Champion fiddle player Woody Simmons performing at the Huntersville Mountain Music and Bluegrass Festival in 1982. The photographer is musician Kim Johnson who worked for Goldenseal magazine for many years. Woody was a familiar face in the early Pioneer Days and performed at Huntersville many times.
Woodford “Woody” Simmons was born in 1911 near Huttonsville, W.Va. He taught himself to play the fiddle, banjo and guitar at an early age, and he personally considered Edden Hammons, of Pocahontas County, to be the finest fiddler he ever heard.
Legend has it that Simmons won more than 300 fiddle contests in his lifetime. In the late 1970s, historian and musicologist Michael Kline noted that at age 67, “Woody Simmons is perhaps the most highly decorated local fiddler to come up in central West Virginia. His legendary smooth bowing style and effortless soaring phrases, and his combative approach to contest playing have won him the admiration of a large following of contest and festival audiences.”
In 1983, the West Virginia Department of Culture and History named him the third recipient of the Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folklife honor.
Woody Simmons died in Elkins June 3, 2005 and was buried in the Old Brick Church Cemetery in Huttonsville. That year, the Pocahontas Community Cooperative released a two-CD compilation of his live radio tracks: “Woody Simmons Live at WVMR” and later an hour-long audio documentary about him, “Double Geared Lightning.” (Courtesy of Kim Johnson, Huntersville Music Festival Collection; ID: PHP003555)
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If you have historical records or photographs to be scanned for the county Historical Archive contact Preservation Officer B. J. Gudmundsson at 304-799-3989 or email info@pocahontaspreservation.org Prints of photographs are available.
