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4 unusual facts about Samantha Bumgarner


Samantha Bumgarner

Among the other (racially integrated) performers were American concert artists Marian Anderson, Lawrence Tibbett, and Kate Smith, singing classical and light popular music; and folk performers Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls; Josh White; the Golden Gate Quartet; Sam Queen and the Soco Gap Square Dance Team, who demonstrated clog dancing; and Alan Lomax, singing cowboy songs.

"Aunt" Samantha Bumgarner (October 31, 1878 - December 24, 1960) was an acclaimed early country and folk music performer from Dillsboro, North Carolina.

Bumgarner was also among the artists Lunsford assembled to play before George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England in June 1939 at the invitation of President and Mrs. Roosevelt at a White House concert of American music arranged by Charles Seeger and Adrian Dornbush (of the WPA) for the benefit of the first visit by a reigning British monarch and his consort on American soil.

Folksinger Pete Seeger attended Lunsford's festival in 1935 at the age of 16 in the company of his father, composer Charles Seeger, then working for the music division of the WPA, and his stepmother, noted modernist composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, and would have heard Bumgarner perform there.



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