Tommy Jarrell (1901 to 1985) was the fiddler and banjo player at the center of the Round Peak sound of Surry County, North Carolina. He ran a road grader for the state highway department for decades and played for dances on the side. After he retired in 1966, his home in Mount Airy became a school for old-time musicians from across the country. He received one of the first NEA National Heritage Fellowships in 1982.
Why Jarrell matters
Old-time fiddling as most people play it today runs through Jarrell’s front room. He kept a repertoire and a bowing style that took shape before 1925, and he handed both to hundreds of visitors, one tune at a time. His records on County set the standard for what Round Peak fiddle and clawhammer banjo sound like. If a jam breaks into Breaking Up Christmas or John Brown’s Dream, the version in the room came from him or from someone he taught.
Life and career
Thomas Jefferson Jarrell was born on March 1, 1901, near Round Peak in Surry County, North Carolina, close to the Virginia line. He was the oldest of the children of Benjamin Franklin Jarrell and Susan Letisha Amburn Jarrell. His father Ben was a fiddler who recorded with DaCosta Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters. Tommy learned banjo at age eight from Boggy Cockerham and took up the fiddle at 13, learning from his father, his uncle Charlie, and neighbors. By 16 he played for dances at Round Peak.
Jarrell married Nina Lowe in 1923. He worked on farms and at a sawmill, then joined the North Carolina Highway Department, where he ran a motor grader for 30 years. He retired in 1966. Nina died in February 1967, and he began to play more.
In the late 1960s and 1970s County Records recorded him, alone and with Fred Cockerham and Oscar Jenkins. The albums included Back Home in the Blue Ridge (1969), Down to the Cider Mill (1972), Come and Go with Me: Tommy Jarrell’s Banjo Album (1974), and Sail Away Ladies (1976). Mountain Records issued June Apple, a duo record with Kyle Creed, in 1972, and Heritage Records issued Music from Round Peak in 1976. Young revivalists began to travel to his house, and going to see Tommy became a rite of passage.
The North Carolina Folklore Society gave him its Brown Hudson Folklore Award in 1981. On July 4, 1982, at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, he received an NEA National Heritage Fellowship in the program’s first year. The film Sprout Wings and Fly came out in 1983. Jarrell died of a heart attack in Mount Airy on January 28, 1985, at age 83. County released Rainbow Sign, recorded the summer before his death, in 1986.
Playing style
Jarrell’s fiddling is built on the bow. He learned his father’s moves, which he called “racking the bow” and “catching up the slack,” and his playing has a heavy, rocking rhythm with strong syncopation. He slid into notes on the fingerboard, and those slides are the ornament that marks the style. He played a fiddle and banjo repertoire, ballads, and Primitive Baptist hymns, and he sang while he fiddled.
He learned about 50 tunes, most of them from his father, and in his later years he made his own variations on them. On banjo he played a clawhammer style tied to Round Peak, and his fiddle and banjo parts lock together in a way that defines the local sound.
Influences and legacy
Jarrell learned from his father Ben Jarrell, his uncle Charlie, Boggy Cockerham, Pet McKinney, and Zack Payne. He learned Sail Away Ladies from McKinney and Billy in the Low Ground, Flatwoods, and Devil in the Strawstack from Payne. Both men were Civil War veterans.
His playing shaped his neighbors Fred Cockerham, Kyle Creed, and Sydna Myers, and younger Surry County players Earnest East, Benton Flippen, and Paul Sutphin. The Blue Ridge National Heritage Area calls his influence on younger old-time musicians profound. Old-time fiddlers with pages on this site, including Bruce Molsky and Erynn Marshall, work in a revival that grew around the players he taught. Mount Airy has held an annual Tommy Jarrell Celebration since 2002.
Signature tunes and songs
Sail Away Ladies Breaking Up Christmas John Brown’s Dream Let Me Fall Devil in the Strawstack Flatwoods Cripple Creek Arkansas Traveler.
Essential recordings
Back Home in the Blue Ridge, with Fred Cockerham and Oscar Jenkins (County, 1969) June Apple, with Kyle Creed (Mountain, 1972) Come and Go with Me: Tommy Jarrell’s Banjo Album (County, 1974) Sail Away Ladies (County, 1976) Rainbow Sign (County, 1986)
Awards and honors
Brown Hudson Folklore Award, North Carolina Folklore Society (1981) NEA National Heritage Fellowship (1982)
Watch and listen
Jarrell plays Breaking Up Christmas in 1983, filmed for the Alan Lomax collection. Watch the bow arm and listen for the slides.
Jarrell plays Cripple Creek in the same 1983 session.
What to learn from Jarrell
Learn Breaking Up Christmas from the 1983 Lomax footage or from a County record. It has two short parts, and it teaches the Round Peak groove in under a minute of music. The technique to steal is the slide. Where a bluegrass fiddler would play a clean note, Jarrell slides up into it from below. Pick one slide in the A part and copy it until it sounds like his, then add the rocking bow. Playing along with the record at his tempo, not faster, is the whole lesson.
Sources
Jarrell, Thomas Jefferson, NCpedia Tommy Jarrell, National Endowment for the Arts Tommy Jarrell, Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Tommy Jarrell, Wikipedia Tommy Jarrell, Discogs
Related players
See the fiddle players hub and the fiddle guide for more old-time fiddlers. Bruce Molsky, Erynn Marshall, and Amy Alvey carry the source-fiddler tradition forward. Clark Kessinger and Melvin Wine were elder fiddlers of the same revival era.