| (The
following is an obituary published by Bluegrass Today. A link to
the original article is provided. The article is copied here for
posterity.) Bluegrass Today Bill Hicks Passes Posted on November 19, 2018 by Richard Thompson William N ‘Bill’ Hicks, a founding member of the Red
Clay Ramblers, passed away on Sunday, November
11, 2018. He was 75 years of age. In the early part of this year he
was diagnosed with a chronic condition that attacked his connective tissue and
his internal organs, and had been in and out of various hospitals for the
remaining months of his life. He had most recently been diagnosed with
aspiration pneumonia and sepsis. Hicks was the fiddler for Durham’s
seminal Fuzzy Mountain String Band and a co-founder, with two veterans from the
Hollow Rock String Band – Tommy Thompson (banjo) and Jim Watson (guitar) – of
the internationally acclaimed Red Clay Ramblers. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on
January 20, 1943, he was the son of a university professor and became
interested in fiddling in the late 1960s, at the same time that the old-time
music community was developing in the Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina, area.
This included the Hollow Rock String
Band, led by Alan Jabbour. Inspired by Jabbour’s work, Hicks started
visiting old fiddlers and banjo players like Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham, and
the Hammons family of West Virginia, learning their tunes and, in turn, being
influenced by their playing styles. As an outgrowth to Hollow Rock String
Band get togethers to learn tunes that Jabbour had collected, there were
several informal Friday night gatherings at Tommy and Bobbie Thompson’s house
that led to Hicks meeting Tommy Thompson and then, in 1968, meeting Jim Watson.
These music parties continued for
several years and the fall of 1972 Hicks, Watson, and Thompson formed The Red
Clay Ramblers, with their first gigs at the Endangered Species and the Cat’s
Cradle, both in Chapel Hill.
During the following year, after
pianist Mike Craver had joined the band, The Red Clay Ramblers went on tour for
the first time, playing dates at Columbia University (New York City), Café
Lena, Saratoga, in upstate New York, and to the Kent State Folk Festival, Kent,
Ohio. Also, they were secretly recorded at the Galax Fiddlers Convention
and appear on a bootleg record along with other musicians, released on the
Tennvale label (Galax 73, TV-002). In 1974 the Ramblers started
performing in a theatre production, Diamond Studs, The Life of Jesse James
(a collaboration with the Southern States Fidelity Choir among others),
starting at the Ranch House in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Subsequently, they
took the show to New York, where it ran at the West Side Theater in Manhattan
from New Year’s Eve 1974 until the end of July of the following year. In addition to their appearances in Diamond
Studs, in the October 1974, their first LP The Red Clay Ramblers with
Fiddlin’ Al McCanless was released by Folkways Records. Watson takes up the story .. “We became full-time musicians in
1974 when we went to New York to perform in the show Diamond Studs.” During the six years from 1975 The
Red Clay Ramblers built on their highly-acclaimed eight-month off-Broadway run
with Diamond Studs, making a short side-trip with the production to the
ArtPark amphitheater, Niagara Falls, New York, and a tour from Florida to
Boston; they played the first Eno Festival in Durham, North Carolina; are the
first band ever at the legendary Down Home Pickin’ Parlor in Johnson City,
Tennessee; and they performed at the Carter Family Store in Hiltons, Virginia,
for the first time, meeting the Carter Family’s Sara Carter. They made their first overseas tour,
with personal appearances from Scotland to Switzerland, and from Sweden to
Romania; then toured with Ralph Stanley on the US West Coast and in Canada;
they made their first appearance on A Prairie Home Companion, when it
was just a local Minnesota Public Radio show, broadcasting from the Minneapolis
Sculpture Garden, an 11-acre park in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Ramblers performed at the 1978
Winnipeg Folk Festival; then returned to Europe, making some eight Channel
crossings in two weeks, playing at the Nyon Festival (Switzerland), the
Cambridge Folk Festival (England), and the at the Fête des Leus
Frasnes-lez-Couvin, Belgium (with Tom Paxton); the band also appeared at
festivals in Vancouver (British Columbia) and at Wheatland (Remus,
Michigan). In 1979 the Red Clay Ramblers toured
Belgium and France with Steve Goodman and Tom Paxton. During that era the group released
the LPs Stolen Love, Twisted Laurel and Merchant’s Lunch;
and recorded Chuckin’ the Frizz – live at the Cat’s Cradle nightclub in
