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Synthetic Country: Arthur Fields, Fred Hall and the Creation of the Hillbilly Stereotype

By Allan Sutton

Related Articles:
Photo Feature: Arthur Fields at Play | Arthur Fields Blue Amberol Cylinderography
The Arthur Fields Song Shop and Arthur Fields Melody Records

(Portions of the following are excerpted from the author’s Recording the ’Twenties: The Birth of the Modern American Record Industry, to be published by Mainspring Press.)


Rex Cole’s Mountaineers, the creation of New Yorkers Fred Hall and Arthur Fields, was one of the first groups to commercially exploit the unfortunate “hillbilly” stereotype that later found expression in the likes of the “Lil’Abner” comic strip and the long-running TV series, The Beverly Hillbillies.

Country music was in a state of transition in 1928. Increasingly, the old-time fiddlers and rural string bands that had dominated the record catalogs were giving way to more modern performers like Jimmie Rodgers and Jimmie Davis—charismatic characters who dressed sharply, wrote much of their own material, and were influenced by diverse musical styles. However, much of the public, particularly in the urbanized North, was not ready to give up its image of country musicians as quaint backwoods relics.

In response, several key figures began to fabricate a stereotypical image of the “hillbilly” that is still with us today. George Hay, creator of the Grand Ole Opry, recast many of that show's early stars in a “hillbilly” mold in the late 1920s. Under Hay, Dr. Bate & his Augmented Orchestra was renamed The Possum Hunters, while the Binkley Brothers became The Dixie Clodhoppers. Opry stars who had previously performed in suits and ties, as most country performers of the period did, were instead made to appear in straw hats and patched overalls, preferably toting a jug. But despite the costuming, Hay’s stars were largely authentic country-style musicians, many of whom worked in Southern cities or towns.

In Beverly Hills, KMPC station manger Glen Rice decided to assemble his own hillbilly act in the late 1920s. Rice concocted an elaborate tale of his expedition to the Santa Monica Mountains, where he stumbled upon a group of Arkansas exiles who had been out of touch with modern civilization for a century. In fact, Rice had ventured no farther than the wilds of Hollywood, where he recruited a mix of professional musicians and aspiring actors and recast them as “Ol’ Jad” and his extended family. Dubbed the Beverly Hillbillies, Rice’s synthetic mountaineers made their first broadcast on April 6, 1930 and would be hugely successful into the 1930s. ¹ Nineteen days after their radio debut, the Beverly Hillbillies were in Brunswick’s Los Angeles studio for the first of many recording sessions.

On the other side of the continent, songwriter-band contractor Fred Hall was making tentative forays into the country-music market. Hall was a popular New York band contractor, but he lost his job as Emerson's musical director when that label was discontinued in 1928. The end was fast approaching for his dance band's Okeh contract, as well. Hall's band played upbeat ersatz jazz, often laced with corny comic effects and featuring the outdated vocal stylings of Arthur Fields. Fields — a former vaudevillian and pop songwriter whose real name was Abe Finkelstein — was not faring particularly well, either, having long ago been been dropped as a soloist by Victor, Brunswick, and Columbia's full-priced line. By the late 1920s Fields was recording primarily as a band vocalist and flat-rate studio freelancer, doing much of his work for dime-store labels. In August 1928, two of Hall’s musicians, Al Russo (guitar) and Thomas Vodola (violin), went to the Edison studio to accompany pop singer Jerry Macy on two country-style tunes Hall had just composed. The records were issued under the pseudonym of “Pop Collins (Old Timber) and his Boys ” 2 and marked the first discernible change of musical direction for Hall. The loss of recording files for many minor labels makes it difficult to determine exactly when Hall began the transition from pseduo-jazz to pseudo-country in earnest. What can be verified is that by May 1929, Columbia was recording Arthur Fields—Hall’s songwriting partner and primary band vocalist—under the pseudonym of “Eddie Powers” for its low-priced Harmony series, probably with backing by some of Hall's musicians. 3 The material was by Fields & Hall and other New York writers, with titles like “The Shoes We Have Left Are Alright” and “Oh Gee, There Ain't No Justice” cobbled together from traditional elements to suggest authentic folk tunes.

Hall’s standard dance orchestra made its last Okeh records in January 1930. ⁴ In the same month, Hall pared down his orchestra to form a small backing group for Fields’ hillbilly numbers. Apart from Fields and Hall, the personnel are not be found in surviving recording files, although the Brunswick ledgers for one session list the instrumentation as violin, guitar, bass, accordion, harmonica, and trumpet. ⁵ Several notable discographers, including Brian Rust and Tony Russell, have suggested, based on aural and circumstantial evidence, that members included such Hall regulars as Philip D’Arcy or Thomas Vodola (violin), Al Russo (guitar), Charles Magnante (accordion), Andy Sannella (steel guitar and reeds), and Leo McConville (trumpet). ⁶

Conceptually, the transition from the ballroom to backwoods ballads would not have been a great leap for this group. They were trained professionals who were widely employed by Hall and other New York band contractors, as well as the recording and radio studios, because they could imitate whatever style a particular job might demand.

