Repertoire and Style
While Uncle Dave Macon recorded over 170 songs between 1924 and 1938, in his day he was most notable for his polished and lively stage presence. Bandmate Kirk McGee later described Macon's personality as a never-ending performance— "All day long, from morning till midnight, it was a show." While playing, Macon would often kick and stomp, and shout sporadically, taxing the skills of WSM's early volume-control engineers. His performance style can be discerned to some extent from his early recordings, in which he whoops and hollers amidst relatively aggressive vocal deliveries.
Macon played an open-backed Gibson banjo on most of his recordings, and while contemporary musicians didn't consider him a particularly skillful banjo player, modern musicologists have identified no less than 19 picking styles on Macon's recordings. Macon's favorite tunes included "A Soldier's Joy", "Bully of the Town", The Arkansas Traveler, and "Sail Away, Ladies". Macon claimed to have learned the song "Rock About My Saro Jane" from black stevedores working along the Cumberland River in the 1880s. The song "Buddy Won't You Roll Down the Line" was inspired by the Coal Creek War, an East Tennessee labor uprising in the 1890s. In the song "From Earth to Heaven", Macon describes his days hauling goods between Woodbury and Murfreesboro for his shipping company. Macon's favorite hymn was "How Beautiful Heaven Must Be", which is inscribed on his monument near Woodbury.
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