The Ross County Farmers – 1948 Radio Shows (FRC307)
By Betty Seymour
Phone conversation w/ Betty Seymour 2/27/07 (Sue Goehring)
Visit w/ Betty Seymour 03-08-07 (Lynn Frederick) Continue reading
Category Archives: Old Time Music
Ashby Family History
John Ashby and the Free State Ramblers (FRC108)
By Ms. Nancy M. Sessions
Here is my personal Family History, and memories that have been told to me, by my Mother, Mrs. Agnes Adelia Ashby Sessions, as well as her Sister, my Aunt, Mrs. Marie Elizabeth Scott Ashby Small, as well! I have a good, and a long memory! I am only very happy that it serves a wonderful purpose; to give out history about my Dear Uncle John C. Ashby! Continue reading
The Ashby Family and Friends of Fauquier County Virginia
John Ashby John Ashby and the Free State Ramblers (FRC108)
By Sandy Hofferth (original article appeared in the Old Time Herald)
Skip Ashby, a winner at the 2005 Appalachian String Band Music Festival at Clifftop, WV, is the latest in a long line of fiddlers going back several generations and a link in a chain of musicians in the Warrenton area of Fauquier County, VA, that goes back a century and a half. The Free State Ramblers, one of the longest running bands ever, started in the 1930s and are still active Continue reading
Esker Hutchins plays Cumberland Gap (Listed as “Unknown Tune #2”)
Esker Hutchins (FRC107)
by Jody Stecher (Fiddler Magazine)
Esker Hutchins. What a great name; sounds like someone taking a bite out of a fiddle. His music did have a lot of bite and crunch actually, and when he had a good band behind him, Esker Hutchins of Surry County, North Carolina played some of the most exciting music I’ve ever heard. Playing solo he was more relaxed but still he had that powerful and incisive bowing arm. Continue reading
Rambling Reminisces of How I Came to Play Old-Time Music
Chirps Smith (FRC608)
By Lynn “Chirps” Smith – November 15, 1995
I was born October 11, 1952 in Pekin, IL. I am the fifth generation of my family in Illinois. My great-great grandfather Mervill A. Smith moved to southern Illinois, from New York state, in the late 1830’s and settled around Mt. Vernon in Jefferson County. When I was very young our family moved to Granite City, near St. Louis, MO. I lived there until 1963 when we moved to Continue reading
The Indian Creek Delta Boys
See The Indian Creek Delta Boys (FRC607)
Known for the many fine and obscure fiddle tunes learned from senior players in their own geographical area, the Indian Creek Delta Boys of Charleston, Illinois were an influential string band from the 1970s through the 1990s. Continue reading
The Complete History of the Plank Road String Band and the Lexington, VA Music Scene
Plank Road (FRC606)
By Brad Leftwich, Al Tharp and Odell McGuire
Brad Leftwich’s Memories
In the early 1970s it seemed like communities of people who loved and lived old-time music and dancing were popping up like mushrooms all over the country. One of the most vibrant was in Lexington, Virginia. I ran across a bunch of musicians from Lexington at the 1972 fiddlers convention in Independence, Va. (Wade Ward’s stomping grounds) and had such a great time Continue reading
The Hurricane Ridgerunners
The Hurricane Ridgerunners (FRC604)
Mark Graham
Mark Graham has been playing old-time music on the Marine Band harmonica for over 30 years. In that time he has played hundreds of concerts and dances and performed with many of the luminaries of Southern old-time and bluegrass music including Tim O’Brien, Laurie Lewis, Dirk Powell, The Horseflies, The Chicken Chokers, Tom Sauber, Pete Sutherland, Bad Livers and Continue reading
The Chicken Chokers
The Chicken Chokers (FRC603)
The Chicken Chokers were an old-timey string band from the Boston area who intersected their roots influences with reggae, punk, and rap. Fiddler Chad Crumm and multi-instrumentalists Paul Strother, Taylor Smith, and Jim Reidy released two albums on Rounder, 1987’s Shoot Your Radio and Old Time Music in 1990. But when Crumm departed for New York City, the group Continue reading
Richie Stearns’ Autobiography
See The Horse Flies (FRC602) and The Renegades (FRC605)
Banjo Player with “the Horse Flies” and “the Renegades”
I got into playing music at 14 in junior high, with a pack of like-minded hippie kids. (A typical beginning, eh?) Except the kind of music we were exposed to was string band and jug band music. Locally there were some very active bands in these genres, while on our record players we had Lou Reed, Bob Marley, the Beatles, the Stones, Doc Watson, Jimmy Rogers, Hank Continue reading
