My family farmed for a living except for occasional carpentry work that my father did. My grandfather, Jerome Broyles, played banjo and was a "Buck Dancer". My Uncle "Gib" Gilbert Broyles played banjo and later learned to play the fiddle one armed, after having the limb amputated in a corn picker. Dr. Richard Blaustein did a "Portrait of a Musical Community in Northeast Tennessee", in 1989, that included both my grandfather and uncle. The name of the album is "Down Around Bowmantown."
I began playing banjo in my late twenties and played at local picking spots for about four years until I decided there were a lot more banjo pickers than bass players, so I learned to play bass. I've been playing the bass ever since. I played with a number of local bands and musicians until one night when I played with a group of musicians at a restaurant where I often ate. They had music nightly but this was the first time I'd ever played there, and that one night led to a permanent position as the bass player for "Tomahawk."
Jerome ("Jerry", "Uncle Jerry", "Rome") Broyles was born March 18, 1885, in the Philadelphia community of Washington County.
Jerome was known as a "live wire," a "cut-up," and an exceptional dancer. Tom Slagle praised him as "the best in the country" when it came to dancing. Jerry's son Taft claimed his father (even in later years) could stand flat-footed and kick an eight-foot ceiling.
Tall and lanky, Uncle Jerry was adept at what is known as buck dancing: A free-form style of Southern Appalachian dance. He was known to lay down his banjo during jam sessions and sometimes even performances and spontaneously begin buck dancing.
When Gib was in his teens, he decided
to take up the banjo. A short time later, Gib caught his jacket sleeve in a
cornpicker, and his right arm was severed just above the elbow. Lesser incidents
have ruined lives; for Gib Broyles, it was simply a hindrance. With one
functional arm, he became an exceptional carpenter.
Tales of his agility with cigarette papers and tobacco still abound in
Washington County. But perhaps the most amazing thing Gib learned to do with
only on arm was play the fiddle. Not long after he married Mary Edith Cartwright
in January 1932, Broyles experimented with tying a bow to his stub with a rubber
band.
On August 13, 1953, Gilbert Broyles was helping put a roof on the Latter's barn in Bowmantown when a 2x6 timber fell and hit him on the head. Gib died en route to the hospital in Johnson City.