Born: 18 August 1916, United States
Died: 16 August 2002
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Ola Wave Campbell
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Born within listening distance of the New River in 1916, Ola Wave Campbell–later known as Ola Belle Reed–began her musical life among family in the mountains of Ashe County, North Carolina. Her grandfathers were fiddlers, her maternal grandmother a singer, and her uncle, father, and aunt all members of the New River Boys and Girls–a regional performance group. Music was central to Ola Belle’s young life, found in church, social dances, and just for the fun of playing with others.
The Campbell family moved from the mountains of North Carolina in 1932, in search of work and to evade the Great Depression. Like many others who left the poverty of Ashe County, their destination was the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. It was here that Ola Belle’s experience with music turned from a community practice into a profession.
She made her first recordings with the North Carolina Ridge Runners at the end of the 1930s and, along with her brother, Alex Campbell, founded the New River Gang in 1948. Ola Belle and Alex were regional celebrities through their radio appearances on WASA and WCOJ radio, while playing as the “back-up band” for the stars of country and bluegrass music at two country music parks: New River Ranch from 1951 to 1958 and Sunset Park from 1958 to 1979.
It was during this latter period that Ola Belle Reed began to take seriously the prospect of a solo career. She assembled a band with banjo player Burl Kilby and fiddler John Miller, occasionally joined by Alex Campbell. Her repertoire moved from the country and bluegrass songs she performed at Sunset Park to the mountain music of her youth, learned alongside family in Ashe County.
This period in Ola Belle Reed’s artistic development is documented in the first half of Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line, a new two-CD/book published by Dust-to-Digital. Over the course of ten sessions from January 1966 to June 1967, folklorist Henry Glassie–now College Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Indiana University–sat with Ola Belle to document her story during the day and to record her band at night. The collection features the first recordings of Reed’s classic, “I’ve Endured,” several of her original compositions (“You Led Me to the Wrong” and “Undone in Sorrow”), and a host of ballads, gospel songs, and mountain tunes. Glassie’s five chapters in Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line paint an early biography of Reed, contextualize her within the history of American country music, and help us understand Ola Belle’s musical mission: to express the values of loyalty, acceptance, and love. [Ed. note: Glassie donated copies of his recordings of Ola Belle Reed to the Library of Congress in 1976; they have been available for research in the Folklife Research Center ever since. The Dust-to-Digital release makes them much more widely available.]
Today, the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland is where the generation of musicians that followed Ola Belle Reed still find themselves. Her son, David Reed, and nephews, Hugh and Zane Campbell, are some of the artists featured in part two of Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line. Clifford R. Murphy, a folklorist, ethnomusicologist, and Director of Folk and Traditional Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts, demonstrates through contemporary recordings and his accompanying book chapters how these family members, and other families who left the Southern Appalachians for the promise of better work, continue the musical traditions of the Southern Mountains in the tri-state area. The work also highlights how this community uses music to connect with, understand, and interpret their families’ home of the Southern Appalachian Mountains.
Ola Belle Reed’s influence permeates both traditional and, increasingly, popular music in the United States. Her songs have appeared on albums by Marty Stuart, Tim O’Brien, and Del McCoury, and have inspired contemporary performers such as the Avett Brothers and Abigail Washburn. Her contributions were recognized in 1986, when she was awarded the National Heritage Fellowship–the nation’s highest honor for traditional artists–by the National Endowment for the Arts. A stroke fell upon Ola Belle in 1987, silencing her until August 16, 2002: the day of her passing.