Growing
up in Smith County
 DeFord
Bailey was born on December 14, 1899 in Smith County, Tennessee,
about forty miles east of downtown Nashville. DeFord's mother, Mary
Reedy, named him after two of her former schoolteachers, Mr. DeBerry
and Mrs. Ford. When he was a little over a year old, his mother
died of an unknown illness. DeFord's father, John Henry, had a younger
sister named Barbara Lou who helped care for DeFord. Gradually,
she took over complete care of DeFord and became his foster mother.
Barbara Lou gave DeFord his first harmonica (or mouth harp).
| "My folks didn't give me no rattler, they gave me
a harp, and I ain't been without one since." |
At
the age of three, DeFord contracted infantile paralysis (polio).
At the time, the disease was almost always fatal. He was confined
to bed for a year and was only able to move his head and his arms.
It was at this time that he started to develop his playing style.
He would lie in bed and listen to the sounds of dogs howling, of
wild geese flying overhead, of the wind blowing through cracks in
the wall, and most importantly, of trains rumbling in the distance.
Eventually he recovered, although the disease severely stunted his
growth and left him with a slight hunchback.
 Music
continued to be a large part of DeFord's upbringing in Smith County.
Most members of his family played instruments and his grandfather,
Lewis Bailey, was a champion fiddler. The tunes they played were
part of a rich tradition of string band music, a style DeFord called
black hillbilly music.
[My
family] "could all sing and dance. Everyone could play
at least one instrument."
Moving
to Nashville
In
1918, DeFord's biological father died and DeFord left rural middle
Tennessee and joined Barbara Lou and his foster father, Clark Odum,
in Nashville. His foster parents were working for Mr. and Mrs. J.C.
Bradford, one of Nashville's prominent families, and Clark arranged
for DeFord to become a houseboy. At first, DeFord's work included
running errands, helping set the table, and cleaning and polishing
silver, but when Mrs. Bradford learned of DeFord's musical talent,
his role changed.
| "One day I was in the yard and she heard me playing.
She said, 'I didn't know you could play like that. How long
have you been playing?' I told her, 'all my life,' From then
on she had me stand in the corner of the room and play my
harp for her company. I'd wear a white coat, black leather
tie, and white hat. I'd have a good shoeshine. That all suits
me. That's my make-up. I never did no more good work. My
work was playing the harp." |
In
1923, DeFord's foster mother, Barbara Lou, died. The entire family
was devastated, especially DeFord. With her death, the family began
to drift apart. DeFord's foster father moved to Detroit, where thousands
of other southerners, black and white, were going to make their
way in the new Henry Ford automobile industry, while DeFord stayed
in Nashville and worked a number of odd jobs for several years.
During
one of DeFord's jobs as an elevator operator in the Hitchcock building
in downtown Nashville, a secretary from the National Life and Accident
Insurance Company heard him play the harmonica. She hired him to
entertain at a formal dinner at the company's new building. He thought
little of it at the time, but later when he looked back, he realized
that it was an odd foreshadowing of things to come. >>
Source for the material
in this section, including excerpts:
David C. Morton with Charles K. Wolfe, DeFord Bailey: A Black Star
in Early Country Music (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991)
EARLY YEARS | OPRY
YEARS | POST-OPRY YEARS
|
