Smokey Greene

The first Bluegrass Festival held in New York State was Smokey Greene's, held in Corinth, New York in 1972 A true pioneer in country music, he is one of the few entertainers who can walk on stage with just a guitar and have the audience demanding more at the end of the set. No matter who you are, there will be at least one song that he sings that will touch you. He entertains with the deft touch of a magician and can deliver the message in a song like no other. Be it funny or sad, his choice of material is truly unique. Only Smokey can do a set with : _ The Band Played Waltzing Matilda _ I Don’t Have To Put The Seat Down Anymore _ Ira Hayes _ I Don’t Look Good Naked Anymore _ Rocking Alone In An Old Rocking Chair In 2018, at the age of 88, Smokey who started his "final tour" in 2015 is still performing mostly in VT & NY, with his sons Arlin and Scott, as "Smokey Greene and the Greene brothers" A very busy performer, at one point, he had for sale on is table at festivals 28 CDs ! [summary of] his story, in his own words: On 10 March 1930, a 10 lb., 11 oz boy, Walter George, was born on the Tom Greene place in Tinmouth, Vermont It was living in lumber camps that I first remember my brother Henry playing a guitar and singing Cliff Carslile and Jimmy Rodgers songs. That used to fascinate me. I wanted to play and sing just like my big brother. Around the camp, someone was always playing a mouth organ or a jews-harp. The die was cast. Throughout the 30’s, we moved from place to place following logging jobs. In some of the places we lived, there would be a piano or pump organ which my mother would play. Dad played the “push pull” accordion (I guess it was called a concertina). I had three uncles that were fiddle players and several older cousins that played guitars, mandolins or banjos. In the 40’s Dad got us a radio. That's when I first heard the great Yodeling Slim Clark. While going to school in Tinmouth, Vermont, I walked a little over five miles to and from school. (the first time I ever rode in a school bus, I drove it). It was 1944 that I first started teaching myself to play the tenor banjo. When I was fifteen I had taught myself to play the banjo, mandolin and guitar well enough so I was invited to a lot of parties and dances. I also used to play and sing in bar rooms where someone would generally take up a collection. In 1946 I first met Yodeling Slim Clark. I played banjo with him and from then on I wanted to play music for a living. But – that would not come to be for another fifteen years. In 1948, I joined the USAF and started driving the guys in the barracks nuts with my guitar and hillbilly songs. The Air Force trained me to be a radio operator, which was a big help when I eventually got into DJ work. I left the states in July of 1950 and I was sent to a small radar site on Hokkaido, the northern most island of Japan. I spent a year on Hokkaido playing the guitar and singing the war away. In 1951 some guys at our headquarters on the main island (Honsho) had heard about me and arranged to have me transferred to play in a band with them. It seems that the commanding officer from Louisiana, was a big fan of hillbilly music. After I transferred to headquarters, I spent many nights entertaining him. The band I played in worked the E.M., NCO and officers clubs and picked up quite a lot of extra spending money. I played mostly the mandolin in this group (wish I’d kept it up). I was having so much fun, I re-enlisted. In 1952, we entered competition for Air Force country bands in Japan and won first place. We then went on to win first place in competition of band from all over the Far East. In mid 1954 or early 1955, I was sent back to the States and was stationed in Fairfield, California. It was in California that I headed up my first band. It was also here that I picked up the name Smokey. California was a good place to be in the mid 50’s if you liked country music. There was lots of places to play and lots of musicians to play with. When I first got to California I sat in with a group every weekend for about six weeks. They saw they couldn’t get rid of me so they started including me as part of the band. The leader of the group used to book us into places where we would make two or three dollars a piece. The lead guitar player and steel player asked me to take over the group and book the jobs where we could make some money. We did start making more money, but it was at this time I found out musicians are always broke. I also found out that the leader of the group not only furnished the PA equipment, transportation, booked the jobs, and arranged the songs, he had to listen to everyone’s problems, be a diplomat, give advice to the lovelorn and always have a few extra bucks to lend. Every night we played I found I was going through 3 or 4 packs of cigarettes, so, I started buying a pack of cigarettes for each member of the band and taking it out of their pay at the end of the night. They started calling me Smokey and the name stuck. I used the name “Smokey Greene and the Green Mt. Boys” for a band name from 1955 until the early 70’s when I called the band “The Boys”. I then got to meet and work quite a bit with Wayne Raney It was in 1956 in California that I made my first phonograph record, a 78 RPM, which included two songs I had written, “Wrong Side Of The Street” and “River Of Blues”. That was my first of quite a few records that sold way under a million. I was discharged from the USAF in April of 1957. I kind of wanted to stay in California, but Pat wouldn’t hear of it, so we headed back for Vermont. When we got back to Vermont, I tried for about six months to find work playing music, but nobody wanted to hire a hillbilly musician. In order to eat, I took a job in the woods driving a crawler tractor, then worked in a mill as a millwright While I was working on a chicken farm in Easton, New York, I got a job Saturday nights playing in a local gin mill. I was doing a single for $10.00 a night. I was really packin’ -em-in. I quit the farm and tried music full time once again and ended up eating government surplus food. My music was starting to catch on a little. I was working six days and playing 4 or 5 nights a week. I had gotten into radio work and developed a good following. I was packin’-‘em-in everywhere I played. Places that I had offered to play three years previously for $5.00 were now paying me $50.00 to $75.00 a night. The money was good, but the work was hard doing a single. That’s when I developed the Smokey Greene style of guitar playing. Most of the jobs were 5 hour gigs so I used to stick my guitar up in the microphone and start playing runs form one chord to another to give my voice a rest. In 1961, I met a fiddler by the name of Jimmie Hamblin. We teamed up and worked together for the next ten years. In the mid-sixties we put together what I think was as good an act as could be found anywhere: Digger Dan Dutra on banjo, Daddy Dick Richards on upright bass, Jimmie and myself. We opened a lot of shows for name acts like Ernest Tubb, Hank Thompson, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and most of the acts that worked the WWVA Jamboree. We had so much work in the Glens Falls area and we were making a good living, so we got into a rut, playing the same places year after year. I could see that I really wasn’t getting anywhere in music, so in 1966, I leased a small nightclub in Thompson, New York. I used to bring in bluegrass acts like Reno & Harrell, The Country Gentlemen, 2nd Generation, Don Stover, Charlie Moore and a host of others. The club would normally hold about 75 people, but with the bluegrass acts, I was packing in 150 or more. I think it was 1974 or maybe 1975 when I first traveled to Maine to work for Fred Pike and Sam Tidwell. It was a great experience for me. I found a whole new and different audience that seemed to appreciate my brand of country music. ... try to read more if site is still accessible