Robert "Bud" Garrett
A country blues musician from Free Hill, TN who was also known as a marble maker for the regional game “Rolley Hole.”
History[edit | edit source]
The Tennessee Encyclopedia entry written by Elizabeth Peterson states:
Bud Garrett, traditional blues musician and marble maker, was born January 28, 1916, to John Tom Garrett and Adeline Hamilton Garrett in Free Hill, a small African American settlement in Clay County established by freed slaves prior to the Civil War. Garrett learned to play the guitar as a young man and accompanied older men in the community at local square dances. In later years Garrett performed as a solo artist on acoustic or electric guitar, and his repertoire included a mixture of traditional and popular song styles rooted in blues, country, minstrel shows and vaudeville, big band, and western swing, as well as original compositions. In 1962 Garrett recorded two original blues compositions–“I Done Quit Drinking” and “Do Remember Me”–which were released on the Excello label.
From the late 1970s until his death, Garrett received broader attention throughout the South on music tours and at festivals, performing his music and demonstrating flint marble-making (marbles made for playing “rolley hole,” a regional marble game played in the Upper Cumberland River Valley) on his machine constructed from an assemblage of spare auto parts. Among other venues, he performed at the 1982 World's Fair, the Smithsonian Institute's 1985 Festival of American Folklife, and the annual Tennessee Grassroots Days in Nashville. In addition to commercial releases, selections of his music appear on recordings of the Tennessee Folklore Society, and several interviews are housed in the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Garrett died November 24, 1987, in Free Hill, while playing marbles.[1]
The Tennessee State Library and Archives Blog notes:
Garrett spent most of his life in Free Hill, an African-American community located northeast of Celina near the Tennessee-Kentucky border. The community was established prior to the Civil War (about 1816) by the freed slaves of Virginia Hill, a wealthy slaveholder from North Carolina. She purchased 2,000 acres of land in what was then Overton County, then freed her slaves and gave the property to them.
People in the Free Hill community and the surrounding areas have been playing rolley hole since before the Civil War. Rolley hole is a marble game in which teams of two players each face off against one another. The game is played on a “yard” that is 40 feet by 20 feet and has three marble-size holes positioned equal distances apart. The object of the game is for both people on each team to put their marbles in each hole, going up and down the course three times, while the opposing team tries to knock the other team’s marbles away from the holes. The game is played with flint marbles as opposed to marbles made of glass or metal. Glass marbles are too delicate and would shatter during play, while metal marbles are too heavy.
Garrett learned to make the flint marbles for rolley hole from his father, a tobacco farmer who took a piece of flint with him to work the field every day. He would file away at the flint each day until it became round. He would then place the marble in a “rounded out form made of sandstone and put it in a creek.” There, the water would turn the marble until it was nice and smooth. The whole process was very time consuming and could take as long as two or three years. There was also a chance of “losing your marbles” if there was a flood or bad weather that would wash the marble out of the sandstone form and away down the creek.
After seeing the tedious process his father followed to create marbles, Garrett invented a “marble machine” in the late 1940s. The machine was powered by an electric motor and could create perfectly round marbles in a matter of minutes. Garrett’s marbles became highly sought after by rolley hole players because of their durability. In fact, every marble Garrett made came with a lifetime guarantee. If one of Garrett's marbles shattered, the owner just had to send the pieces to Garrett and he would send a replacement.
In addition to his marble-making skills, Garrett also inherited a love of music from his father, who was a fiddle player. According to “Remembering ‘Bud’ Garrett” (an article by Tom Rankin in the January/February 1988 edition of “Southern Changes”), Garrett recalled “Blind Lemon Jefferson’s ‘Black Snake Moan’ and the common fiddle tune ‘Boil That Cabbage Down’ as two of the first songs he heard as a child.” Garrett sang and played both acoustic and electric guitars. He loved the blues and would often play old time tunes such as “Old Joe Cark” in a blues/ragtime style. Garrett was featured on a number of records over the years but his record produced by the Nashville-based Excello label is perhaps best remembered. The record, cut in the mid-1950s, featured “Quit My Drinkin’” on the A-side with “Do Remember” on the flip side.
