Description

Bill Hensley (1923-1984) was a remarkable banjo player and ballad singer from Wayne County, West Virginia. He grew up in a musical family, listening as his dad sat on their front porch playing banjo and entertaining passersby on the road across the river. Bill’s hard-driving banjo style employs flurries of pull-offs and a wide range of unusual tunings. He put his own stamp on song lyrics, too, often adding a surprise twist to a ballad’s ending. (His House Carpenter’s ship collides with an iceberg, and his Pretty Polly concludes with the original verse: ‘Polly, pretty Polly, has gone to her rest, poor little Willie is in hell now I guess.’) In 1973, Bill moved to Tucson, Arizona, where he met and mentored Southwest folklorist and banjo player Big Jim Griffith. This release provides a window into Bill’s unique artistry and musicianship through a diverse selection of ballads, songs and instrumentals recorded by Jim Griffith between 1981 and 1984. — Roman Barten-Sherman