Stanley Hicks

Stanley Hicks: was living on Stone Mountain in Ashe County, close to Beech Mountain.  A singer, story-teller and instrument maker (banjo and dulcimer), Stanley was a delight to be with.  He had a side-line selling arrow-heads, which he found scattered around the mountain sides.  One afternoon Stanley took me to Watauga Lake on a ‘flint hunt’.  There were some large slabs of rock at the side of the water where the Native Americans had once sat making stone tools.  We found a number of scrapers and arrow-heads and had a wonderful time together.  I recorded Stanley playing both the dulcimer and the banjo.  He had to borrow a banjo from a neighbour for our recording sessions, having just sold his own and not having yet built another.  The dulcimer had once belonged to his father and held special memories.  In her book American Banjo Echoes in Appalachia (1995), Cecelia Conway gives the following quote from Stanley:

My daddy’s gone on; my grandpaw’s gone on; my great-grandpaw’s gone on.  But they still live - you know, the spirit’s still here.  Your folks can die and go on, but they’re still here.  I don’t know whether you ever thought about it like that or not, but I can show you.  Here is my Daddy’s dulcimer.  That’s his dulcimer he built years ago; it still lives, it’s still here.  You see, hit’s still here, it’s not gone.  And same way by myself - when I’m gone, there’s some of my stuff that the young ‘uns ... you know, it still lives.

And, of course, Stanley still lives, through his recordings.

Part of the booklet notes, written by Mike Yates, to the Musical Traditions Records CDs Far in the Mountains (MTCD321-4)