Lesser-Known Composer of the Month: Brief Sketches: Charlie Poole, Tui St. George Tucker

Charlie Poole was a self-taught banjo player and singer who became one of the early stars of recorded country music. He developed a distinctive three-finger picking style credited with influencing Earl Scruggs and other later artists, likely at least partly as a result of a crippling baseball injury sustained to his right hand.

He worked with a number of musicians over the years but most of his recordings in the 1920s were with the North Carolina Ramblers, a string band he founded with the fiddler Posey Rorer in 1917 or 1918.  The Ramblers made their first recordings for Columbia in 1925, and between then and 1931 cut over seventy sides for the company.  Poole himself also recorded for Paramount and New Brunswick.  The band personnel changed several times over the years, and Poole's own last recordings were made in 1930.

In 1931 Poole and the Ramblers were hired to provide music for a Hollywood film.  Poole died of a heart attack before his scheduled departure for California, possibly brought on by alcohol poisoning.

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Tui St. George Tucker was born in California and attended Occidental College from 1941 to 1944 before moving to New York, where she established herself as a virtuoso recorder player.  She was an active composer and often experimented with microtonal composition but was also influenced greatly by plainsong and Baroque music.

She is best remembered for her association with Camp Catawba in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a summer camp for boys founded by the poet Vera Lachmann in 1944.  In addition to the usual summer camp activities, Camp Catawba provided cultural exposure to art, music, literature, and drama.  Tucker served as the camp's music director, under whose guidance campers performed music ranging from medieval plainsong and polyphony to contemporary American works,  from 1947 until it closed in 1970.

In 1985 she inherited the camp grounds from Lachmann.  In accordance with Lachman's wishes, Tucker sold the grounds to the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation while retaining a life estate.  She lived on the grounds from 1985 until her death in 2004, continuing to compose and conduct local ensembles.

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