Otto Wood, the Bandit - by Trevor McKenzie (Paperback)

About the Book

"Legions of bluegrass fans know the name Otto Wood (1893-1930) from a ballad made popular by Doc Watson, telling the story of Wood's crimes and violent death. However, few know the history of this Appalachian figure beyond the larger-than-life version heard in song. Trevor McKenzie reconstructs Wood's life, tracing how a Wilkes County juvenile delinquent became a celebrated folk hero"--

Book Synopsis

Legions of bluegrass fans know the name Otto Wood (1893-1930) from a ballad made popular by Doc Watson, telling the story of Wood's crimes and violent death. However, few know the history of this Appalachian figure beyond the larger-than-life version heard in song. Trevor McKenzie reconstructs Wood's life, tracing how a Wilkes County juvenile delinquent became a celebrated folk hero. Throughout his short life, Wood was jailed for numerous offenses, stole countless automobiles, lost his left hand, and made eleven escapes from five state penitentiaries, including four from the North Carolina State Prison after a 1923 murder conviction. An early master of controlling his own narrative in the media, Wood appealed to the North Carolina public as a misunderstood, clever antihero. In 1930, after a final jailbreak, police killed Wood in a shootout. The ballad bearing his name first appeared less than a year later.

Using reports of Wood's exploits from contemporary newspapers, his self-published autobiography, prison records, and other primary sources, Trevor McKenzie uses this colorful story to offer a new way to understand North Carolina--and arguably the South as a whole--during this era of American history.

Review Quotes

"Suitable for inclusion in any academic or special library with a focus on North Carolina folklore or popular history in the early twentieth century."--North Carolina Libraries

"Otto Wood, the Bandit is an entertaining and valuable contribution to the histories of Appalachia and the American South and to ballad scholarship, and a timely reminder of the puzzling and alarming human propensity for admiring, openly or in secret, and from a safe distance of time or space, people who offer perhaps some measure of vicarious catharsis for our own darker impulses, people we enjoy talking, reading, or singing about, but would not much care to meet at a family reunion or on a dark country road."--North Carolina Historical Review

"This simple and efficient book is a linear timeline of one man who was praised for his misguided ingenuity, vilified and eventually killed for his crimes, and cemented his legacy as a part of North Carolina's zeitgeist."--North Carolina Literary Review

" A deeply researched account that strives to establish the true story behind a crime spree that has been immortalized in a much-played and much-recorded bluegrass ballad . . . engaging [and] thoughtful."--Southern Review of Books

"McKenzie brings a unique, musician's perspective to the book . . . [and] deftly threads the needle between fact and fancy, telling the story of the man behind the song."--New York Journal of Books

About the Author

Trevor McKenzie is an archivist and musician living in Boone, North Carolina.

David Holt is a four-time Grammy Award-winning bluegrass musician, storyteller, and historian. He lives in the mountains of North Carolina.