davidson,
and Tom Davidson. He was also tremendously impressed
by recordings of Riley Puckett and Henry Whitter,
though he always considered Nick Lucas to be his
dominant influence.
Although Smiley was a virtuoso on the guitar, he
was also accomplished on several other string instruments.
He learned to play the tenor banjo by playing with
a pianist, Mrs. James Lindsay, of the Galax area.
He played five-string banjo well enough that he once
took first prize at the Galax Fiddlers Convention
for his version of “Home Sweet Home.”
Ward Petty, an outstanding fiddler from Galax, Virginia
says “Smiley was one in a million. . . . he
was a keeper . . . a wonderful friend. I have never
met anyone like him . . . he knew all the old-time
tunes of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. There
were no ‘two chord’ tunes for Smiley;
nobody around here played like that.” He added
that the “mouths of spectators and musicians
alike would drop open and their eyes would light
up hearing him play.” Anyone who ever witnessed
the dexterity and wizardry of this affable gentleman
as he maneuvered with ease from major to seventh
to minor and diminished chords, immediately recognized
his genius. Using such sophisticated chords without
ever using a capo—Smiley does not own one—is
really high level picking!
Though Smiley’s roots were in the old-time
music of the region, he was equally at home with
almost any type of modern music. A list of his favorites
reveals his musical range: “Coney Island Washboard,” “Aunt
Hegar’s Blues,” “Shine,” “It
Looks Like Rain in Cherry Blossom Lane,” “Sleepy
Rio Grande” and “Bluebell.” Roy
Horton, another respected bluegrass musician from
the Danville, Virginia area, who heard Smiley play
well in to his 80s, mused, “Can you imagine
what kind of guitar player he must have been 50 years
ago? He still plays flawlessly.” In thinking
back over his long life, Smiley himself put it best “if
I had my life to live over, I would still be in music
. . . music was my life.”
George Wells lives in Danville, Virginia. He is
a retired secondary school principal, former Navy
journalist, and avid music fan.
