DESCRIPTION:
Ola Belle Reed was born Ola Wave Campbell on August 17, 1916, in Lansing, North Carolina. She was one of thirteen children born to Arthur Harrison Campbell and Ella May Osborne Campbell. The Campbell family ancestors had moved to the New River Valley of Western North Carolina sometime around the 1760's. Arthur Harrison was an educated man who spent his life as a schoolteacher. He also owned a general store and was a dedicated farmer during summer months on his farm in the New River Valley. The Great Depression brought a huge economic burden on the large Campbell family, and they followed many Appalachian mountain people to Northeastern Maryland, where there was fertile farmland and it seemed easier to secure jobs. Music was an integral part of the cultural heritage on both sides of Ola Belle's family. Her grandfather Alexander Bolivar Campbell was an early Primitive Baptist preacher and an accomplished fiddle player. Her father played fiddle, banjo, guitar, and organ and formed a string band, The New River Boys and Girls with his brother Oliver Dockery, known as "Doc" and sister Ellen in 1910. An uncle, on her mother's side, Herb Osborne, sang mining songs made popular in the coalfields of West Virginia. Her grandmother and mother sang ballads and topical songs in the traditional Appalachian style...Ola Belle's autobiographical song "I've Endured" perhaps best sums up her personal tenacity: "I've worked for the rich, I've lived with the poor; Lord, I've seen many a heartache, there'll be many more; I've lived, loved and sorrowed, been to success's door; I've endured, I've endured. - Thomas Polis
(LOC, Robert Frank)