That Rural Rhythm
“I feel like calling Willard Hodgin the McGonagall of old-time music,” music historian Tony Russell writes. “William Topaz McGonagall of Dundee, Scotland (if you are not familiar with him), was one of the most...
Oldtime on the Prairie: a review of Farmhouse Fiddlers
Between 1976 and 1985 fiddler and ethnographer Philip Martin conducted extensive interviews with more than 100 older-generation fiddlers and musicians in his local south-west Wisconsin. Martin played music with them, collected old photographs, and...
Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance
A friend once quipped that the name of the main Facebook page for the music we all love should be retitled, "Dedicated to Narcissistic Escapism". It's true when we get together in collective celebration,...
Banjo Billy’s “500 Fiddle Tunes: Old-Time Archive”
When I was nine years old, my fiddle teacher sent me to a workshop from the “Famous Fiddlin’ Banjo Billy Mathews.” Having played less than a year and being deathly shy, the workshop was...
Depression Era Country Guitar
While it would be a fool's errand to try and count all the instructional books on, say, bluegrass fiddle, blues guitar, or clawhammer banjo, the number of books on oldtime backup guitar fits pretty...
Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s
Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s
Harry Bolick and Stephen T. Austin
University Press of Mississippi, 2015
Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s is an ambitious work that brings together various materials collected...
The Fiddle Book, Marion Thede (1967)
A large part of the 60s folk revival was made up of people who didn't grow up with the genres of American vernacular music learning to play it themselves. Initially, those largely urban or...