The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Earlier this month, I was in New England for work. As has become my custom, I scoped out a couple record stores to seek out some vinyl for my collection . I visited two stores in Portland, Maine: Strange Maine and Moody Lords . I walked away with two albums from each store. Strange Maine had a huge inventory and fairly cheap pricing, mostly specializing in rock, punk and metal. This is your typical crate digger's paradise, with albums crammed tightly into dozens of bins around the store. I picked up two post-"Pet Sounds" Beach Boys albums. But you probably don't care about that. Moody Lords had a much smaller selection, but it was well-curated and very clean in terms of decor and vinyl condition. The shop also doubles as a vintage clothing store. There, I stumbled upon two nice old-time compilations: " Echoes in the Ozarks, Volume 1: Arkansas String Bands 1927-1930 " (1970) and " More Clawhammer Banjo Songs & Tunes from the Mountains "...

Once it became clear that it was clawhammer banjo I wanted to learn, the one resource that everyone recommended was the three-volume "Clawhammer Banjo" recordings by Charlie Faurot . For people who play this style of banjo, he was our Alan Lomax, a man who set out to record the living masters of our beloved five-stringed instrument. Faurot died Sunday at the age of 77. Born in Chicago and educated at Yale, Faurot began recording old-time musicians in the 1950s. By the 1960s, he started publishing the recordings as a side business to his careers as a banker, math teacher, swimming and water polo coach, and computer systems consultant. A few years after retiring, Faurot founded Old Blue Records in 2003 and began publishing old-time recordings he made from the 1960s to the present, including albums he had recorded for County Records. Looking through all the albums on the Old Blue Records website, it surprised me how many of Faurot's recordings I owned without realizing...