“Walter Henry ‘Hamper’ McBee (1931-1998) was a moonshiner, carnival barker, and ballad singer of legendary proportions. First ‘discovered’ and recorded by folklorist and performer Guy Carawan in 1964, Hamper’s massive talent and personality won him admirers not only in his native Smoky Mountains but throughout the folk music world, where his unique approach to old-time ballads and lyric songs struck like revelations. He drew from both the oral tradition and from records – he especially loved Bradley Kincaid, Vernon Dalhart, and, surprisingly, Burl Ives – to create a repertoire entirely his own, and that he sung in a warm, powerful voice seasoned by prodigious quantities of cigarettes, booze, and joie de vivre.

“Recorded at Hamper's home in late 1977 and early 1978 by renowned country music scholar Charles K. Wolfe and filmmaker Sol Korine (father of director Harmony Korine, who co-produced the record), ‘The Good Old-Fashioned Way’ compiles the best of McBee’s traditional ballads, original compositions, and outlandish, side-splitting stories of life on the carnival circuit, at the moonshine still, in the back of Sheriff Bill Malone’s patrol car, and as Hamper McBee.

“A clip from Sol Korine and Blaine Dunlap's "Raw Mash" video profile of Hamper, 1978: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiNPVXG6W3g" – Twos & Fews