Ahead of the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, the National Endowment for the Arts seeded folklife programs across the country, leading to our own folk and traditional arts program anchored at the University of Missouri. In Missouri’s own bicentennial year, our staff has been sharing stories over the course of 2021 about folk and traditional arts in the Show Me State. Some of these Stories have landed here on the Show Me Folk blog first, as we share portraits composed by some of our favorite community scholars.

For the post below, we thank Marideth Sisco, who put on her journalistic-ethnographic hat to conduct a series of interviews in south central Missouri in 2019. Today’s post features master banjo player Van Colbert, particularly sharing his family history; his participation in the Blackberry Winter Band’s North American tour in support of the independent film Winter’s Bone; and his 2018 apprenticeship with Cindy Parry. Our thanks to Marideth for the interviews and stories she shared, adding another layer to the 200 Stories project. 

 

VAN COLBERT

based on a 2019 interview with Marideth Sisco

Van Colbert, Missouri master of the drop-thumb, two finger, clawhammer banjo, may have earned his entire hillbilly credibility the night he arrived. At the very least, it was very near the beginning of a great fable. The third child of Joseph Truiett and Veneica May (Easley) Colbert, Van was born Feb. 7, 1955, in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter, in a snowstorm – in the cab of his parents’ pickup truck. They had actually made it to the hospital in West Plains, Mo. ahead of the doctor, who was delayed by the bad roads. But they didn’t make it inside. Van’s name was taken from a tribal elder in Virginia, where Van’s mother once taught at an Indian school because she thought he was a good man. It was a classic story of Ozarks hill life. Do what needs doing, and call it good.

Shortly, though, the growing family’s fortunes needed a step up, and they left the Ozarks in search of a better job with a paycheck that would support them all. Van was still an infant when the family moved to St. Louis. His father soon found work delivering packages for the Railway Express Co., a forerunner of United Parcel Service. He and the growing family settled in and stayed more than a decade in the city. At the time, they loved the city and its opportunities, Van said. By the time they moved back to the Ozarks, when Van was twelve, the family had grown to seven boys and one girl, and the siblings were not in favor of the move.

“All of us kids hated it when we had to move back. We loved living in the city because there was so much to do. Of course, it was what we knew. But as time went by, we changed our minds. I still enjoy going to the city to do things. But I wouldn’t want to live there. I don’t miss it at all.”

Even in the city, he said, his favorite hours were spent sitting at home listening to his father play guitar or banjo and singing the old Ozarks ballads. And they never lost track of their country roots. At every holiday and long weekend, they were off to visit relatives and renew their spirits. And the whole time they were away, all but two were playing music with their dad, or without him. Old-time Ozarks music, but about every other kind of music as well. Southern blues, rock and roll, pop, even a little jazz.

But when they returned to the Ozarks for good, some of the kids’ city ways didn’t set well with some of the locals, Van said. “Some of us had adopted enough of the urban counter culture to be dubbed ‘long-hairs’ by local people. We had to fight our way through a lot of that. A couple of us still wear our hair long. That’s how we like it,” he said and grinned. “Not that we’re stubborn or anything.”

One thing that held the clan together through the changes, he said, was the music. With their dad at the helm, they were now a family band. On his 13th birthday, shortly after the family returned to Willow Springs, Van’s father brought home a stout little Silvertone banjo from a local pawnshop and told Van to get busy. If they were going to have a family band, he explained, somebody had to play banjo. Van has been playing ever since.

“The banjo ain’t for everybody,” he said. “My dad was my first teacher. My dad’s the one that taught me the thumb and finger roll, all the basics. Then, I started watching other players: Stringbean, Grandpa Jones, Tommy Thompson from the Red Clay Ramblers. And Frank Profitt. He played fretless banjo. And Reed Martin. I guess, from all of them, the one I learned the most from, and learned to play like, was Tommy Thompson. Of course, I could never play as well as him.”

There are those who would dispute that. But Van said he knows he can play. But even after all these years, he has some trouble playing for the public. That’s surprising, as the Colbert Brothers Band has been asked to be the opening act at the Old-Time Music, Ozarks Heritage Festival in West Plains, MO. for literally decades. Asked if the Colberts had opened for the festival from the very start, he said no, he was too shy to play at first.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnh0YE-xKZE

“We sat out the first four or five years because I was too shy to get up on stage,” he said. But, he observed, it was a good thing he got over it, because in 2009, when he was asked to play banjo in a movie, he wasn’t too shy to accept.

Colbert’s talent landed him a small musical role in the low budget independent film Winter’s Bone, a story of poverty, drugs and family loyalty in a darker side of Ozarks. The film became a “sleeper” hit, earning it four Oscar nominations and national notoriety. Van didn’t appear on screen but was featured in the soundtrack and ended up touring the U.S with the band that promoted the movie and its score, Blackberry Winter. He counts it as one of the truly watershed experiences of his lifetime.

“It was really cool. It was too hard on me because I have a heart condition, and I didn’t know if I could make it. But it was worth it. It was the neatest thing I’ll ever do, getting to tour the whole United States playing the banjo. I saw things I never would have never seen otherwise, and met some really wonderful people.”

