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Vernon Spencer, Jim Shumate Albums Released by Field Recorders’ Collective

The Field Recorders’ Collective has announced two new releases for 2019. Vernon Spencer and Jim Shumate seem to represent opposite ends of the old-time spectrum. Spencer was a gas station operator from Big Springs, Kansas, who played in a family band. Shumate was a professional fiddler who played with the likes of Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs in the early days of bluegrass.

These fiddlers, disparate though they may be, provide vital a link for today’s old-time enthusiasts. Spencer was the grandfather and main influence to one of today’s fiddling luminaries, Tricia Spencer, of Spencer & Rains. Shumate, on the other hand, exemplifies the blurred lines between old-time and early bluegrass with a fast, smooth style and repertoire filled with traditional fiddle tunes.

Vernon Spencer of Big Springs, Kansas (FRC726) features 39 tracks and includes two excellent album notes from his granddaughter that are available on the FRC website. One features detailed track notes, and the other a history of Vernon Spencer and the Spencer family.


From the FRC album description: “Vernon Spencer ran an old Skelly gas station between Topeka and Lawrence in the tiny town of Big Springs, Kansas. It was here that you could fill up your tank and get some basic essentials, or Vernon would get his fiddle off of the wall and have a tune or two. The Spencer family moved from LaRue County, Kentucky to Douglas County, Kansas in 1857 and have been there ever since. The Spencers have been making music in the county for at least five generations and these recordings, made at home and at fiddle contests, are a window into one family making music together in rural Kansas in the 1960s and ’70s.” — Howard Rains

Jim Shumate: Pioneering Bluegrass Fiddler (FRC727) features 33 tracks that range from old-time favorites like “Katy Hill” and “Paddy on the Turnpike” to Flatt & Scruggs standards like “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “My Cabin in Caroline.”

From the FRC album description: “Born in Wilkes County, NC, Jim Shumate (1921-2013) played with Bill Monroe in the mid-1940s and was the original fiddler for Flatt and Scruggs’s band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. The four tracks that he recorded with Lester and Earl are some of the most revered songs in the entire bluegrass repertoire. He also devised many of the standard licks that are still used by bluegrass fiddlers the world over.” — Wayne Erbsen

The albums can be purchased on CD at the FRC store page or as a digital download at fieldrecorder.bandcamp.com.
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