It was from the Blue Ridge mountain town of Lansing, North Carolina that a young Ola Belle Campbell came to Rising Sun, along with her whole family on a flatbed truck, to begin a new life in the fields, factories, and general stores of Cecil County, Maryland. The Campbells were storekeepers, and they built a network of general stores that catered to other Appalachian migrants – selling Hot Rize flour and other products Appalachian migrants associated with the old home place. Many of the Appalachian migrants were related to early pioneers of country music – known in the record industry at the time as “Hillbilly Music” – including members of the Red Fox Chasers, the Virginia Mountain Boomers, Emmett Lundy, Kilby Snow, Fields Ward, and others. The Campbell’s stores became a gathering place for these families, and Ola Belle and her brother Alex started a country music park in Rising Sun in the 1940s called the New River Ranch (named after the New River that ran through their old home town of Lansing, NC). The park became a hotbed of local music-making and a destination for the biggest names in country and bluegrass – the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Johnny Cash, and others. Ola Belle & Alex and their family and friends worked as the house band, and the park – and a later park called Sunset Park, established by Ola Belle and her husband Bud in Oxford, PA – became a weekend destination for hundreds and thousands of local and city folk.

In the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, Ola Belle was booked by Pennsylvania state folklorist Henry Glassie, Maryland state folklorist Charley Camp, folklorist David Whisnant, and the Smithsonian’s Ralph Rinzler to perform at a number of folklife festivals that launched her, her husband Bud Reed, and son Dave Reed to national prominence in the folk music world. Ola Belle & Family recorded for Folkways and Rounder Records, and Ola Belle would eventually receive a National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Ola Belle’s son, Dave Reed, carries on his mother’s mountain clawhammer banjo style while also performing Christian bluegrass/country music in churches throughout the region. Ola Belle’s original songs have been recorded by many, including Marty Stuart’s top ten version of “High on a Mountain.” Her song “I’ve Endured” chronicles her experience of moving to Maryland and working as a house servant in Pennsylvania as a young girl. The song, which asks “how long can one endure?” is answered by the house painters, carpenters, and musicians of Cecil County and the surrounding region who carry on the singer’s legacy in their own music-making.

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