I’ve Endured: Women in Old-Time Music

Close-Up on Women in Old-Time Music

Home » Matokie Slaughter

Matokie Slaughter

Photo of Matokie Slaughter
From the Southern Songbirds program guide by Rachel Goodman

Hometown

Pulaski, Virginia

Date of Birth

December 21, 1919

Date of Death

December 31, 1999

Matokie Slaughter grew up in a large musical family, turning her hand to clawhammer banjo and developing a distinctive driving style. In the 1940s she played with other family members on local radio around her hometown of Pulaski, Virginia, and she also participated in fiddlers’ conventions. Matokie performed at folk festivals throughout the United States and also formed a band called Matokie Slaughter & the Back Creek Buddies that included her sister Virgie and iconic musician Alice Gerrard.

Take a Listen

Select Discography

  • The Clawhammer Banjo, Volumes 1 and 3 (Rounder Records)
  • “Georgie”

Learn more about

Matokie Slaughter

Keep Learning

More Close-Ups of Women in Old-Time Music

Sheila Kay Adams

Sheila Kay Adams

Sheila Kay Adams is a seventh-generation ballad singer, banjo player, and storyteller. Her family’s long line of musical and storytelling traditions reaches back two centuries to the original English and Scots-Irish settlers of Sodom Laurel, North Carolina. The...

Hazel Dickens

Hazel Dickens

Hazel Dickens was the eighth of eleven children who grew up in a coal-mining, hard-working, impoverished family that drew comfort from religion and mountain music. Following World War II, she moved to Baltimore.  Hazel found an audience and her identity as a female...

Maud Pauline Karpeles

Maud Pauline Karpeles

Maud Karpeles is an often unrecognized heroine of the preservation and promotion of English folk song and dance. On a 1909 trip to Stratford-On-Avon, Maud and her sister had their first exposure to English folk song and dance, which became a major life focus for both...

Back to All Bios

Visit the exhibit

Entry included in full museum admission.
Buy Tickets