The Sweet Voice Continues — Doug & Jack Wallin
Doug Wallin inherited his father’s (Lee) charisma and Berzill’s way with a song. He had the sweetest tenor voice and interspersed every song with a story.
–Interview with Joe Penland, July 2010
The musical legacy first noted in the early 1900s when Cecil Sharp visited this rich area continued through the Wallin family line to two of Lee and Berzilla’s sons, Doug and Jack.
Doug Wallin (1919-2000) played the fiddle; however, he preferred singing the ballads without instrumental accompaniment.
Doug Wallin Photo copyright Rob Amberg 2010
He sang those time-honored ballads, hymns, and love songs in the style and tradition of his ancestors. Doug was recognized in the community as one of the best-known unaccompanied singers of Southern Appalachian tunes because of his style. His singing was quietly refined, usually filled with with subtlety, precision, and a quiet passion. Doug Wallin was honored with a National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1990 and a North Carolina Heritage Award for his loving preservation of traditional music.
CD Cover Photo copyright Rob Amberg 2010
Jack (1932-2005) played the banjo, fiddle and guitar. He preferred instrumental music and always accompanied himself unlike his brother. Jack began performing in public at the age of twelve or thirteen with a gospel shape-note quartet. Both of them appeared frequently in festivals throughout the 1950s.
Doug was featured on an album produced by John Cohen in the 1960s: Old Love Songs and Ballads (album liner notes) which was released in 1963. Their music together was not readily accessible until the 1995 Smithsonian-Folkways’ Family Songs and Stories from the North Carolina Mountains (album liner notes), a CD of field recordings which features Doug’s brother Jack on three tracks.
