A Magazine Dedicated to Old-Time Music
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
All images from the collection of Paul Wells. Organologists—scholars who study and classify musical instruments—lump them into large, broad generic groupings. All stringed instruments, for example, are classed as “chordophones,”… Read More →
This spring the Great Smoky Mountains Association released a new podcast mini-series, Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music. The series, they write, which is hosted by Drs. William Turner and… Read More →
In June 1984, newly hired as a ranger by the National Park Service, I was assigned to work for the Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, North Carolina. My vocation… Read More →
Jimmy Boyd (photo by Sam Linkous) Jimmy Boyd believes in the power of genetics. “There’s something about us Boyds,” he told me, “that just put rhythm in us. My daddy… Read More →
Lena Bare Turbyfill (photo courtesy of Elizabeth Gwyn) Listening to field recordings can be an experience of intimacy and distance at the same time: intimacy because we hear the unedited… Read More →
Given the focus of the Old-Time Herald on string band music, it naturally has been appropriate that in most of our visits to the Attic we’ve spent the time looking… Read More →
November 9, 1915-March 28, 2015 If you have ever played or heard “John Short’s Tune,” a lively polka, then you have met my father, Erwin A. Thompson. He passed the… Read More →
One of the popular, recurring topics of discussion, debate, disagreement, and disputation among fans of old-time music is the question of when guitars began to be used as accompanying instruments… Read More →
Old-time music experienced a great loss in February 2020, with the passing of banjo player Mac Benford. Mac had submitted this essay to the OTH a few months earlier, and… Read More →
by Dan Foster Note: This article was written in part to celebrate the release of a new CD of old-time fiddling from the Field Recorders’ Collective, Teodar Jackson with T.… Read More →
Early Country Music, from the Top Down Before the debut broadcast of Country Music, filmmaker Ken Burns’s paean to American exceptionalism, that popular music genre was beloved among its core… Read More →
The North Carolina Arts Council has recently completed work on its Millennial Traditional Artists Directory, an effort to promote the work of young traditional artists in North Carolina. The project… Read More →