The Horse Flies
The Horse Flies (FRC602)
By Judy Hyman
The Horse Flies came together in 1979 in Ithaca, NY. The initial lineup (Judy Hyman and Mike Scott fiddles; Jeff Claus, guitar; John Hoffmann, banjo; and Molly Stouten, bass), played fiddle tunes and old songs at regional festivals and square dances. By the early 980s they settled into a 4-piece quasi-traditional old-time string band with Judy Hyman on fiddle, Richie Stearns on banjo, Jeff Claus on guitar and banjo uke, and John Hayward on upright bass. Continue reading
Play-Party Songs and Dances in Texas
See Texas Fiddle Bands (FRC409) and P.T. Bell (FRC410)
From Bill Owens “Tell Me a Story, Sing Me a Song”
In Texas, as in other parts of the frontier west of the Alleghenies, the settlers were generally liberal in matters of personal belief and religious freedom. Continue reading
The Nee Ningy Band
By Bob Hudson
If a band is defined more by its sound than by its songs, then the Nee Ningy Band was in a class by itself. Most old-time or blues bands, while unique in their own way, sound at least a little like every other old-time or blues band. While the musical influences on the Nee Ningy Band are easy to distinguish—blues, Cajun, Celtic, and so on—they just didn’t sound like anyone else. Not then, not since. Continue reading
The Music of Walter Raleigh Babson (1900-1987)
By Andy Cahan
Walter Raleigh Babson was among the few banjo and fiddle players from coastal North Carolina still living in the late twentieth century. Originally from Ash, in Brunswick County, he lived at Wrightsville Beach for about the last 25 years of his life. He worked for many years as a carpenter and was a skilled woodworker as well. In earlier times he worked in various trades Continue reading
Tommy Jarrell
By Ray Alden
Thomas Jefferson Jarrell was born in 1901, the son of Ben and Susan Jarrell. His father was the fiddler for Da Costa Woltz and his Southern Broadcasters, a string band that recorded nine 78 rpm records for Gennett in 1927. Just as his father eclipsed his brother Charlie as a well known fiddler, Tommy would surpass all of his ten siblings in music. Oddly enough, Ben did not push Continue reading
Tommy Jarrell at Pinewoods Camp
By Jerry Epstein
I first went to Pinewoods Camp Folk Music Week in 1965 — a life changing experience in more ways than I can count. It was the first time I had an opportunity to live with source traditional artists, and I had enough sense to realize that there was something special here that would not be found on the coffee house circuit. I met Jean Ritchie in 1965, Louis Killen in 1966, and Norman Kennedy in 1967. Continue reading
Rector Hicks
About Rector Hicks
Rector Hicks was born out in the country around Chloe, Calhoun County, West Virginia in 1914. Although his father played mouth harp, no one in his immediate family was a fiddler. Rector learned from fiddlers in the area, beginning to play the instrument when he was about ten years old. Rector said that he never played for dances, a typical training ground for a country Continue reading
Dink Roberts
By Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide
The titles of tunes this historic North Carolina banjo man recorded evoke the rowdy milieu he came out of : “High Sheriff,” “Old Corn Liquor,” “Black Annie,” “Roustabout,” “Fox Chase,” and so forth. But his importance as a link to Afro-American traditions as well as Appalachian styles means his music has been the subject of intense study by archivists and ethnomusicologists. Continue reading
Union Grove Musicians
Bob Douglas
by Paul Wadey
Robert McKinley Douglas, fiddle player: born Pikeville, Tennessee 9 March 1900; married (two sons, and one daughter deceased); died Dayton, Tennessee 2 May 2001. Continue reading
An Evening with Lee Roy Stoneking, with a Few Unexpurgated and Incomplete Comments on Field Recording Traditional Artists During the Heyday of the Folk Festival and Fiddlers’ Contest Revival
By Howard (Rusty) Marshall
On a chilly, clear evening in November 1975, I had the opportunity to record and photograph the fiddler Lee Roy Stoneking at his home in Clinton, Missouri, a few miles from the farm where he was born. Stoneking had invited his son, Fred, to come play backup guitar, but Fred couldn’t make it. But his daughter, Judy Vanderville, was handy, and the session turned out nicely, with Continue reading