Stephen Wade
The purpose of the shows was to honor folk-music legend Hobart Smith and celebrate Smithsonian Folkways’ recent release of In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes, a compilation of material Smith recorded, 15 months before he died, in the home of Old Town instructor Fleming Brown, who has also since passed. Backed by a trio of guitar, fiddle, and either piano or pump organ, Wade played songs from those sessions, interspersed with lengthy prepared comments. Half the time the evening felt like a classroom lecture, and half the time it felt like a much-postponed wake for both Smith and Brown.
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Fleming Brown was an avid follower of Smith’s. He’d incorporated Smith’s double-noting technique into his own playing and was teaching it in his classes at the Old Town School. His talent impressed Smith, and they developed a friendship based in their mutual passion for folk music. During a two-week series of Chicago-area engagements Brown set up for him in October 1963, Smith sat down for several recording sessions in Brown’s rec room. They hoped to document Smith’s playing style to make it easier to teach to others: he’d amble through a song like “Railroad Bill” at a fraction of his normal tempo, so a listener could pick out what exactly was happening between his fingers and the strings to create the phenomenally dense and detailed patterns he was known for. Then, without a perceptible change in effort, he’d tear through it at its proper speed–if anything it seemed to be more of a strain for him to slow down.
