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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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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Why Are There So Many Banjo Jokes?

By Wayne Erbsen

Maybe youโ€™ve heard the one about the banjo player who always sits in a level spot so the tobacco juice will run out of both sides of his mouth.

Or the guy who makes a perfect score by throwing a banjo in a dumpster without hitting the sides. He earned extra points for landing on top of an accordion.

Or what has 16 legs and 3 teeth? The front row of a banjo concert.

Or what do you call a banjo player in a three-piece suit? A defendant.

The fact is, people love making jokes about banjos

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Dock Boggs – Only Remembered For What He Has Done

By Jack Wright

Originally published in The Old-Time Herald, Volume 6, Number 5, 1998ย 

Introduction

Dock Boggs’ 1927 recordings of raw, powerful singing and distinctive banjo-playing have moved and influenced musicians, fans and scholars ever since their release. His songs that became especially well known include Country Blues, Sugar Baby, Oh Death, Prodigal Son, and Wise County Jail. With the release this year of the CD of Dock’s material, and the planned release on Smithsonian Folkways, his music is crossing new lines and reaching larger audiences.

DocBoggsANDwoman_editedDock was a coal miner in southwestern Virginia and

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How to Jam on the Mandolin

By Wayne Erbsen

By now youโ€™ve learned to play a few tunes on the mandolin. You know some of your basic chords, and youโ€™d love to be able to play with other musicians in a jam, but youโ€™re โ€œchicken.โ€ Thatโ€™s because up to now, youโ€™ve just been playing by yourself in the closet, so to speak.

Well, it may be time to walk proudly out of the closet and into the limelight. Or, on the other hand, you may need to go deeper into your closet, pulling a coat down over your head (just kidding).

Letโ€™s take this little

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Civil War Music

As we approach the 150th or sesquicentennial anniversary of the start of the Civil War, letโ€™s pause to remember an aspect of this tragic period beyond the roar of the cannons and the movement of soldiers across the battlefield. For soldiers on both sides of this conflict, it was the music that helped them carry on. No less an authority than General Robert E. Lee said โ€œI donโ€™t believe we can have an army without music.โ€

Music touched practically every aspect of soldiersโ€™ lives. They were awakened in the morning with the first call of the bugle, riveted into step

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eBook and MP3 FAQ

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We currently offer PDF versions of most of our titles on this website. You can also find many of our titles available on Amazon Kindle as well.

What devices can I read your eBooks on?ย 

The wonderful thing about PDFs is that you can read them on any device: your computer, laptop, tablet, iPad, eReader (Kindle, Nook, etc), or smart phone. You can even print them out!

I bought one of your music instruction books but I don’t have a CD player. How do I access the audio online?

You can find all of the

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