The Delmore Brothers – by John Lilly

“There was a big crowd there and everything was decorated and all fixed up like the president of the United States would be there. It was by far the biggest and most important contest in the entire country. People who had never been to a contest before gathered with the contestants at the Old Athens (Alabama) Agricultural School. My mother had made (guitar) cases for us out of cotton sacks we used during the picking season and we had our names on them spelled out in full. I painted them on the cases with pokeberry juice.

“You know how it

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History of Jimmy Rodgers, Blue Yodeler by John Lilly

“Folks everywhere knew about Jimmie Rodgers, and although some of them were reluctant at first to believe that he was really there in person, playing their own town, they soon learned that he was as much at home in Sweetwater or O’Donnell as in front of a Victor microphone or on the stage of some fancy big-city theater. Vernon Dalhart and Gene Austin might make a lot of records, but they didn’t come out into the boondocks to rub shoulders and tell bawdy jokes and laugh with the plain folks who bought them. The effects of the Blue Yodeler’s tours

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Carter Family Music & History by John Lilly

Carter Family photograph

Anita Carter was only four years old when she first saw Dr. John Romulus Brinkley in 1938 at a mansion in Del Rio, Texas, but it was a sight she never forgot: a goat-bearded, diamond-studded, round spectacled man, floating down the stairs with a pet monkey on his shoulder. Dr. Brinkley had built the most powerful radio station in the world, 500,000 watt XERA, and blanketed North America with sales pitches for snake oils and his quack remedies. A Chicago company, Consolidated Royal Chemical, also used XERA airwaves to sell patent medicines, and featured the best in country music entertainment

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The Coon Creek Girls by John Lilly

Rural Roots of Bluegrass

On the evening of June 8,1939 limousines began to deliver the cream of Washington D.C. society to the East Room of the White House. President and First Lady, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were entertaining King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England and had arranged a command performance in their honor. Chandeliers sparkled, jewelry glistened, and the royal guests sat in the front row with their hosts. Music for the evening was provided by the finest representatives of American culture, including opera tenor Lawrence Tibbett, classical musician Marion Anderson, the large and popular Kate Smith, and Alan Lomax singing Western

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How to Build Your Own “Hamdolin” by Wayne Erbsen

A chair rung joins the body to the neck.

Five or six years ago, I was rooting around in a wrecking yard near my home, searching amidst a sea of abandoned cars for an exhaust manifold for my old Dodge van. Call it fate (or just outright compulsive curiosity), but for some reason I happened to peer through the window of an old truck, and I spotted two empty ham cans sitting peacefully on the seat.

A chair rung joins the body to the neck.Well, right off, those pear-shaped tins reminded me of mandolins (we musicians tend to see music in almost everything), and that got me to thinking about the banjo-like instrument I’d once made out

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How to Play Mandolin

By Wayne Erbsen

NOTE: I wrote this article in back in 1980 for the Mother Earth News.

Some people call it a ‘tator bug because of its traditional round back, but most people know it as a mandolin. The instrument, a distant relative of the lute and (even more distantly) the guitar, was brought to America from eastern Europe during the last century. It wasn’t exactly an overnight success, though — probably because the import’s bowl-like back made it frustratingly hard to hang onto to play.

But in the late 1800’s, an instrument maker in Kalamazoo, Michigan, named Orville Gibson

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Clawhammer Banjo – A Simple Lesson

Red Rocking Chair tablature

By Wayne Erbsen

Here are the basic steps to learning old-time clawhammer banjo:

1. With your right hand over the strings of your banjo, curl your fingers up as if they were holding a baseball bat.

2. Strike down on the 1st string with the nail of your middle finger. (This is your melody note). With your hand still in motion, let your right thumb come to rest on the 5th string.

3. Then lift up you right hand and quickly brush down on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd strings with the nails of your middle and ring fingers. Again,

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Welcome, Closet Banjo Players!

By Wayne Erbsen

Come into the closet. As you nestle yourself in amongst the overcoats and umbrellas, you may be wondering why I called you here. A lot of people think that the only real banjo playing goes on at the Opry or at some far away stage with lights glittering from above. Not so. Some of the best banjo picking comes from inside of a well-stuffed closet. Of course, the sound does tend to get a little muffled in there, but the feeling is right, and the motives are pure. What closet picker could ever be accused of being

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The Ballad of Barbara Allen by Wayne Erbsen

No other old English or Scottish ballad even comes close to the popularity of “Barbara Allen.” Brought over to America by the earliest pioneers, its roots can be traced to at least the year 1666 when Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on January 2, “In perfect pleasure I was to hear her [Mrs. Knipp, an actress] sing, and especially her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen.” Even Abraham Lincoln sang “Barbara Allen” while growing up in rural Indiana.

In America, “Barbara Allen” was sometimes called “Barbara Allen’s Cruelty or the Young Man s Tragedy.” It was also known as

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The Art of Chewing Tobacco for the Complete Ignoramus

By Wayne Erbsen

Good News! I’ve discovered a way of increasing your speed on the banjo without resorting to harmful drugs or distasteful practicing. It doesn’t even require that you force yourself to change long-held habits of picking the banjo. After all, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, now can you? For some strange reason, this miracle solution to banjo speed has been omitted from all banjo instruction materials now on the market. The method, as you may have gathered from the title, consists of the venerable practice of chewing tobacco. Yes, that’s right folks. Chewing tobacco makes

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