At 18, Jim Smoak finished high school in South Carolina, grabbed his banjo and suitcase, and hit the road to go see the Grand Ole Opry. This trip ultimately kicked off his impressive career as a bluegrass musician where he played alongside Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass.
This summer the Washington County resident and his musical career were honored by the Indiana Arts Commission and Gov. Eric Holcomb with the Governor’s Arts Award. Smoak was one of five Hoosiers to receive the award.
“A five-string banjo was created in this country in 1831. I am one of the people who continues to pass it on,” Smoak said.
During his career, Smoak helped shape bluegrass as a musical genre. One of the newer stars on the bluegrass scene, Billy Strings, plays sold-out, multi-night shows across the country. One of the songs he plays is “This Heart of Mine,” written by Smoak and Steven F. Brines. Strings won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2021.
Smoak’s generation of banjo players popularized the three-finger technique – a complex syncopated style that emerged from the western Carolinas and came to define the bluegrass sound for a national audience, according to the IAC.
At 18, Jim Smoak finished high school in South Carolina, grabbed his banjo and suitcase, and hit the road to go see the Grand Ole Opry. This trip ultimately kicked off his impressive career as a bluegrass musician, where he played alongside the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, and helped to shape this American musical genre.
This summer, the Washington County resident and his musical career were honored by the Indiana Arts Commission (IAC) and Gov. Eric Holcomb with the Governor’s Arts Award. Smoak was one of five Hoosiers to receive the award.
“A five-string banjo was created in this country in 1831. I am one of the people who continues to pass it on,” Smoak said.
The Governor’s Arts Award was first presented in 1973 to recognize outstanding achievements and contributions to arts and creativity in Indiana. The award is presented once every two years and is the highest honor the state gives in the arts.
Many listeners today may be familiar with newcomer to the bluegrass scene, Billy Strings, who plays sold-out, multi-night shows across the country. Strings won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2021. Strings can count Smoak as one of his influencers. One of the songs Strings often plays is “This Heart of Mine,” written by Smoak and Steven F. Brines.
Smoak’s generation of banjo players popularized the three-finger technique – a complex syncopated style that emerged from the western Carolinas and came to define the bluegrass sound for a national audience, according to the IAC.
“I was playing with my mother and grandfather with a finger and a thumb on my right hand. Then, when I saw this guy playing in a schoolhouse auditorium, he had two fingers and a thumb. I said, ‘That is what I want to do,’” Smoak said.
Following years of traveling and playing bluegrass for audiences, Smoak settled down and made a home in Washington County with his family next to his father-in-law’s farm. The Indiana Uplands is home to creativity of all forms – from artists painting rolling hills to musicians filling the atmosphere with melodies to engineers designing solutions to complex problems. Today, Smoak has helped to keep creativity alive in the hills by teaching banjo, guitar, and harmonica in Washington County and the surrounding area for nearly 50 years. He also still performs. His most recent gig was for an art gallery opening in Terre Haute this summer.
How it all began
Smoak first realized he wanted to play the banjo when he was three years old and heard Snuffy Jenkins on the radio. His mother showed him a few techniques when he began strumming the banjo at 12 years old. She played the banjo along with her father, Smoak’s grandfather.
“That’s where it all came from,” he said.
“My whole family is musical on both sides. On my father’s side, it was more kind of classical study music. On my mother’s side, it was down-home, shin-kicking music. Everyone in the family could dance by themselves or square dance or whatever. That was the place to be. I grew up with that kind of music.”
Playing music was in his blood, and Smoak was ready to play music for a living. After high school, he began his journey. Smoak’s trip to Nashville was funded by the money he saved by driving a school bus his senior year of high school, which the law in South Carolina allowed at the time if the highway patrol had trained the student. His trip along the way included stops in Nashville, Tennessee, and Knoxville, where musicians were busy playing live music for two different radio stations. Smoak stopped by one of the radio stations and played his banjo for them, and the employees said he was sure to be hired, but the head of the station was not there that day, so off he went to Nashville.
Once in Nashville, Smoak approached the head of the Grand Ole Opry about being a regular performer there.
“He smiled and said Bill Monroe (a regular performer) was the only person who used a banjo player of my style,” Smoak remembered. But, Monroe already had a banjo player like Smoak.
