08/09/2026
Regional Old-Time Music in Virginia!!!!
A father and leatherworker from the hills of southwest Virginia, James Cowan Powers won regional fame during his early life as a contest fiddler. His fiddling style, inherited from his family, was built around double stops and remarkable bow dexterity. Upon the death of his wife, Mathilda, in 1916, he decided to take his family of four children on the road and form a string band. (The family included Charles, Ada, Oprha, and Carrie, and all were teenagers or younger when they started performing.) The band was soon playing professionally full-time, making a regular five-state circuit through Appalachia and doing especially well in coal towns of Kentucky and West Virginia. They were one of the first, maybe the first, to turn professional.
In August 1924 they travelled to Camden, New Jersey to make a series of recordings for the Victor Company--the first commercial recordings of a regular mountain string band that had been performing together outside of a studio. The records were commercially successful and were widely used in Victor's early advertising for old-time music. Later the group made recordings for Edison and Okeh Records, but as the family grew and began their own lives, Powers returned to performing as a fiddle soloist. He was still alive and actively playing for the Stanley Brothers when he died onstage at a concert in Saltville, Virginia in the early 1950s. (The Encyclopedia of Country Music, 2004)
The track featured here, "Ida Red," is a classic southwest Virginia fiddle tune. This tune was one of eleven recorded on the second day of recording in New York City on August 19, 1924.
Click here to listen "Ida Red" :
https://archivesofappalachia.omeka.net/exhibits/show/regional-fiddling-styles/virginia
More about Regional Old-Time Music of the Timothy F. Woodbridge 78 rpm Record Collection:
https://archivesofappalachia.omeka.net/exhibits/show/regional-fiddling-styles
