Frank Proffitt

This great North Carolina old-time music artist and clawhammer banjo specialist was the source of the folk chestnut "Tom Dooley" as well as some 50 other traditional songs and banjo numbers. Listeners who cringe at the mention of "Tom Dooley" might want to toss their Kingston Trio discs on the fire and check out the Frank Proffitt version, known as "Tom Dula" in an attempt to spellcheck the evocative accent of the Northwest Carolinian. This artist is clearly in another universe than the ultra-clean folky scene of the '60s revival groups; anyone who has heard Proffitt sing about maggots "like a bowlful of rice moving," crawling through the skull of the "Missing Bride" will nod their heads in shocked, and perhaps slightly disgusted, agreement. Few fans of traditional music would be disgusted by the fact that the Kingston Trio and the big labels behind the group lost an expensive lawsuit because Proffitt's family had established a claim to the Dooley/Dula song copyright. Assuming it was "just" a traditional number, various music business birds -- some vultures, some perhaps well-meaning little sparrows -- claimed authorship for this ditty prior to the final legal reckoning, or "reck'nung" as Proffitt would have put it. This includes several giant record labels, several obscure European arrangers who included the song in Muzak collections, and the not-so-obscure musicologist Alan Lomax, who didn't confine his collections to the limited traditional folk music market. Even though Lomax never came within a mile of having anything to do with writing this song, it appears credited to him on piles of greatest-hits compilations. Speaking of which, good old Frank Proffitt would have felt like he had conquered the music world just to judge by the territory this song has nabbed. It...