After a few days in Nashville and realizing he was not going to find work right away, he made his way back home. But first, he stopped at that Knoxville radio station again. As luck would have it, the boss was there, and he hired Smoak on the spot after hearing him play. He had worked at the station for around eight weeks when Bill Monroe rolled through town, looking for a banjo player for a show in North Carolina. He heard Smoak playing on the radio and called the station.
“I met Bill Monroe on the street corner, played a tune with him, and he hired me right there,” Smoak said.
Smoak played with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys for two years, in 1952 and 1954.
“He was just a regular guy. He grew up on a farm in Kentucky, and I grew up on a farm in South Carolina. We had a lot in common as far as the kind of people we were. We got along well,” Smoak said of Monroe. “He was just a good ol’ country boy. He was just Bill Monroe.”
Journey to the Indiana Uplands
The Indiana Uplands is also home to the famous Bill Monroe’s Music Park and Campground in Brown County and the world’s oldest continuously running annual bluegrass festival. First started in 1967, the legendary Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival continues today, bringing many bluegrass fans to the region for a weekend of old-time mountain music featuring the pleasant strumming of mandolins, fiddles, and banjos. The campground and music park is one of the largest campgrounds in southern Indiana.
Smoak first visited the music park in 1952. It was his first trip out of Nashville, Tennessee, with Monroe and his band.
“At that time, it was a big barn with theater seating and a cafe inside. There was a stage with curtains,” Smoak said.
“That was always a Sunday job because you had to be in Nashville. You could not miss a show at the Grand Ole Opry. You would be fired. You could miss two shows a year, and that was it if you were a contracted musician.”
Monroe was in a serious car crash in 1953. That year, Smoak played with another Grand Ole Opry act, Little Jimmy Dickens. At the end of 1953, Smoak returned to South Carolina to join the Army, knowing he would eventually be drafted for the Korean War. On a trip to pick up his reconditioned banjo in Nashville in 1954, he played with Monroe once again on the radio before heading back home.
“Then the phone rang, and he asked me to meet him in Georgia, so I went back to work with him that year,” Smoak said.
Smoak served in the Army in 1957. On his way back home from Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington, he stopped again in Nashville and walked backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, where everyone still knew him. Smoak said that was the first time he heard his country music scene be called “bluegrass.”
The bluegrass genre likely does take its name from Kentucky bluegrass, a plant native to central Kentucky. Bill Monroe named his band after his home state, Kentucky, or the “Bluegrass State.”
“I think the story (of the bluegrass name) is that someone who introduced Bill Monroe at a show said, ‘Here is Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass boys playing some of that bluegrass music.’ At least that’s the story I know,” Smoak said.
Smoak continued to play music in Nashville before moving to Louisiana in 1960 to work in TV and radio there. While there, he recorded two albums. One of the albums is now maintained by Smithsonian Folkways, a nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. While in Louisiana, he formed a band called the Cumberlands and worked with them for ten years. At the end of 1970, the band moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and Smoak worked with them until 1972. He then decided to quit traveling after two decades. He began teaching music in Louisville. He met his wife Rhonda at church, and the two married in 1975, then moved to Indiana.
Life in the Uplands
Besides playing and teaching music, you can find Smoak at The Depot Railroad Museum in Salem. In 1993, he began collecting model trains. He began volunteering at The Depot not long after it opened in 2001, where he is responsible for taking care of the large train set in the basement. If a train is broken, he makes sure it gets fixed.
During the holiday season, Smoak is responsible for booking the live music for The Depot’s Christmas Open House. He tries to make sure there is a banjo, fiddle, guitar, bass, and vocalist to entertain the guests each year.
“We always have a packed house,” he said.
Smoak and his wife have one daughter and a 7-year-old grandson who live about 15 miles from them. Smoak recorded a few more CDs in 2003, and his daughter sings on some of the tracks. His grandson has not started playing music, but Grandpa is ready when he does.
“I haven’t got him to play the banjo yet, but he has a fiddle, banjo, and ukulele when he’s ready,” Smoak said.
Listen to Smoak’s music on Spotify and visit his website to learn more about his career.