Garrett died Nov. 24, 1987, “while playing marbles in the Bud Garrett Marble Yard” at his home in Free Hill. An obituary mentioned that he was “one of 90 Tennessee folk artists to represent the state at the 1986 Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C., where he performed blues, told stories, and crafted flint marbles as part of the presentation of the unusual Rolley Hole marble game.” Garrett’s wife Edith, a renowned quilter, was also one of the folk artists representing Tennessee at the festival.[2]
His daughter maintains a tribute page on Facebook that honors his legacy and regularly updates new findings of his long impact on the Upper Cumberland region.
The Tennessee Arts Commission also maintains a collection of Robert Garret marbles, saying""Rolley-hole, a marbles game involving teams, is regionally played in the Upper Cumberland River Valley. Garrett was a popularizer of the game and in the 1940’s he invented a marble-making machine. His marbles, while not always completely smooth, were prized for their beauty and durability. Garrett built a rolley-hole yard in Celina, TN. This is a selection of marbles for Garrett’s personal use and marbles of this design are commonly referred to as “flint” by the maker and players. Garrett was also known for his county blues singing and playing."[3]
Folklorist Tom Rankin remembers Bud Garrett:
Music was a very large part of Bud Garrett’s life. The son of a fiddle player, Garrett began playing guitar as a young boy. He recalls Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” and the common fiddle tune “Boil That Cabbage Down” as two of the first songs he heard as a child. Both songs are emblematic of his musical influences: he absorbed as much from the fiddle and banjo tunes and minstrel songs played at square dances for blacks and whites in the area as he did from the blues he heard in juke joints and on the radio. He performed solo most of his life, usually at parties or at the cafe he once owned in Free Hill. In the mid-fifties he cut a 45-rpm record for the Excello record label in Nashville (“Quit My Drinking” b/w “Do Remember”).
Garrett came to favor many post-war blues standards by bluesmen such as T-Bone Walker and Little Milton, and white country standards by Merle Haggard and Don Williams, which he often reworked into a slow twelve or sixteen bar blues. His “I Got a Little Place in Free Hill,” an original talking blues improvisation about his homeplace and life in Free Hill, appears on the Tennessee Folklore Society LP, Free Hill: A Sound Portrait of a Rural Afro-American Community (available from the Tennessee Folklore Society, Box 201 Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37212). Garrett performed at such festivals as the Grassroots Festival in Nashville, the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, the Brandywine Festival in Delaware, and the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C.
Bud Garrett will be missed.[4]
Releases[edit | edit source]
1962: "Quit My Drinkin' " b/w "Do Remember" (7" 45) on Excello, cat# 45-2216
External References[edit | edit source]
https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/robert-garrett/
https://tslablog.blogspot.com/2017/02/music-and-marbles-life-of-bud-garrett.html
https://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15138coll42/id/240/
https://tnartscommission.org/permanentcollection/robert-bud-garrett/
https://southernchanges.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/sc10-1_001/sc10-1_005/
https://claycountycourthousetn.com/bud-garrett-musician/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z31zaG26FF4 TN Folklore Society performance by Bud Garrett.
https://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Bud-Garrett/100063601951502/
https://www.appalachiabare.com/freeing-free-hills/ The story of Free Hill, TN
For more information on Bud and Edith Garrett, take a look at the Tennessee Arts Commission Folk Arts Program Records:
http://sos.tn.gov/products/tsla/tennessee-arts-commission-folk-arts-program-records-1899-2014
And, the Tennessee State Parks Folklife Project Records at the Library & Archives:
http://sos.tn.gov/products/tsla/tennessee-state-parks-folklife-project-records-1979-1984