Smokey Mayfield
| Arlie Vincent "Smokey" Mayfield
(American bluegrass musician | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 20, 1924 Dawn, Deaf Smith County, Texas, USA |
| Died | September 11, 2008 (aged 84) Hutchinson County near Spearman, which is actually in Hansford County, Texas |
| Spouse | Mary Keenum Mayfield (born 1934; married 1951-2008, his death) Children:
|
| Religion | Baptist |
Arlie Vincent Mayfield , known as Smokey Mayfield (June 20, 1924 – September 11, 2008), was a ranch supervisor in the Texas Panhandle and a bluegrass musician. In the late 1940s, Mayfield and his brothers played warmup for Tennessee "Ernie" Ford, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Hank Snow, and other country singers.
Background
Mayfield was born to William Fletcher Mayfield (1881-1952) and the former Penelope Ruth Drake (1887-1937) in rural Dawn in Deaf Smith County, southwest of Amarillo. In January 1931, he moved with his parents, three brothers, and two sisters to Dimmitt in Castro County near Lubbock, where he attended school, having left high school before graduation. His mother died qhen he was thirteen years of age.[1]
Mayfield served in the United States Army in the European theater of operations in World War II and participated, at the age of twenty, in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium in December 1944 – January 1945.[2]
A family of musicians
The Mayfields played all musical instruments, beginning with the mandolin. Mayfield and two brothers, Thomas Edd Mayfield (1927-1958) and Herbert Mayfield, went on the Bluegrass circuit and opened in Amarillo and Lubbock for Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Maddox Brothers and Rose as the Green Valley Boys, named for their ranch.[3]
Edd Mayfield left the family band and played the guitar with a thumbpick for a decade with Bill Monroe, considered the "father of Bluegrass." While he was on tour with Monroe, Edd Mayfield died of leukemia in Bluefield, West Virginia.[4]
Herb Mayfield recalled that he and his brothers enjoyed music so much that they would race home after doing their ranch chores so that they could practice.[2] Eventually, Smokey chose the fiddle as his instrument. He was, however, too small to hold a full-sized instrument under his chin. So he anchored the fiddle between his chest and the wall of the barn. He continued to play in that position, with the fiddle on his chest rather than under his chin, into adulthood.[4]
Smokey Mayfield resided in Hutchinson County near Spearman, which is in neighboring Hansford County in the northern Panhandle. He worked for a half century for the historic Turkey Track Ranch in Hutchinson County.[2] Herb Mayfield was born in Erick, Oklahoma, but lived in Dimmitt and graduated from Dimmitt High School. During World War II, he participated in troop lifts in Normandy, France, and, like Smokey, the Battle of the Bulge. Thereafter, Herb Mayfield was a welder for cattle feedlots in Dimmitt. He was for many years the president of the Dimmitt Rodeo Association and a member of the Panhandle Blue Grass Association. He died some three months prior to the passing of Smokey.[2]
Extended family
In 1951, Smokey Mayfield married the former Mary Keenum (born August 5, 1934), originally from Hale Center in Hale County. The couple met while Smokey was playing bluegrass in Lubbock. They wed in Cleburne in Johnson County near Fort Worth. Mary formerly operated a flower shop. Mayfield died of a heart attack at home after fighting a long battle against neuropathy. He was a Baptist, but services were held at his wife's congregation, the Church of Christ in Spearman. Interment, with military honors, was at Hansford Cemetery in Spearman.[5]
In addition to Mary, he was survived by two sons, James Clinton "Clint" Mayfield (born February 28, 1952), a United States Postal Service employee in Amarillo, and wife Eileen N. Mayfield (also born 1952), and Freddie Calvin Mayfield (born December 28, 1949) and wife Janice W. Mayfield (born 1955) of Spearman; three daughters, Cynthia Arlece Knox and husband Ted of Stinnett in Hutchinson County, Loretta Diane Reed and husband Roy of Chickaloon, Alaska, and Harriett Palmer and husband Charlie of Pleasanton in Atascosa County near San Antonio, and nine grandchildren, including namesake Arlie Vincent Mayfield, II (born 1988), a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.; 14 great-grandchildren; and one brother, James F. "Jim" Mayfield (born 1917), a retired rancher from Playas in Hidalgo County in southwestern New Mexico. Fred Mayfield, also a ranch manager, was actually the birth son of Edd Mayfield and his wife, the former Jo McLain, since Jo Butler of Atwater, California, but Fred was reared by Smokey and Mary Mayfield after the sudden death of his father.[2]
Legacy
On May 6, 1989, Smokey and Herbert Mayfield were honored by South Plains College in Levelland in Hockley County west of Lubbock, as "Pioneers of Bluegrass Music in the South Plains." They received commemorative plaques and belt buckles as "Honorary Bill Monroe Bluegrass Boys." The two played for decades in regional music festivals..[4] The Mayfields are also honored through the Mayfield Bluegrass Scholarship at South Plains College..[2]
Mary Mayfield said that her husband "had perfect pitch, never had a music lesson, and couldn't read music, but he could play anything he heard." His last Bluegrass jamboree was in Amarillo in 1992. He also played in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, and in Nashville, Tennessee in a reunion concert with Bill Monroe.[5]
The radio performances and personal appearances of the Mayfield Brothers in West Texas inspired Waylon Jennings, Sonny Curtis, and Buddy Holly of a later generation of musicians.[4] The Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro prepared a documentary film on the Mayfield family.
References
- ↑ Penelope Ruth "Neppie" Drake Mayfield. Findagrave.com. Retrieved on January 23, 2020.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Obituary of Smokey Mayfield, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal,' ' September 14, 2008.
- ↑ Arlie Vincent "Smokey" Mayfield, I. Findagrave.com. Retrieved on January 23, 2020.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Joe Carr and Allan Munde, The Mayfield Boys," Hansford County Reporter-Statesman, undated.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Statement of Mary K. Mayfield, September 21, 2008.
