In 1927 and 1928, Victor Records sent Ralph Peer to Bristol, Tennessee, to record country musicians, in what became known as the Bristol Sessions. In 1987, the Country Music Foundation… Read More →
Sidetrack My Engine (Nora Brown)
For the first five years or so that Nora Brown was performing, starting around 2014, she was billed as “Little Nora Brown.” During those years, she won first place junior… Read More →
Attic #24: Gone to Texas (and Oklahoma)
It is said that in the 19th century when many Americans left the places they had settled and emigrated to what was then the Republic of Texas, they would write… Read More →
Arthur “Cush” Holston, Florida’s Fiddling Fisherman
“Do I resemble myself this morning?” The elderly gentleman greeted Thelma Boltin as she pulled into the yard of his shack one day in 1959. She had come to invite… Read More →
The Old Originals Project: A Look Back after 50 years
“The old tunes, like the old originals, they are all about gone.” This is the way fiddler N.H. Mills of Boones Mill, Virginia, put it to us that summer day… Read More →
Songs that Tell Stories: Thomas Burton and the Appalachian Ballad Tradition
Thomas Burton’s Oral History, as told to Ted Olson In November 2016 I interviewed Dr. Thomas Burton, hoping to generate a written narrative relating his key experiences in studying, researching,… Read More →
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An Interview with George Wilson
George Wilson has been a mainstay of the contra dance scene in the Northeast for four decades. He has played fiddle with one of the premiere dance bands, Fennig’s All… Read More →
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A True Adventure in Field Recording
Northern Oklahoma is nearly a perfect grid. You can measure your progress through it by counting section lines, a gravel road marking each mile. It was 10 miles north from… Read More →
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Lloyd Jeptha “Jabe” Dillon
This article is excerpted and adapted from the book Fiddle Tunes from Mississippi: Commercial and Informal Recordings, 1920 – 2018, by Harry Bolick and Tony Russell, published in 2021 by… Read More →
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I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy: Urban French-American Fiddling from the 1930s-1950s. (Frank Ferrel)
Even the most utilitarian fiddle tune books carry on the stories of the musicians who played the tunes, the listeners and dancers who wanted to hear them more than once,… Read More →
Festival Season (Dolly and the Devil)
Clifftop was cancelled due to the pandemic in both 2020 and 2021. We all missed it, but Rick and Joanne Davidson did something about it: they assembled 18 good friends… Read More →
The Village Out West: The Lost Tapes of Alan Oakes
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken.” Hearing these CDs for the first time has been an incredible experience… Read More →
Brandywine Ridge (The Piros)
I suspect that nearly all parents who bring their children to old-time festivals dream of having their own family band. Mark and Amy Piro made it happen, and it sure… Read More →
Everywhere You Go (Bruce Molsky)
When a music-loving boy from the Bronx was 11 years old, he asked for and received a guitar — his first instrument. He would grow up to become a world-renowned… Read More →
Home to Stay (South Carolina Broadcasters)
A reviewer could be forgiven for being confused about this band’s name. First, South Carolina is not as well known as a hotspot for old-time and early transitional bluegrass as… Read More →
fRoots Radio
We were sorry to learn that shortly before the pandemic, the folk music magazine fRoots ceased publication after 40 years. The fRoots Radio podcast, however, is still on the air,… Read More →
