Charlie Bowman - String Bands and Vaudeville

String Bands and Vaudeville

At a Mountain City fiddlers' convention in May 1925, Bowman met Al Hopkins, who invited Bowman to join his band, the "Hill Billies." With Bowman on fiddle, the Hill Billies traveled to New York, where they recorded several sides for Vocalion and Brunswick and even played on Broadway. The band then relocated to Washington, D.C. where they played regularly on D.C.-area radio station WLS, and in 1928, performed at a White House social hosted by President Calvin Coolidge. Later that year, the band played in the Al Jolson motion picture, The Singing Fool. In Fall 1928, Bowman left the band and returned to Gray Station.

In October 1928, Bowman and several family members made several recordings at the Johnson City sessions, a recording audition held by Columbia Records in Johnson City. The following year, Columbia invited Bowman to New York, where he and his brother, Walter (on banjo), recorded "Forked Deer" and "Moonshiner and His Money." Around 1930, Bowman and several family members joined the vaudeville group, the "Blue Ridge Ramblers", with whom they toured the Loew's vaudeville circuit until 1935.