Hobo Jack Adkins

Hobo Jack Adkins was given his stage name by a radio station manager during an era when radio was closely involved with newly developing strains of old-time, country, and bluegrass music. It places him in the unique category of players whose names connote a rambling lifestyle -- Ramblin' Jack Elliot would be the most famous example -- as if all musicians weren't already partially hobos because of the wandering demands of the occupation. An orphan, Adkins grew up during the worst years of the Depression and claims to have never known any family besides a mother who died when he was 16, and a father who had apparently been poisoned when Adkins was just a baby. It was a haunting memory that he claims to have visualized while performing country & western masterpieces decades later. He went on to record some of the most beautiful examples of early bluegrass music in the company of most of the membership of the legendary Lonesome Pine Fiddlers: stellar old-time players such as mandolinist and vocalist Red Ratliff, banjoist Ray Goins, and fiddler Ray Cline. Adkins always had one foot solidly in country music despite the enormous influence of traditional Appalachian string music, and made historic early use of electric guitar on tracks such as "You Have Let Me Memories," originally cut for the Lucky label in the mid-'40s. The memories Adkins did have were certainly ones of deprivation: his toys were rocks which he pretended were cars, the family stowed apples in the cellar in order to have something special for Christmas, and "a candy bar was really somethin' back then!" A cousin that played guitar got him into music at around the age of 12, also coinciding with the beginning of his days of hitchhiking and roaming. Around 17, he actually acquired a guitar of own, after a bit...