The McCormick Brothers played together on stage for the last time one night in June 2004.

Haskel McCormick. Photo by Morgan Minch

Haskel McCormick, an independent mason from Oak Grove, Tennessee, quit laying brick for the day and picked up his Gibson banjo and a set of finger picks before meeting his brothers at the River of Music Party (ROMP) in Owensboro, Kentucky, an event sponsored by the city’s International Bluegrass
Music Museum.

Even without 20/20 hindsight, it was a nostalgic evening. McCormick met up with an old friend, J.D. Crowe, whom he hadn’t seen in three decades.The two
banjo pickers, who first met when they were ten or twelve years old, talked a long time that night.

Besides a single performance earlier in the year, McCormick hadn’t performed on stage with his brothers in at least thirty years. All things considered, the set went smoothly. It felt good to be back. Eventhough he had, as always, butterflies in his stomach, music, he thought, still beats laying brick.

But before a year had passed, Haskel McCormick’s older brothers were dead: Middle brother Kelly, 76, died on January 8, 2005, of complications from the asthma and other respiratory problems that had plagued his entire life; Lloyd, the oldest at 84, died exactly three months later, weakened by a two-week virus.

“I really miss my brothers who helped me get started,” he says.“They taught me and gave me an opportunity. If it hadn’t been for them, I might never have gotten interested in [music].”

Besides their talent and contributions to bluegrass, the McCormick Brothers are revered for their dedication to family, says Gabrielle Gray, executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum.

“Haskel and the McCormick Brothers have had a remarkable career, setting trends and forming what is now known as traditional bluegrass music,”Gray says. “Throughout it all, they placed family first, choosing proximity to home above fame on the road, playing dates close to home in northern Tennessee so they could be with their families at night.Theirs is a story of men remaining true to their music, their God, their families, and each other all their lives.”

At the pinnacle of his music career, Haskel McCormick played banjo with Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass for nearly four years in the early 1970s, then toured with Marty Robbins in 1974.

He and Robbins worked 51 show dates that year, including two appearances on The Midnight Special, a television show produced in California.The time away from his wife, Rebecca, and their four children took a toll on McCormick, and he decided to call it quits, playing only a few more shows at the Grand Ole Opry.

“Family life to me is worth everything,” he says.“When you’re married and having a family, you can’t hardly live both lives [and] live either one of them right. I love my music, too, but really, to do either one like it should be done, you can’t do both of them. And I liked being around my children as they grew up.”

McCormick, 68, was born and raised near Westmoreland, Tennessee, in Sumner County, which borders the Kentucky state line northeast of Nashville. As a ten year old in 1947, he began waiting with friends outside the Grand Ole Opry in downtown Nashville, hoping to meet the musicians. Getting there before the
show meant he had a chance at getting backstage, and he did on more than one occasion, rubbing elbows with the likes of Bill Monroe, whose Bluegrass Boys at the time included Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

“They used to have a guard, and you couldn’t get in if you didn’t know somebody at the Opry,”McCormick recalls.“Bill Monroe knew us.We got to meet Bill and Ernest Tubb and different ones.”

It’s one thing to go backstage for a chat and a handshake, but McCormick unofficially played the Opry at age ten—not for the ticket holders, but for the musicians. Amazed at this child prodigy, the Opry greats began inviting McCormick to pick with them.

“It was fascinating to be able to go backstage,” he says.“ Of course, when you’re starting out in music and trying to learn and meet people, it’s a big step just to be around them. It helped being able to talk with them and even pick some with them, practicing and rehearsing backstage.”

A key part of McCormick’s draw was his ability to play the new three-finger style developed by Scruggs. For about 200 years the banjo had been played with a “frailing,” or claw-hammer style.

Then along came Scruggs, who explains to fellow pickers Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs on their Three Pickers CD that as a youth, he had trouble keeping up with his brothers and sisters playing claw-hammer style because “his fingers kept wanting to move independently.”

Just as kids today unlock the mysteries of video games, McCormick pieced together the magic of the new threefinger style. And the Grand Ole Opry entertainers became the entertained.

"It amazed them because I was so young, picking like I picked,” he says.

He picked up affectionate nicknames from his legendary friends. Flatt called him The Hawk, and Robbins later referred to him as Hacksaw.They helped spread the word about McCormick’s ability, and he began to get invited to play on local radio stations such as WSM in Nashville and WHIN in Gallatin,Tennessee.

