Music of the Southern Appalachians by Mike Seeger

This area is to the west of the flat tidewater and piedmont areas of the Atlantic coastline and includes some broad valleys with good agricultural land, such as the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, as well as many smaller valleys, some just wide enough for a little bottomland next to a creek. The eastern mountains are not nearly as tall as the Rockies; they generally rise 1,000 to 3,000 feet with a maximum of 6,000 feet, and are forested with a variety of deciduous and evergreen trees and many smaller bushes and flowers. Some mountains are green, rolling hills, but in

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Short Life of Trouble ~ Music, Lyrics, and the Joy of Sad Music

By Wayne Erbsen

This is an excerpt from Rural Roots of Bluegrass.

A while back I was invited to bring an instrument to a potluck party of some friends of mine in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. I brought along my fiddle in the hopes of finding some bluegrass musicians to jam with.

When I arrived at the converted barn where the party was being held, I saw a guitar learning up against the corner, so I sidled up to the guitar’s owner and introduced myself. As I shook howdy with him I asked him what kind of music

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Wiley & Zeke Morris, The Morris Brothers

Rural Roots of Bluegrass

It all started with mama. It seemed like she could make music on about anything with strings on it and some things that didn’t, like the french harp. There never was enough time for mama to play, what with raising six rambunctious sons. But often on Saturday night she would put her work aside and get together with her two brothers, Rome and Joe, to make music. Joe played banjo in the old clawhammer style, and Rome played the fiddle. In addition to the hoedown square dance tunes, Rome was known to have played some beautiful waltz music on the

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Hank Williams’ Lost Charleston Show By John Lilly

When he left his Alabama home on December 30, 1952, Hank Williams had his sights set on West Virginia. He was billed as the headline act for a gala “Western Style Revue” at Charleston’s Municipal Auditorium and was scheduled to perform two shows here on New Year’s Eve night. Sadly, he never arrived.

Little has been written about this Charleston engagement. Most authors, researchers, and fans have shifted their attention instead to Canton, Ohio, where Hank was expected to perform the following day. On January 1, 1953, in Canton, the first public announcement was made about the passing of this

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New Release: Easy 2-Chord Songs for Mandolin

Many folks are on the lookout for easy and foolproof ways to learn to play their favorite musical instrument. Who can blame them? Everyone wants a free ride down music alley. These kind of folks get lured to websites that make grand promises of quick success if you try their method. Not being afraid to jump on this bandwagon, I’m working on a new book entitled Easy 2-Chord Songs for Mandolin

***This book will be available in late February 2018. Email us at info@nativeground.com if you want us to let you know when it comes out. ***

It doesn’t

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Samantha Bumgarner: The Original Banjo Pickin’ Girl

This article was written by Charles K Wolfe.

One of the sillier myths being bandied about these days by the Nashville establishment involves the role of women in the history of country music. It is said, down along Music Row and in the August pages of Country Music Magazine, that before the advent of Kitty Wells in the late 1940’s, women had little to do with country music’s devel­opment: they were cast as only pretty faces along to dress up the act. This, of course, is nonsense, and an account of the significant women artists who contributed to

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Appalachian Tradition Music, A Short History by Debby McClatchy

MOST Europeans consider the Appalachians to be mountains of the southeastern region of the United States, but in truth they encompass eighteen states, reaching from Maine to Georgia, and include, among others, the Berkshires of Connecticut, the Green Mountains of New Hampshire, the Catskills of New York, the Blue Ridge of Virginia, and the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Southern Appalachia includes three hundred counties covering most of West Virginia and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Virginia, an area called today the Southern Highlands or Upland South, or, in Colonial times, the ‘Back Country’.

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Rural Black String Band Music

By Charles Wolfe

Originally published in Black Music Research Newsletter 4, No. 2 (Fall 1980). Used by permission of Mary Dean Wolfe.

“The first time I think I ever seen Arnold Schultz … this square dance was at Rosine, Kentucky, and Arnold and two more colored fellows come up there and played for the dance. They had a guitar, banjo, and fiddle. Ar­nold played the guitar but he could play the fiddle-numbers like Sally Goodin. People loved Arnold so well all through Kentucky there; if he was playing a guitar they’d go gang up around him till he would

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The West Virginia Coon Hunters

Coon Hunters 2

The West Virginia Coon Hunters-On the Trail of a Lost String Band by John Lilly

Not long ago, two men from West Virginia — both fine guitarists — were enjoying a visit to Nashville. During part of their stay, they browsed some of the big record stores in Music City, marveling at the wealth of country music LP’s, CD’s, and cassettes offered for sale — recordings that they could never find in the stores back home.

Robert Shafer, a national champion flatpicker from Elkview, casually picked up a release of vintage old-time music. On the back of the jacket,

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Diamond Joe

Gene Autry with an acoustic guitar

By Wayne Erbsen

I’ve always been a sucker for a good ole cowboy song. This isn’t because I was born and raised on a cattle ranch in Texas; I’m actually a native of southern California. Growing up in the late ’40s and early ’50s, I was raised on a diet of TV westerns like Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Maverick, Rawhide, The Rifleman, Bonanza, and Have Gun – Will Travel. Actually, I was listening to The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke on the radio before they became popular TV shows. My favorite movies were Shane

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