Chapel Hill – and the tracks for Debby McClatchy with the Red Clay Ramblers. After a three-month transition
period with Clay Buckner doubling on fiddle, Hicks left the band at the
beginning of 1981. Hicks contributed a few songs to the
Ramblers’ repertoire; The Hobo’s Last Letter – on the LP Twisted
Laurel; Play “Rocky Top” – Chuckin’ the Frizz; the 2nd verse
of Cabin Home – Chuckin’ the Frizz, and Three Bells Road,
another tune from the Chuckin’ the Frizz LP. Songwriter Joe Newberry fondly
recalls the story behind one of those songs ….. “Hicks always laughed about writing Hobo’s
Last Letter while working as an editor at Duke Press. He would say that it
was the perfect place to do it, since, as he would put it, writing a song and
editing a book look exactly the same from across the room. The chorus to ‘Hobo’ is full of love
and hope….. ‘I’ll be home in the morning when
the sun is coming up. And the rooster’s singing ‘wake up’ to a thousand
buttercups. There’ll be pigs in the pen, and turkeys in the woods. I’ll be home
in the morning, dear, for good.’ I am so glad we got to perform this
on Prairie Home Companion just three short years ago this month.” Watson shared these thoughts about
Hicks’ spell with the Red Clay Ramblers …. “The constant touring eventually led
him to leave the band and concentrate on being a stone mason, and by all
accounts a good one. He was the fiddler during what I
believe was the most creative time for the Ramblers – 1975-1980 – when we
released three albums and toured seemingly incessantly around the country and
also Europe. His style was not only rooted in tradition but also
adventurous, which fit the style of the Ramblers to a T, and his energy was
contagious.” After leaving the Red Clay Ramblers
Hicks began working as a stone mason in Chatham County, North Carolina, and
playing music with his wife, Libby. However, it wasn’t long before
Watson linked-up with Hicks once more … “I started playing music again with
him in the late 1980s in the Next Zenith String Band, which included his wife
Libby on guitar and Tom Holt on banjo.”
About 1997 or so, after a long dry
spell, Bill Hicks re-discovered his song-writing skills so much so that he felt
he “needed to make this CD just to make it known that I am a songwriter and
singer as well as an instrumentalist.” The result, a solo album – The
Perfect Gig – was recorded live at the Cave, a Chapel Hill “dive,” features
Hicks’ talents as a guitarist (electric and acoustic) and no less than 17 of
his songs. Bill and Libby Hicks spent time
living on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, where for six years (1996 -2001)
they played in the Cajun-Zydeco band Unknown Tongues, in addition to doing duet
shows and dances. In 2001 the duo released an album, South
of Nowhere. Among the 14 tracks there are four songs penned by Bill
Hicks. As well as their many personal
appearances, the couple occasionally taught at the Augusta Heritage Workshops,
and — in the summer of 2004 — at Allegheny Echoes in Marlinton, West Virginia. In the early 2000s Bill Hicks got
together with Mike Craver, Jim Watson and Joe Newberry in a band that soon
became known as Craver, Hicks, Watson & Newberry or, unofficially, the Law Firm. In 2012 the quartet released a CD, You’ve
Been a Friend to Me, an album that includes a Hicks original, Uncle
Charlie’s Revenge, also found on the South of Nowhere album.
According to Jack Bernhardt, writing for the Raleigh News & Observer,
the CD “gloriously revives the spirit and sound of the Ramblers’ early years.” Watson shares this observation about
Craver, Hicks, Watson & Newberry, commenting, in particular, on what Bill
Hicks was doing in recent years ….. “We did music from the old Ramblers
along with a variety of stuff from our usual sources and also newer original
material, and he had lost none of the power and inventiveness that he had
played with in the old days.” Hicks was also a contributing editor
for the Old Time Herald. R.I.P., Bill Hicks Newberry remembers the impact that
Hicks and the Red Clay Ramblers had on him… “Bill and the Red Clay Ramblers were
such influences on my playing as a young man. I never dreamed I would meet them
– they were just people who lived on records. My first night in North Carolina,
I went to a party and remember thinking that the fiddler played just like Bill
Hicks. Of course, it was Bill Hicks, and I sat in rapt attention the rest of
the night. As Craver, Hicks, Watson &
Newberry, we had lots of adventures over the years, including shows around the
country and overseas ……….. My condolences to his wife Libby, daughter
Anna, and a whole world of friends that he left behind.” A Discography Solo –
Bill and Libby Hicks –
Fuzzy Mountain String Band –
Red Clay Ramblers –
Craver, Hicks, Watson & Newberry
–
With others –
Our thanks are due to Jim Watson for his invaluable assistance in the writing of this obituary. |
