The Briarhoppers have been with us since the ’30s. Next stop: the NC Music Hall of Fame

After nine decades, WBT Radio’s legendary bluegrass band the Briarhoppers has joined the ranks of Doc Watson, Randy Travis, Nina Simone and Thelonious Monk, soon to be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.

The band joins other notable North Carolina musicians, including Jermaine Dupri, Charles Whitfield and the Squirrel Nut Zippers, in the 2020 class.

Briarhoppers history

WBT Radio began operations in Charlotte in the early 1920s. A little over a decade later, the wattage increased to 50,000, making it one of the most powerful radio stations in the country.

“WBT radio waves spanned from Maine to Miami, and there were only a few powerhouse stations of the sort at the time,” said current Briarhopper member, bassist Tom Warlick, 59.

By the 1930s, Charles Crutchfield joined WBT as an announcer, during a time when country and bluegrass acts like the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and Mississippi Sheiks were driving record sales across the country.

In 1934, a potential advertiser called the station and asked if WBT had a band to advertise its products. The studio didn’t, but Crutchfield said yes.

As the story goes, station announcer Bill Bivens was on a hunting trip with Crutchfield when they were startled by a rabbit. Bivens yelled, “Look at that briarhopper!,” and the name stuck.

Original band members included Johnny McAllister, Big Bill Davis, Don White, Thorpe Westerfield, Clarence Etters and Jane Bartlett. Only singer Billie Burton Daniel, who joined the group in 1936, is still living, now in a home on the North Carolina coast.

“This was during the Depression,” Warlick said. “People didn’t have any money. But they had radios, and most of the radios in this region were tuned to WBT,” especially at 4 o’clock when the Briarhoppers show came on.

He recalls his father telling him about the program.

“At that time, you would go to school, come home, do your chores and warm up the Delco radio,” he said. “And then you’d listen to the Briarhoppers.”

Just like in those days, Briarhoppers concerts today consist of original songs, new songs and the original scripted commercials for Peruna patent medicine, Kolor-Bak hair dye, Zymole Trokeys throat lozenges and Radio Girl perfume.

Cleveland County native and famed banjoist Earl Scruggs played with the Briarhoppers before joining Bill Monroe’s band. Other notables who sang with the band included major songwriter and TV star Arthur Smith and Fred Kirby, who became the beloved kids-show cowboy on WBTV.

“Before Nashville emerged as the national center for country music recording after World War II, Charlotte’s WBT nurtured top talent,” said historian Tom Hanchett. “In fact, more country and gospel records were cut here in the mid-1930s than in Nashville.”

The legend continues

Warlick joined the Briarhoppers in 2007, but his connection to the band started in 2002.

Warlick, whose father grew up listening to the Brairhoppers, invited the band to play in a bluegrass show in York, S.C., for his dad’s birthday. “They liked me, and they said we’d like to keep in touch,” Warlick said.

After the death of the last original member, Don White, long-running duo Roy “Whitey” Grant and Arval Hogan — who were members in the 1940s — sensed that the group’s history was dying, Warlick said. They contacted him and asked him if he and his wife would write a book on the band.

In 2007, they published “The WBT Briarhoppers: Eight Decades of a Band Made For Radio.”

Today, when it’s called for, Warlick still plays McAllister’s ukulele.“ His daughter had sent it to me,’‘ Warlick said. “She wanted me to have it for safekeeping.”

As for the legend of the band, he’s keeping that alive, too.

“We strive to continue the golden age of radio,” Warlick said. “We do all the old commercials. We do the old songs and we do some new ones, too. But our goal is to mimic as closely as possible the Briarhoppers Radio Show of the 1930s and 40s.”

NC Music Hall of Fame

The North Carolina Music Hall of Fame plans to induct its 2020 and 2021 members on Oct. 21, at a public event at the historic Gem Theatre in Kannapolis.

Roberta Flack, who received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, will be recognized for her lifetime of achievements in the music industry along with Tony Brown, a Grammy Award-winning record producer and pianist who co-founded Universal South Records and is the former president of MCA Records Nashville.

Other inductees include:

• Donald Lawrence, a Grammy-winning gospel music songwriter, record producer, vocal coach and recording artist.

• Charles Whitfield, a music producer and Hidden Beach Recordings executive.

• Jermaine Dupri, a Grammy-winning producer, hip-hop artist, songwriter and record executive at So So Def.

• Michael T. Mauldin, co-founder of the Black American Music Association and the Black Music Entertainment Walk of Fame, former president of the Black Music division at Columbia Records and former senior vice president of the Columbia Record Group. He is also the father of Dupri.

• The Squirrel Nut Zippers, a jazz band that reached commercial success during the swing revival during the late 1990s.

• Tony Rice, a guitarist, bluegrass musician, singer and composer.

• Robert Moog, the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesizer, which debuted in 1964 and revolutionized every genre of music.

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This story was originally published August 24, 2021 at 6:30 AM with the headline "The Briarhoppers have been with us since the ’30s. Next stop: the NC Music Hall of Fame."