Bill Yates — June 18, 2005

Taped/interviewed at Bean Blossom.  At Frank Neat’s RV, outside, at dinnertime, with Frank, his wife, and also banjo player R.C. Harris, formerly with various groups including Bill Monroe and also Curtis Blackwell and the Dixie Bluegrass Boys, who played the BB festival early on.

BY= Bill Yates

TA= Tom Adler

FN = Frank Neat

RCH= R.C. Harris

[TA asks about rural country music parks]

BY:  Well, we had Oak Leaf Park in Luray, we had Old Dominion Park in Manassas, we had American Legion Park in Culpepper, we had Lake Whippoorwill Park in Warrenton.   That was mostly around [Washington] D.C.

BY:  Old Dominion – started having music there about 1959.   They just ran on summertime weekends.  Eddie Matherly, that used to be on WKCW in Warrenton, he’d find these bands that was coming through the area, and he’d book ‘em for one of the days, you know.   They had Bill Carlisle there, and people like that, and had Johnny Cash one time, I think, and Waylon Jennings.  But mostly it was, uh, like Jimmy Martin’d come through, and Don Reno and Red Smiley. 

TA:  How big?  And Is that still going?

BY:  Old Dominion is now a racetrack, but they don’t have music there any more.  The music quit probably somewhere in the mid-sixties.  Old Dominion Park was maybe as big as this wooded section [i.e., the northernmost wooded area in the park at Bean Blossom – perhaps 8 to 12 acres?]   And they’d have a stage and,--   Didn’t have any trees, then.  The trees were on the hill in the back.  But people had the benches, the regular hard benches, to sit on.

BY:  And Shipp’s Park, now that’s another one.  Shipp’s Park, down on Route 17, between Fredericksburg and Warrenton.  They’d have Mac Wiseman, and of course they had the Yates Brothers there, and Bill Harrell, and-- Most of those little parks, they couldn’t afford to have the real, real big ones, you know, but sometimes they’d gamble and do that.  But mostly little local bluegrass bands would come in, you know, and then they’d have a big act—The biggest of them then would be Jimmy Martin, or, like I said, Don Reno, or Mac Wiseman or somebody would come through.

BY:   I know at Old Dominion Park--   Well, we had a club down in Fairfax, Virginia, called the Bluegrass Parlor.  We had bluegrass there, three nights, or four nights a week.  And then Sunday we would go up [to Old Dominion Park].  Eddie Matherly, the  WKCW deejay, he took a liking to and Wayne and I, my brother.   And he told the guy at the club, he said, “You know, you let ‘em play bluegrass in here and I’ll give you free advertising on the radio.”   So that didn’t hurt him, then he’d book an act like Monroe or Jimmy Martin in Old Dominion Park.   We’d go up, the Yates Brothers, and do a show, we’d be the opening act.  So when we finished, we’d always tell the people that was at the show, that we were goin’ to the Fairfax Food Shop -- it’d be on a Sunday evening -- and that Jimmy Martin was going there with us.  So we’d take Jimmy down there and give him a free meal.  And he’d come down there.  And they’d be standing as far as from here to that woods over there, tryin’ to get in that place.  And they would eat, and then say, “Jimmy, why don’t you get up and do one?”  So they’d get up and do a half-hour show!  Because they liked us you know.  But mostly it was pick-up groups for shows coming through.

[BY notes that Bill played the first BG festival for $400.  At Cantrell’s Farm, near Fincastle, VA. 

TA: [Marketing of albums at the parks?]

BY: When I was with Jimmy Martin, he would give you so many records of different kinds of records, you know, and he’d put em in these boxes.  And this box was yours, and this box was yours, and you’d go through the audience.  “Jimmy Martin records . . . Jimmy Martin records! . . .  Widowmaker!   This World Is Not My Home!”  and go in and out those benches, down there hollerin’, selling albums.  We didn’t set at a table.  Jimmy said if you take it to ‘em, they’ll buy it.  He said, you hand it to ‘em, say it’s a Jimmy Martin record, they’d buy it.  They won’t get up and walk to the table a lot of times.  And I used to sell—I’d sell $500 dollars worth, get in the bus and start back home, I’d give him the money, he said “Boys, I’ll tell you --