Since his two older brothers—McCormick was the middle sibling of five—were also musicians, they formed the McCormick Brothers and went on stage with Lloyd on guitar, Kelly on mandolin, and Haskel the headliner who was billed as “the tenyear-old banjo player.” He had to stand on four or five soda cases
to reach the microphone, but he managed to keep his nerves at bay as crowds watched him perform.

I don’t mean this bragging,” he explains,“ but looking back on it, they would just fill that room up and just put’em out the door, looking over at me picking. Of course, I was nervous and everything, but it made me feel good, you know, people thinking that much of my picking.”

The McCormicks bought their first guitar for $3.69—including delivery—from the Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog using money they received from selling an intemperate goat a neighbor had given them. After their father tuned the strings, each of the brothers learned to play.

Haskel McCormick’s first interest was actually the fiddle, but he had trouble bending his bow arm. (“It was like charming a snake,” he says.) His father and uncle both played the banjo clawhammer style, but it was Scruggs’s revolutionary style that literally struck an answering chord in him.

“The sound of the banjo fascinated me,”he remembers.“ I loved the way it sounded.When I heard Earl Scruggs on the Opry with Bill Monroe, I knew I wanted to pick banjo that style.”

With no classical instruction, the only way for him to capture this new style was to play by ear.This meant catching radio segments or slowing down 78-rpm records. For one radio show that aired from 5:45-6 a.m., a parent or brother would bring him his banjo instead of breakfast.

“I wanted to play so bad I just devoted a whole lot of my time to sittin’ and pickin’ day in and day out,”he says.“After you get going, it’s like a job of any kind.You can soon hear what they’re doing, where they’re at on the neck—down high, middle, or up at the top.”

In 1955, the year before he graduated from high school, McCormick found himself filling in a few times for Scruggs, who had injured his back in a car accident and couldn’t travel. Flatt and Scruggs had formed their own band after leaving Bill Monroe in 1948, and McCormick would regularly practice with Scruggs, who, like his brother Lloyd, was 14 years older than he was.

“He wanted me to come to his house when I got off the road and we’d pick some together, just me and him,”McCormick says. “He’d play rhythm and I’d pick out, then I’d play rhythm and he’d pick out.”

Gabrielle Gray notes Scruggs had specific reasons for selecting McCormick to fill in for him.

“This was at the height of Earl’s career,” she says. “He could have asked any banjo-picker in the world to take his place so the fact that he chose Haskel speaks volumes about Haskel’s talent, creativity, stage presence, and professionalism. I feel certain Earl had yet another reason for this decision: He could be completely confident that Haskel McCormick would protect his good name. There is no finer gentleman in bluegrass music.”

Lloyd McCormick bought him a new banjo after Haskel was invited to play on a TV talent show. McCormick’s recollection is hazy on the timeline of the show, which aired sometime in the late 1950s. But the thrill of receiving the gift from his older brother made a lasting impression.

“He bought me a brand new RB100 Gibson 1950 model,” McCormick says.“It just shook me up, you know, tickled me to death. Getting something new [after] not having anything good to pick on…. It’s like an old car and a new one: When you get a new one, it’s so much easier to drive, smoother, and everything works well.That’s the way the banjo works.”

Haskel played with The McCormick Brothers throughout high school.The group played on weekends, treating the music more like a hobby, though they were very successful considering the amount of time they put into it.They played square dances and sold a lot of records. At one point in time, they were playing three shows a week at different venues.

McCormick also began learning to lay brick with his cousins in 1957, yet he was never too busy to woo his high-school sweetheart, Rebecca Lynn.When she married him on July 17, 1959, it wasn’t for his music.

“She was an Elvis Presley fan,” he says.“She never did like bluegrass music all that much.”

The McCormick Brothers went on to achieve some high notes, receiving group awards and taking the stage at both the Grand Ole Opry and Carnegie Hall. But they never took that final step of playing or touring full time, which is what Haskel McCormick wanted to do.

Several months after Flatt and Scruggs parted ways in 1969, McCormick approached Flatt about a job and ended up played nearly four years full time with Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass. He got to meet Ernest Tubb during this time because Flatt’s band had the same shows on one particular tour. It was also an
exciting time because the Opry moved into its new location near the Opry Mills Mall off Briley Parkway, giving McCormick the opportunity to play on both stages.