There was a period of overlap between the demise of Hall’s standard dance orchestra and its final recasting as a “hillbilly” band. Hall’s full orchestra recorded for many months after the first of the Fields and Hall country-style recordings. Columbia began recording Hall’s new hillbilly group in January 1930—the same month that Hall's full orchestra made its last standard dance-band records for Okeh—under the pseudonym of “Eddie Younger & his Mountaineers,” for Clarion, Diva, and other low-priced labels. ⁷ By June 1930, the American Record Corporation was recording the same group as “Sam Cole & his Cornhuskers” for its line of dime-store and mail-order labels. ⁸ The group's records would eventually be issued under more than a dozen pseudonyms, including the Gaunt Brothers, the Colt Brothers, and Jim Cole's Tennessee Mountaineers.

A New York refrigerator distributor named Rex Cole would finally catapult Fields and Hall into the hillbilly arena full-time. Cole was neither a musician nor a mountaineer, but a successful New York distributor for General Electric who had an interest in broadcasting. Probably aware of the success of the Grand Ole Opry, and acts like the Beverly Hillbillies on radio, he decided to air his own hillbilly act in New York. How Cole came to decide upon Fred Hall is not known, but the upshot was that in the spring of 1930, Cole signed on to sponsor Hall’s new hillbilly act over station WEAF (New York).

Cast in somewhat the same mold as Rice’s Beverly Hillbillies, the act would be billed as “Rex Cole’s Mountaineers.” Fields was retained as primary vocalist, along with a small group of musicians believed to have been from Hall’s dance orchestra. Most material would be written by Fields and Hall (who were reinvented for the show as Long Tom and Joe Colt, respectively), sometimes with the assistance of composer Bert Van Cleve. Hoping to exploit yet another new market, the group would also make occasional excursions into pseudo-cowboy fare, calling itself Buck Wilson & his Rangers.

The first advertised broadcast by Rex Cole’s Mountaineers was made on July 23, 1930, over WEAF. The show was touted as a program of “original back-woods compositions played and sung to ballroom tempo... for a pleasant relief from the ultra modern.” ⁹ Cole’s Mountaineers soon settled into a regular fifteen- (or at times, twenty-) minute afternoon time slot at 5:45 on weekdays, following WEAF’s afternoon children’s program. ¹⁰ The Mountaineers also starred in at least one film short and made occasional live appearances. One that received some press coverage was a benefit for the Salvation Army at Madison Square Gardens on May 26, 1931, along with 200 other radio stars. ¹¹ The Mountaineers proved so popular that in 1931 WEAF renewed the Fields & Hall contract for $175,000. ¹²

Unlike Hay’s Grand Ol' Opry, which employed authentic rural performers, and Rice’s Beverly Hillbillies, which made some attempt to honor the musical traditions they were scavenging so successfully, Fields and Hall often lampooned those traditions. They pandered to their audience with the most blatant comic stereotypes, tempered with a strong dose of maudlin sentimentality. For their film short, band members donned overalls and tattered work clothes, and Fields wore a false beard. They perched on barrels, swigged moonshine, brandished guns, and generally anticipated the worst excesses of “Lil’l Abner” by more than a decade. It was an act very much aimed at middle-class Northern urbanites, allowing them a laugh at the expense of rural folk, much as Len Spencer and Steve Porter had done with their popular “rube” routines three decaders earlier.

By 1933, Cole had replaced the Fields and Hall group with new personnel that included Jerry Bisceglia, a.k.a. Tex Fletcher. The revamped Mountaineers made no recordings under Cole's name, and their last documented network broadcast was made during the week of March 18, 1934. ¹³ They seem to have continued working for about another year, playing small-time vaudeville and movie houses. One of their last appearances was as a warm-up act before the showing of Clark Gable’s “After Office Hours” at Loew’s Paradise Concourse, a Bronx movie theater. ¹⁴

Few country music fans today even know of Rex Cole’s Mountaineers, and even fewer mourn its passing, but it is a group worth remembering as symptomatic of a turbulent transitional period in country music and in the recording industry.

NOTES

1  Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, p. 78. University of Chicago Press (1997).

2  Many sources have erroneously attributed these records to Arthur Fields. Macy’s identity, and those of his accompanists, are confirmed in the Edison studio cash books (Edison National Historic Site, Orange, NJ).

3  Columbia recording files (5/9/1929). BMG-Sony Archives, New York.

4  Okeh recording files (1/11/1930). BMG-Sony Archives, New York.Hall’s remaining Okeh issues would be pseudonymous hillbilly releases, leased from Columbia.

5  Brunswick-Balke-Collender recording files (1/16/1931); in Laird, Brunswick Records, Vol. 2. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (2001).

6  See, for example, Russell, Country Music Records: A Discography (1921–1942), pp. 341–345. New York: Oxford University Press (2004).

7  Columbia recording files (1/9/1930). BMG-Sony Archives, New York.

8  Thomas, Billie W., and Allan Sutton. The Plaza-ARC Discography, Vol. 1, p. 371. Denver: Mainspring Press (2006).

9  WEAF ad for Rex Cole’s Mountaineers. New York Times (7/23/1930), p. 24. It is suspected that the group made some earlier broadcasts, but documentation remains to be located.

10  “Radio Programs Scheduled for this Week.” New York Times (miscellaneous issues, from 8/24/1930).

11   Don’t Miss This Show” (advertisement). New York Times (5/26/1931), p. 36

12  “Art Fields and Fred Hall Re-sign with Rex Cole for Another Year.” Metronome (March 1931), p. 24.

13  “This Weeks’ Radio Programming.” New York Times (3/18/1934), p. X10

14  Loew’s Paradise Concourse advertisement. New York Times (3/26/1936).