Van also credits his involvement in the Missouri Folk Arts Program with making possible some high points in his life, particularly his participation in the master/apprentice program.

“It’s a really great program with its mission to support and preserve important things; it’s a great thing for the state to do. I mean, if you’re gonna spend the taxpayers’ money, that’s the best thing you could do with it. Plus, the people you have to deal with, like Lisa Higgins, who runs the MFAP program, and Deb Bailey, who does the master/apprentice part, they’re really nice people, and have always been very kind to me.”

Working with the apprentices is rewarding, too, he said, particularly his most recent, Cindy Parry. “She was a surprise because she was such a good musician. Good voice. Good songwriter. But she was too timid; she still wants to play so no one hears her. But she’s a good musician. And she’s smart, kind, a good player. Except you have to strain to hear her.”

Colbert said he helped with that difficulty by putting her in the middle of a bunch of musicians, so she wouldn’t be singled out. It gave her the freedom to just relax and enjoy the process. Parry said it was a process that worked. Parry, who lives near the Douglas County hamlet of Gentryville, is a registered nurse by profession, but she has always had a passion for the banjo. Shyness stopped her, just like Van, and she had no others to play with. That all changed with the apprenticeship. She offered high praise for Colbert’s ability as a teacher.

“Apprenticing with Van was a great experience for me. I feel really fortunate to have had the opportunity. Van is so unique as an individual as well as at playing the banjo. He can stand up and play with anybody. His catalog is so deep; he knows everything from the common to the most obscure – the whole canon of old-time music as well as a great deal of everything else.

“One thing I appreciated was how he can take anything from about any genre and can interpret it for banjo. He told me he and his brothers grew up playing music, and didn’t care what it was. It was just music. They were not tied to a genre.”

Parry said she loves the old music and recognizes its fragility as the old players pass away. But, she said, even as the old ways pass, some of the younger players have begun to take notice of the music, and have begun to play it, even though their style is nowhere near what the old timers would call pure. It’s the same as what those young Colberts learned, to play the music first, and argue about genres later.

“It’s great to see the young ones exploring the old-time tunes, and working them up in their own ways. So, the music itself is actually getting to be back in favor again. This music has been around forever. Some tunes go way the heck back. It has made me appreciate the terrible beauty of even those songs written about some horrible story, like the darkest of the old murder ballads. I’m working on a Child’s song now that is very dark, and yet the music is so haunting and so beautiful.”

Parry acknowledges she now thinks of herself as a player, not an apprentice, for the banjo has captured her, and she now masters tunes on her own. She credits Colbert for her confidence.

“I was pretty timid at first. But Van is such a good teacher, he was never negative, never put you down; he just wants you to learn the music. He really has a heart of gold.” Parry said while studying with him, she came to appreciate the entire Colbert clan, not just as musicians but for their generosity of spirit. “I feel so privileged to have been taken in to that whole Colbert family. I went over every Thursday for my lesson, and we would sit in the living room at Van and Carolyn’s and just play for hours. Bobby and Vernon (Van’s brothers) would come and go at different times, and we’d all play. And everybody had a little bit of a different style, and I never was made to feel uncomfortable or that I couldn’t play well enough. I was just one of the players. I feel like Van as a musician is really an undiscovered gem. And it’s a shame. These days if you don’t have a YouTube channel, you don’t have access. Your music just doesn’t get out. But he’s well worth a listen. He’s not just capable. He’s a great talent.”

As may be noted here, Van Colbert is not enamored of fame. His happiest times are those spent with his wife Carolyn, sitting on their front porch, playing his banjo or fiddle. If he has a fault, say his brothers, it’s that he buys too many banjos than is good for a person. But he doesn’t collect them, he said. “I get them to play until I get tired of them. I don’t have them around to keep up on the shelf.”

The Colbert family has lived in the Ozarks for many generations, and nearly all his ancestors are buried in the same cemetery, he said. “The Colberts came up out of Georgia after the Civil War and settled down on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. But they had family already up here in Missouri, and they eventually came up to join them and to look for work. They’re all buried out there at Bly Cemetery, out by Caulfield. I’ve got mine and Carolyn’s stone already set out there.”

Colbert said the wisest thing he’s done was when he married Carolyn. “I was kinda wild in my younger days. I had seen her around town but didn’t know her. Then she hired my brother Bobby, who’s a teacher by profession, to tutor her kids. She was out at Bobby’s with her kids when we all came out to play. She was just walking by me, and I swear she smelled just like lilacs. And it wasn’t perfume. It was her. I guess that’s what you call pheromones. I just decided that she was for me.”

It was Carolyn’s doing that got him on that tour bus, he said.

“I was scared to go. I’m not that much of a traveler, and I told her I’d decided against it. And she said ‘Van, you have promised these people. So, you’re going.’ She was right. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. She always has good advice like that. I don’t know what I’d do without her.” He paused a moment. “Plus, she puts up with my banjo playing,” he said.