“Being on at the Opry was probably the biggest highlight because there are so many stars before me,” he says.“It was a privilege to be on the same stage, you know, where Hank Williams Sr. was on… Ernest Tubb… all the big stars that go down through the years.”

Of the two Opry stages, McCormick said he prefers the first stage downtown “ because the audience was closer.”

McCormick wrote a few songs with Flatt, including “Haskel Stomp,” “Nashville Grass Breakdown,” and a second recording of “McCormick String Picnic,” which he had written back in the 1950s while playing with the McCormick Brothers.

Playing with Flatt meant a bigger spotlight, although he seemed to draw an older crowd. Playing in 1974 for the more country-oriented Marty Robbins meant playing for a larger, younger crowd.

The McCormick Brothers disbanded in the early 1970s, although Haskel’s two younger brothers,William and Gerald—who are two and seven years younger than he is, respectively—formed the Bluegrass Invasion and continue to play occasionally at festivals today.

After coming off the road, McCormick packed away his banjo for roughly a decade while he and Rebecca raised four children: Melissa McCormick O’Neal, Tracy McCormick (their only son), Shawn McCormick Perry, and Paige McCormick Kendell.

For two or three years, McCormick took up factory work, but he never quit masonry.When he began laying bricks full time, he started his own business that has lasted for thirty years.

But he finally dusted off his banjo around 1985, and from that time until the McCormick Brothers reunited in 2004, he has played twice a week at the Church of God in Oak Grove, Tennessee, where he sings with his two oldest daughters and occasionally with his brothers and friends at Christmas and other
family gatherings. He has also trained the next generation, giving banjo lessons for twenty years.

A die-hard bluegrass man, gospel hymns are the only other genre he enjoys playing. He’d like to continue playing the occasional festival with his two younger brothers.

By now no stranger to playing for crowds, McCormick understands the basic connection music has for people.

“Not very many people don’t like some kind of music or singing,” he says.“I’ve never met anybody who don’t like it.”

Of his seven grandchildren (women dominate the family—just ask the only grandson), only one has shown interest in music, a granddaughter who plays violin.

This past August, Rebecca and Haskel McCormick became great-grandparents.This one’s a boy.

His “elder of the tribe” status doesn’t shock him, but when he thinks back on Earl Scruggs and maybe performing again, it’s tough for him to accept the math.

“Earl’s got to be 82 now,”He says with a laugh.“Twelve years from now I’ll be eighty.That don’t sound right.”

In McCormick’s view, bluegrass has definitely grown from its early days. At the same time, the big names have been replaced by many less-renowned acts. So while bluegrass continues to gain popularity with those of all ages, it’s more difficult to find a distinct sound—like a Bill Monroe or a Johnny Cash—that rises
above the rest.

The difference I see more than anything,” he says,“it’s like, you know, when you heard Ernest Tubb, you knew it was Ernest Tubb. And if you heard Johnny Cash, you knew it was him. And Marty Robbins. All those people back then, when you heard them, you didn’t have to hear but one or two words, and you knew who it was.

“It might be because I’m getting older and don’t follow as closely as I used to, but now it seems like a lot of them sound alike. I don’t know whether everybody sees that or not. They’re good singers, you know, don’t get me wrong.”

For that matter, McCormick hopes all his years of hard work have helped him carve out a unique sound to call his own.

“I think in the process of trying to make a point in life, you have to have something of your own, something that’s original,” he says.“And a lot of [musicians] I feel is just kind of playing the same things. I might be 100 percent wrong. My style hasn’t changed, except for what I’ve added to it. I hope I’ve got a style of
my own.

“There was a lady who used to go to our dances all the time. I took it as a compliment when she said if she hears me picking, she don’t have to see me—she knows it’s me.To me that’s a compliment, that they can detect you from others.”

Jeremy Desposito is an award-winning writer who has been published in Long Island Lifestyles, The Daily Advance and other news publications. Born in Queens, New York, he received a bachelor's degree from Queens College. He lives in Gallatin, Tennessee with his wife Morgan and their infant son Calan.

southernarts JOURNAL Issue 2 · Winter 2006, pp66-75