old-time
Whitetop, Virginia
Photo: Pat Jarrett/Virginia Humanities
Hailing from Whitetop, a tiny Appalachian community nestled in the rugged Blue Ridge Mountains of Grayson County, mother and daughter duo Martha and Emily Spencer are a living testimony to the vitality and deep roots of traditional music in Southwest Virginia. Both women are gifted multi-instrumentalists and singers. They carry on the multigenerational legacy of one of the region’s most beloved musical families, known for keeping alive the old-time music tradition unique to Grayson County.
Emily Spencer is the matriarch of the celebrated, rip-roaring Whitetop Mountain Band, a family-based group now in its eighth decade. She plays in a distinctive, driving clawhammer banjo style she learned from local legends Jont Blevins, Lawrence Russell, and Enoch Rutherford, an essential aspect of the high-energy old-time music that has inspired dancers across southern Appalachia for generations. Born in Arlington, Virginia, Emily settled in Whitetop in the mid-1970s after marrying fiddler Thornton Spencer. For four decades, they led the Whitetop Mountain Band, a group founded in the 1940s by Thornton’s brother-in-law, legendary fiddler and instrument maker Albert Hash. In the wake of Thornton’s passing in 2018, Emily continues to lead the band with her daughter Martha. She is also among the region’s most important music educators, directing initiatives throughout Appalachia and beyond, including the visionary Albert Hash Memorial String Band program. Founded by Hash at the tiny Mount Rogers School in Whitetop, under Emily’s leadership the program has expanded to other Grayson County schools, helping to preserve and nurture Appalachian traditions into the 21st century.
Martha Spencer, an alumna of the Albert Hash Memorial String Band, grew up with the Whitetop Mountain Band playing in her living room. Daughter of Emily and Thornton Spencer, niece of Albert Hash, and great-granddaughter of award-winning Appalachian dancer Bud Spencer, Martha has been immersed in old-time traditions both at home and in her community from the time she was born. The famed Whitetop Folk Festival, the Galax Fiddlers’ Convention, and the Carter Family Fold were local fixtures, as were events associated with iconic names like Carter, Stanley, and Watson. Now the Whitetop Mountain Band’s lead vocalist, Martha plays guitar, fiddle, banjo, bass, dulcimer, and mandolin, in addition to her exuberant flatfoot dancing. Involved in countless other projects, as well as a solo career she launched with her self-titled 2018 album, Martha was recently counted among “The Women Who Are Taking Back Country Music” by No Depression. When not performing, she hosts an old-time music radio show, and produces a documentary project, Mountain Music Magazine.
Both Martha and Emily are committed to sharing their region’s rich traditions, seeing them as essential to the health of their community. "With the culture I grew up in, it was always something that was to be shared and invited into," Spencer says. “It’s important for me to pass it on and keep going. Music and dance can do a lot for people…. It's something to be prideful for."