Glen Neaves
Musician
Best known for
Songwriter
Glen Neaves was a southwestern Virginia fiddler, guitarist, and singer who led the Virginia Mountain Boys across three decades and recorded for Folkways, documenting the bluegrass and older string-band music of Grayson and Carroll counties.
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- Took up the fiddle around 1919, as a boy; his father played clawhammer banjo, but the technique never took with him.
- Modeled his playing on G. B. Grayson, the traditional fiddler who lived nearby and is named in “The Ballad of Tom Dooley.”
- Formed the Virginia Mountain Boys in the 1940s and kept the band going in shifting lineups for the next thirty years.
- Many of the band’s members were the first in their families to play bluegrass rather than the older Appalachian string-band styles they were raised on.
- Played in a more contemporary bluegrass style than most of his regional contemporaries, and largely avoided the standard breakdowns.
- Sang lead and accompanied himself on guitar as well as fiddling.
- Recorded for Folkways, including Country Blue-grass From Southwest Virginia (1974) and a series documenting Grayson and Carroll county music.
- Wrote “The Old Swinging Bridge,” recorded by Ted Lundy and the Southern Mountain Boys (1973), James King (1993), and the Lonesome River Band (2016).
