Something Got Hold of Me · I Believe in the Old Time Way

Charlie Moore and Bill Napier made their records as a duo from 1960 to 1967, nearly all of them for King in Cincinnati. Both were born in 1935. Moore, from Piedmont, South Carolina, had already recorded with his Dixie Partners at radio-station sessions in Greenville and Anderson, South Carolina, which Starday issued in 1958 and 1959. Napier had been playing mandolin for the Stanley Brothers since November 1957, including their King sessions in Cincinnati in the fall of 1958 and September 1959. The pair’s first single, “Big Daddy of the Blues” / “Story of Love” (American 101, 1960), was recorded in June 1960 at Wayne Raney’s studio in Oxford, Ohio, with Ansel Guthrie on mandolin and Dan Padgett on banjo.

King’s association with them began with a session leased to the label, recorded on 28 December 1962. It filled the album Folk ’n’ Hill, with Moore on guitar and lead vocal and Napier on guitar and tenor, and it produced their first singles: “(Metracal – Same Old Gal) Sing Along with Mitch” / “Country Twist,” issued on Bethlehem early in 1963, and “Truck Driver’s Queen” / “In a World of Broken Hearts” (King 5782). From July 1963 to October 1966 they recorded at King’s studio on Brewster Avenue, with Henry Dockery on bass. Most sessions were built around a themed album, and King took singles from each. Gospel sessions in April 1964, with Napier also on banjo, gave the singles “Jonah and the Whale” and “Our Fathers Had Religion”. An instrumental date that November produced “Big Daddy’s Blues” / “Cincinnati Breakdown.” The truck-driving songs of July 1965 gave “Long White Line” / “A Truck Driver’s Romance” (King 6004). From the April 1966 album Country Music Goes to Viet Nam came “Is This a Useless War?” / “A Soldier’s Prayer” (King 6036).

King issued twenty singles by the duo between September 1963 and March 1967. King 6073, issued in December 1966, paired “Something Got Hold of Me,” left over from the 1964 gospel session, with “I Believe in the Old Time Way,” a Moore–Napier song cut on 5 October 1966. The last, in March 1967, was “Take a Message to Mother” / “Sweeter Than the Flowers.” Moore went on to lead the Dixie Partners on Wango, Vetco and Starday, and he recorded an album with Don Reno in 1973. He and Napier recorded together again in 1975 at Old Homestead’s studio in Brighton, Michigan, for an album issued in 1978. Moore died on 24 December 1979. Napier later led his own Mountain Music Clan, and in 1987 he recorded an album of Stanley Brothers songs with Larry Taylor. He died on 3 May 2000.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.