The IBMA Foundation is pleased to announce the creation of the Gloria Belle Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship is named in memory of Gloria Bernadette Flickinger (1939-2023), best remembered for her work with Jimmy Martin & the Sunny Mountain Boys from 1968 to 1975.
“Although we were both part of the Daughters of Bluegrass projects, I never got to know Gloria Belle personally,” said IBMA Foundation board member Becky Buller. “But as I’ve studied her story and work, I’ve come to greatly admire her passion for bluegrass, her musicianship, her sweet spirit, and her tenacity, which is why I set out to establish this scholarship in early 2023.”
Gloria’s first public performance was at age three on a church radio program in Frederick, Maryland. By her early teens, she played guitar, piano, drums, mandolin, and banjo. She dropped out of high school at age 15, taking odd jobs to pay the bills. Her first professional gig came six years later when she was invited to join the cast of Cas Walker’s Farm And Home radio show in Knoxville, Tennessee. Cas dubbed her “Gloria Belle” because he couldn’t pronounce Flickinger.
“To listen to Gloria Belle tell her life story was inspiring,” said Murphy Hicks Henry, author of Pretty Good For A Girl: Women In Bluegrass. “In addition to appearing regularly on the Cas Walker Show, Gloria Belle performed with Betty Amos and her All-Girl Band, led the group Gloria Belle and the (all male) Green Mountain Travelers, recorded a solo album in 1967 (the first to feature a woman playing a lead instrument!), and finally formed her own band, Gloria Belle and Tennessee Sunshine, in 1990. In chronicling her life in my book, I realized that Gloria Belle was literally going where no other woman in bluegrass had gone before: she was carving a completely new path. Other women would follow, but she was the first.”
“I think it was at Sunset Park in Pennsylvania where I first met and jammed with Gloria Belle,” said Fred Bartenstein, chair/president of the IBMA Foundation board. “I was in high school at the time. I visited her and her family several times in Hanover (known as the ‘Snack Food Capital of the World’), where she was living and working in a potato chip factory. She gave me a copy of her first Rebel album (1968), and we exchanged letters during the time she was touring with the all-female Bluegrass Kit Kats (terrible name!). Shortly thereafter she joined Jimmy Martin, and we connected frequently at the many festivals I emceed. I remember her as sweet, generous, and single-mindedly focused on a performing career in bluegrass, despite many roadblocks and little financial remuneration. It is most appropriate that we honor her with an endowed scholarship fund, preserving her name and legacy forever.”
In 1999 Gloria Belle was honored with the IBMA’s Distinguished Achievement Award, along with two Recorded Event of the Year awards for her participation in Follow Me Back to the Fold: A Tribute to Women in Bluegrass (2001) and Proud to be a Daughter of Bluegrass (2009), on Rebel and Blue Circle Records.
“I always treated Gloria Belle like bluegrass royalty . . . because she was,” said Nancy Cardwell Webster, executive director of the IBMA Foundation. “That ‘She Persisted’ t-shirt that was popular a few years ago could have been inspired by Gloria Belle. She was one of the first women in bluegrass to tour, perform, and record nationally and internationally in well-known groups as a side musician who was not a part of a family band or married to someone in the band. She played as well as she sang, pulled her weight in bands, and was a role model and inspiration for all the great female instrumentalists, singers, and band leaders who have come along in bluegrass music in later years. She will not be forgotten. I’m very pleased that my friend, Gloria Belle, will be remembered with an IBMA Foundation college scholarship.”
The Gloria Belle Memorial Scholarship is currently in the fundraising phase. To date, approximately $5,000 has been donated toward a goal of $20,000, at which point it will be endowed and able to give out an award of $1,000 each year indefinitely.
Scholarship applications will be available to any student enrolled in a college, tech, or trade school who is also engaged in the bluegrass music community, either as a musician/singer or behind the scenes as a DJ, event producer, graphic designer, videographer, photographer, luthier, etc.
If you would like to help the IBMA Foundation honor the memory and music of Gloria Belle by encouraging the next generation of bluegrass music, please consider making a tax-deductible donation of any amount by clicking here.
For donations of $100 or more, we would like to thank you with a Gloria Belle Memorial Scholarship t-shirt. Click here for more information about the scholarship. Click here to make a donation of $100 or more to get a Gloria Belle t-shirt.
To hear Gloria’s story in her own words, click here. For a complete list of all scholarships, awards, and grants available from the IBMA Foundation, go here.
Visit the Gloria Belle Memorial Scholarship page on this website here.
RETURN to the June 2024 issue of The Cornerstone.
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