Dock Boggs in Thomas Jefferson's Virginia

Abstract

DOCK BOGGS WAS A SINGER AND BANJO PLAYER who sounded as if his bones were coming through his skin every time he opened his mouth; that was the sound that drew people to him. If you can imagine him on his own ground, in the coal towns of western Virginia and eastern Kentucky, in the 1920s, you might picture him walking alone, staring straight ahead, stone-faced, like a man ashamed to admit he ended up in the wrong place because his money didn't run out before the whiskey did. Or you might find him playing on a corner, people around him, dollars in his hand, a glint in his eye that says-what? That, this day, the time is right to go all the way into the songs he's sung so many times, songs that, somehow, he's less sung than listened to, less loved than feared? Or that what the people who are giving him money are purchasing is a treasure, a memory he will be permitted to keep long after they have forgotten they paid for it?