Biography
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Born
18 July 1920
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Born In
Mount Airy, Surry County, North Carolina, United States
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Died
28 June 2011 (aged 90)
James Benton Flippen (July 18, 1920 – June 28, 2011) was an old-time fiddler from Mount Airy, North Carolina. He was one of the last surviving members of a generation of performers born in the early 20th century playing in the Round Peak style centering on Surry County, North Carolina. Benton was the seventh of eight children. Benton recounts that he started playing the banjo in his early teens, and picked up the fiddle when he was about eighteen. He also played guitar from time to time, and his wife Lois recalls that he even sang the occasional song when they were courting.
Benton Flippen is a one-time phenomenon. Ambling quietly forth from a musical family, he has taken the traditions around him and molded them into something unique to suit himself. Along the way, he's often astonished and delighted others.
Being born and raised in Surry County, North Carolina didn't hurt. In this country, the home of celebrated old time musicians Fred Cockerham, Tommy Jarrell, Earnest East and Kyle Creed, musical signatures are very strong. Benton's is as strong as any in a place where individuality is taken for granted, even nurtured and approved, and powerful personalities abound. Old time fiddlers' conventions remain part of community life. Here, with very little listening experience, you can tell who's about to fiddle a tune as soon as a bow is drawn across the strings.
Benton educated himself, in music as in most other things. He listened to a fiddling uncle who would come to visit from Thomasville, NC. He seems to have listened intently to the late Esker Hutchins, a highly respected local fiddler and banjo picker with whom he played for several years on a radio and at fiddlers' conventions.
"I guess I'll keep draggin' the bow until I just can't do it anymore," he said one day, sitting his den with a wall of fiddling trophies behind him.
-taken from Paul Brown, Westfield, NC
Benton was also the leader of The Smokey Valley Boys from the 1970s until his death in 2011.
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/bentonflippen
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