Return to main page

Speedy Tolliver was born in 1918 in Green Cove, a small hamlet in Virginia’s southwestern highlands. It was from his home community that he inherited a rich musical legacy rooted in the Anglo-Saxon and African ancestry of the region’s early inhabitants. During his youth, social occasions provided time for musicians to get together to relearn tunes or pass their particular renditions to others. But Speedy is not merely a ‘preservationist’. During the late 1920’s into the 1930’s, he became well versed in popular music and culture. Commercial recordings and radio profoundly influenced his musical growth. Speedy was 9 years old in 1927 when the Victor Talking Machine Company went to Bristol – mere miles from Green Cove on the Tennessee/Virginia border – and recorded the legendary sessions that jump-started the country music industry by launching the careers of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.

In 1939, Speedy joined legions of other southern highlanders who migrated to the Washington, DC area, where the country music scene was blossoming due to the influx of white Southerners who came to the Capitol in search of opportunity. As a member of “The Lee Highway Boys,” Speedy quickly mastered the violin when the band’s fiddler suddenly went missing. Later, the multi-instrumentalist was part of a succession of the area’s professional “hillbilly” bands, playing with the likes of: Eddie Stoneman of the famed Stoneman Family, Hoss Clark (and his son Roy Clark - later of “Hee Haw” fame). Throughout the 1940’s, Speedy was a regular on WGAY radio’s weekly “hillbilly music” show, “Rural Roundup”. Working for pioneering music promoter Connie B. Gay, head of Arlington’s WARL radio station, Speedy performed with stars like Grandpa Jones and Chubby Wise. Conversely, the sophisticated musician was also a regular member of the Sammy Ferro big band, playing regularly at Glen Echo Park’s Spanish Ballroom.

Why, then, do so few know the name of this versatile musician? While other staples of the DC-area country music scene (Roy Clark, Jimmie Dean, et al…) rode the rise of TV to national fame, in 1950 Speedy gave up his life as a professional musician for a regular job so as to provide for his growing family (not unlike the story of DC-area jazzman Buck Hill). Although dabbling in a Dixieland band with work colleagues, Speedy did not return to the professional stage until the late 1960’s. Nonetheless, Speedy’s reputation among musicians remained sterling. Concentrating on the fiddle, Speedy worked regularly with area bands and traveled the globe for many years in this second phase of his career.

content from a 2005 Arlington, VA press release.

JamsOnTheJames.com Presents:
An Evening of Old Time Music... featuring a Master of the Fiddle and Banjo –
Speedy Tolliver
with Mark Cambell on the fiddle, Jim Lloyd on guitar, and Al Firth on bass...

...also Country Blues with John Bradshaw, Nate Layne and Ron T. Curry