Charlie Bowman

Charles Thomas Bowman (July 30, 1889 – May 20, 1962) was an American old-time fiddle player and string band leader. He was a major influence on the distinctive fiddle sound that helped shape and develop early Country music in the 1920s and 1930s. After delivering a series of performances that won him the first prize in dozens of fiddle contests across Southern Appalachia in the early 1920s, Bowman toured and recorded with several string bands and vaudeville acts before forming his own band, the Blue Ridge Music Makers, in 1935. In his career, he would be associated with country and bluegrass pioneers such as Uncle Dave Macon, Fiddlin' John Carson, Roy Acuff, Charlie Poole, and Bill Monroe.

Early life Bowman was born July 30, 1889, in Gray Station, Tennessee, a small community approximately north of Johnson City. He first learned to play banjo at the age of 12, and purchased his first fiddle for $4.50 shortly thereafter. According to family tradition, Bowman actually made his first recording on a neighbor's Edison cylinder phonograph in 1908. In his teen years, he and his brothers (who had each learned a different instrument) collected pocket change by playing at square dances and other local events around Washington County. Congressman B. Carroll Reece was one of several politicians to hire the Bowmans to play at political rallies in the early 1920s, and Reece remained a lifelong friend of the Bowman family.

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.

Discography Rural String Bands of Tennessee (County, 1997)— contains "Moonshiner and His Money" and "Forked Deer", recorded by Charlie Bowman and His Brothers The Hill Billies, Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters, Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order three volumes, (Document DOCD-8039, 8040, 8041, 1999