James Roberts

He was born on 10 February 1918. His father, Fiddlin’ Doc Roberts, was among the first traditional musicians from Kentucky to make commercial records, and James joined his recording sessions with the singer and guitarist Asa Martin as a boy. At the Gennett studio in Richmond, Indiana, on 23 and 24 August 1928 he sang with Martin on “Old New Hampshire Village,” “Friends of Long Ago” and “East Bound Train,” with his father on fiddle. Through the early 1930s the duo of Martin and Roberts recorded for the American Record Corporation in New York, James now playing guitar and mandolin as well as singing: “Sunny Tennessee” and “Darling Nellie Gray” in March 1931, and in August 1934, with Art Satherley producing, “Crawlin’ and Creepin’,” “Sweet Florine,” “Budded Roses” and “Lillie Dale.” With Martin and his father he also played stage shows across Kentucky.

With Martha Carson he formed the gospel duo James and Martha, billed as the Barn Dance Sweethearts, James singing and playing mandolin and Martha singing and playing rhythm guitar. Their first records were probably made at radio station WGST in Atlanta late in 1946, for the White Church label: among them “I’m Gonna Let It Shine” and “Budded on Earth to Bloom in Heaven,” both credited to him, and “The Sweetest Gift, a Mother’s Smile,” James B. Coats’s song, of which theirs is the first recording. Capitol signed them as James and Martha Carson, and Dee Kilpatrick produced their sessions at the Emory Hotel and at WGST in Atlanta in 1949, which gave them “When God Dips His Pen of Love in My Heart,” “Salvation Has Been Brought Down” and “Looking for a City.” In June 1950 they recorded at Castle Studio in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel, including “I’ll Fly Away” and a new “Man of Galilee,” and their last session together followed there that October; by 1951 Martha was recording on her own.

As James W. Roberts he played mandolin with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. He is on the band’s session of 21 February 1954 at Thomas Studios in Nashville, with Melvin Goins on guitar, Ray Goins on banjo, Ezra Cline on bass and Curly Ray and Charlie Cline on fiddles, and on its second RCA session that year, in September, which produced the band’s signature piece, “Windy Mountain.” He played with them again on Hylo Brown Meets the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, recorded at Starday in Nashville on 24 and 28 November 1962 with the Goins brothers and the Clines behind Hylo Brown’s singing and issued by Starday in 1963. In 1974 he played a reunion concert with Asa Martin at Berea College, and he later placed his father’s papers in the college’s archives. He died on 21 June 2007.