Walter Smith
Musician
Best known for
Songwriter
Walter “Kid” Smith was a North Carolina old-time singer who, with the Carolina Buddies, recorded the “Ballad of the Lawson Family Murder” — the Columbia single he wrote in March 1930 about the Christmas Day 1929 massacre of the Charles Lawson family in Germanton, North Carolina. The record was one of Columbia’s best-selling hillbilly sides of 1930.
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- Worked the Piedmont North Carolina string-band circuit in the late 1920s and 1930s.
- Wrote the “Ballad of the Lawson Family Murder” in March 1930, weeks after Charles Lawson’s December 25, 1929 shotgun killing of his wife and six of seven children in Germanton, North Carolina.
- Recorded the song with the Carolina Buddies for Columbia; the lineup featured Posey Rorer on fiddle, Buster Carter on banjo, Lewis McDaniel on guitar, and Smith on lead vocals.
- The single sold more than 8,000 copies and ranked among Columbia’s best-selling hillbilly records of 1930.
- The song entered the standard old-time, country, and bluegrass-murder-ballad repertoire and has since been recorded by the Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, and many others.
