Stanley Hicks
1911-1989
Stanley Hicks was one of the many talented children of musicians Buna and Roby Hicks. Growing up in the Spice Creek area of Beech Mountain, he became a skilled musician, luthier, and flatfoot dancer, and absorbed the oral history and folktales of his home community. After losing part of a finger in a carpentry accident while building a dulcimer, Stanley adapted his banjo style to the absence of a digit, and continued to play. He often performed at and visited Jack Guy’s store, where he also sold folk toys that he made. In 1983, Stanley Hicks received the National Heritage Fellowship, the nation’s highest honor for a folk artist, for his role as an important bearer of Appalachian traditional arts.
Listen to Stanley Hicks in the Jack Guy Collection:
Links
Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Traditional Artist Directory profile
Alan Lomax Archive: Stanley and Ray Hicks singing “Roving Gambler”
Source unknown: 1977 film of Stanley Hicks talking about and playing the dulcimer