Stephen Tarter and Harry Gay

Tarter and Gay are an obscure duo from the western tip of Virginia. They made one great record in 1928 (Unknown Blues/Brownie's Blues) for Victor, having come to Bristol after hearing about the auditions while living in Johnson City, TN. They then slid back into almost total obscurity. What little we do know about them comes almost exclusively from Leslie Riddle.

Stephen Tarter was born in either Gate City (Harry Gay's hometown) or in Big Stone Gap, VA, Carl Martin's birthplace. Their two known songs are excellent examples of Piedmont blues; Tarter's singing is clear and cleanly enunciated and the guitars on Unknown Blues sound quite a bit like Willie Walker and Sam Brooks on South Carolina Rag. Both duos were obviously artists in the same tradition. Tarter and Gay probably the same age, based on their playing. According to Riddle, they were both about 30 when they made their one record. The duo had been playing around Kingsport for a year or two when Riddle met them, and he was impressed by their professionalism. Riddle, who worked with Brownie McGhee and The Carter Family, called Tarter ``one of the finest instrumentalists that I ever heard'', able to play or sing in any genre or style. Tarter could play guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, ``anything that had strings''. Apparently, his father was a multi-instrumental musician as well and passed on his knowledge to his son. Riddle once played a party with Tarter in Kingston, filling in for an absent Harry Gay. Though Riddle thought him the best guitarist he'd ever heard, Tarter usually played mandolin and taught Gay how to play guitar.

Their record was popular in the area, and we can only speculate as to why they never recorded again. Maybe they didn't like recording or didn't feel like travelling; other field recordings came through the area later on, so maybe they didn't trust record companies. For whatever reason, their one record is a not-so-gentle reminder that those who were recorded the most weren't necessarily the best, and that the best may never have recorded at all. We can only be thankful that their two songs, available on the Yazoo compilation cd East Coast Blues, 1926-1935 (Yazoo 1013), survives to this day, and that Leslie Riddle information rescued them from total obscurity. Other bluesmen who were from the area, or at least those recorded there, like El Watson and Ellis Williams are merely names and songs to us.