By Nancy Cardwell
Thanks to a substantial donation last year from Jim and Kathy Kortge of Fenton, Michigan, the new Gloria Belle Memorial Scholarship will launch in 2025, with the first recipient to be announced in July.
The scholarship, created by IBMA Foundation board member and band leader, Becky Buller, will provide assistance with college or technical training for bluegrass musicians and singers, or for individuals studying behind-the-scenes subjects like sound engineering, broadcasting, instrument building, event production, photography, videography, publicity, marketing, graphic design, or instrument building.
Jim Kortge started on a musical path as a big band-style guitarist, joining his first group at age 15. “By age 65 I had nearly worn out the thumb joint on my left hand, playing with three bands at once,” he said. “I decided I was done with that,” he laughed. “It was too much! I had a five-string banjo in high school; I used to play Pete Seeger style during the folk boom. I would hear bluegrass being played, and I about went nuts trying to figure out how they were doing it! I saw the New Grass Revival in Michigan in 1971, and then when the movie, Bonnie and Clyde, came out, I heard Earl Scruggs playing ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown.’ I decided before I die, I was going to play like that!”
In 1974 Jim took a six-week group banjo class at a community school. After jamming with his instructor, Dennis, and his wife, Mary for several weeks, they asked Jim to join their band, the Acme Bluegrass Company. A steady calendar of gigs followed from 1977-82. When the fiddle player and the mandolin player’s marriage broke up, the band did too. Jim put the banjo away and didn’t play it for 30 years.
HIs renewed interest in playing led Jim to replace his Japanese instrument with a used Ome banjo from Janet Davis Music. Jim and his wife, Kathy, got involved in playing and listening to bluegrass again. Kathy started out on mandolin, “but she wore out the thumb on her right hand holding a pick,” Jim said, “so she decided to learn to play the Dobro, which would be easier on her hands. We went to the Kaufman Kamp in Maryville, Tennessee for the first time in 2010.”
Through music camps, lessons, and jam sessions, Jim continued to learn from an impressive list of banjo masters. “During my ‘second’ banjo career (after 65),” Jim said, “I probably learned the most from Gary ‘Biscuit’ Davis. We hit it off, and we would sit and pick after classes at music camps.” Kortge also learned from Jens Kruger, Ned Luberecki, Alan Munde, Bill Evans, and Murphy Henry.
Jim worked as an engineer at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, Michigan, for 40 years, rising to the position of Internal Control Specialist at the laboratory before retiring in 1998. “I was the head crash test dummy,” he joked. “I worked at the lab where we did all the safety testing for the corporation—things like steering columns and bumpers. We had full scale simulators—sleds, that replicated the internal environment of a car. We did a thousand tests a year, and I ran the part with the crash test dummies for 12 years.” In fact, Jim’s team developed the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) dummies that were eventually adopted by the entire automatic industry as a standard. Before that, an engineer would ride on a vehicle’s running board and then leap off at the last second before it hit a hard barrier. “My fingerprints are all over those dummies,” Jim said.
Jim and Kathy Kortge first met Becky Buller when she was playing fiddle and singing with Brooke and Darin Aldridge at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. Jim inquired about fiddle lessons, asking if Becky ever taught at the Kaufman Kamp. She had been hired to teach there the following year, and a long friendship began.
After learning about the Bluegrass, Old Time, and Roots Music Studies program at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, where Becky had gone to college, Jim and Kathy ended up funding the Michigan Bass Player Scholarship at ETSU that would help Katelynn Lowe (Bohn) earn her degree and then go on to perform professionally with the Tray Wellington Band for three years. An additional donation enabled four more students to get an education at ETSU in the field of bluegrass music.
“I’m a firm believer that if you have resources, you need to do good in the world,” Jim said. “I heard about the Gloria Belle Memorial Scholarship from Becky Buller. I did some research on Gloria Belle and agreed this woman needed to be recognized. I watched the video of Murphy Henry interviewing Gloria Belle. Becky had raised $4,000 after three years, and at that rate it was going to take several more years to create an endowed scholarship. I had some money from an IRA required minimum distribution, and I’d rather give it away than pay taxes on it!” Jim said. “When the dirt hits the side of your coffin, it’s too late. I would rather spend the money now and know that people are appreciative if it while I’m still around.”
If you run into Jim Kortge at a festival, ask him to play an original, “Waterfall,” for you. Or one called “No More C in Me,” written in 2017 after completing six months of chemotherapy for lymphoma. He is a survivor. Jim plays with a local Monday night group called Crossfire that does a lot of bluegrass gospel music. He says his banjo style is an amalgamation of musicians like Biscuit Davis and Alan Munde who have influenced him, along with his own sound that’s developed over the years. “I play a lot of chords when I’m backing someone up,” he said, “which probably comes from the big band influence.” Jim also plays viola in the Fenton Community Orchestra. Playing viola is something he’s done since 1957, in the seventh grade. He feels like every fiddle player owes it to him or herself to check out the viola at some point, to hear what the C string can offer. Jim gave one of his violas to Buller, which she played on a song on her 2022 Christmas album, The Perfect Gift.
When they heard about the new IBMA Foundation college scholarship in memory of band leader and multi-instrumentalist Gloria Belle, a former member of Jimmy Martin and his Sunny Mountain Boys, the Kortges were anxious to help scholarship founder Becky Buller meet the initial endowment goal.
The Kortges embody the spirit of the IBMA Foundation, whose goal is to make the future of bluegrass music brighter. The only thing more joyful than playing bluegrass music is sharing the opportunity to play and learn with someone else. We appreciate the positive influence Jim and Kathy Kortge have had on the bluegrass music education community in the past, and we celebrate the students and their music who will be supported by their generosity in the future.
RETURN to the January 2025 issue of The Cornerstone.
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