| July, 2001
Calhoun folk music icon Phoeba Cottrell Parsons is dead at 93. More famously recognized for her
celtic-music talents around the country than in Calhoun, she has been admired and
respected in mountain music circles for many years. Pheoba was taken to Roane General
Hospital from her country home on Bear Run in southern Calhoun last week, complaining of
heart problems, according to her son Eugene "Tubecheck" Parsons.
Pheoba said she would "Get up and dance a little..."
The Parson's clan plays for family reunion
Only last week Pheoba was scheduled to come to her son's house on Nicut to be
interviewed and photographed for a series of articles about Calhoun musicians. The article
will now be done posthumously. She was of the Parsons, Cottrell and McCumbers clan,
whose talent seems to have flowed in the blood for several generations since they first
settled the West Fork country of southern Calhoun in the early 1800's.
Last year at the Parson's Reunion at Arnoldsburg, Pheoba offered to "Get up and dance a
little, if you have a little time to wait," she said.
| 
