Dixon Brothers

The Dixon Brothers are an American old-time country duo made up of brothers Dorsey Dixon and Howard Dixon. They begin performing professionally in 1934, after moving from local jamborees to the WBT Saturday Night Jamboree radio show in Charlotte, North Carolina. They record for RCA Victor from 1936, with their first session on 12 February 1936, and over the next two years they make six further sessions that produce almost 60 songs.

Background and early life

Dorsey and Howard Dixon are two of seven siblings and grow up poor in the mill towns of North and South Carolina. Before their teenage years, they work in mills, and Dorsey later begins writing his own rural folk songs at the age of 32. Dorsey is born in 1897 in Darlington, South Carolina, and survives a difficult start to life as an oxygen-starved baby weighing three pounds.

Songwriting and themes

Their best-known material includes songs such as “Weaver’s Life”, “Factory Girl”, “Babies in the Mill”, “The School House Fire” and “Spinning Room Blues”. These songs draw on the experiences of poor workers in the southern textile mills. Their song “I Didn’t Hear Anybody Pray”, recorded in 1938, later becomes the basis for Roy Acuff’s 1942 hit “Wreck on the Highway”.

Recording career and later years

During their RCA Victor sessions, Dorsey’s wife Beatrice Dixon appears on twelve of the recordings. The brothers say their success in the Depression comes from divine providence. When their contracts end around the start of the Second World War, they return to mill work and rarely perform professionally again, apart from local church appearances in the 1950s. After Howard dies working in the mills in 1960, folklorists encourage Dorsey to make new recordings for Piedmont and the Library of Congress. Dorsey later appears at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, introduced by Pete Seeger. Dorsey dies in 1968 and is buried in East Rockingham, North Carolina.