The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Leave it to me to write whole big post about records that aren't vinyl, and then forget about the newest additions to my old-time music collection that ACTUALLY ARE vinyl.  First up is an album released earlier this year. I had my local record store pre-order me a copy of Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow , which was released in April on Nonesuch. The album features two-thirds of the original Carolina Chocolate Drops lineup and arrived shortly before the band's reunion concert at the inaugural Biscuits & Banjos Festival , April 25-27, in Durham, North Carolina, and it also preceded the release of a new documentary about the band that you can watch now on Amazon Prime.  The Giddens-Robinson duo provide a dozen North Carolina fiddle and banjo tunes. The entire album was recorded outdoors at Joe Thompson’s and Etta Baker’s North Carolina homes, as well as the former plantation Mill Prong House. In the background you can hear the s...

More than a decade ago, I stopped into a record store in Ravenna, Ohio, and bought a couple New Lost City Ramblers albums, one of which turned out to be signed by Mike Seeger. I wrote a little bit about that visit in a post titled " Vinyl Hunter: The Origins ."  What I didn't mention was a record that I passed up ... and it has haunted me ever since.  While flipping through the folk/country/bluegrass/misc. of that store, I came across a copy of The Watson Family , originally released on Folkways Records in 1963. The album features Doc Watson and various family members, including most notably his father-in-law Gaither Carlton, son Merle Watson, brother Arnold Watson and wife Rosalee Watson.  You might remember in 2020 that Smithsonian Folkways released a latter day companion album, Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton , featuring concert recordings from two Greenwich Village performances in 1962.  The Watson Family was compiled from field recordings made by Ralph Rinzler, ...

While I haven't been inside a record store in I don't know how long now, I haven't let the coronavirus pandemic stop me from getting new records. On May 29, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings released a new album of previously unreleased live recordings of Doc Watson and his father-in-law Gaither Carlton ( SFW40235 ). The track list was compiled from two of Watson's earliest concerts in New York City's Greenwich Village in 1962. The album is available in LP, CD and digital formats. I had pre-ordered the vinyl in April, and it arrived on June 1. This is the second time I've pre-ordered something from Smithsonian Folkways, and I've been pleased with how quickly the item arrives. The audio quality on the album is excellent. Watson was in his prime, and Carlton adds understated and exquisite accompaniment. On this album, we get a taste of Watson's banjo playing and autoharp, in addition to his legendary guitar picking and singing. Carlton also plays ba...

RIP Doc Watson We lost another one. Doc Watson, 89, died Tuesday in Winston-Salem, N.C., following abdominal surgery. Watson was born in Deep Gap, N.C., March 3, 1923, the sixth of nine children, who lived in a three-bedroom house. Although Watson was famous for his guitar playing, he also was an accomplished banjo player , learning to play the five-string as a boy. When he was 11, his father gave him a homemade banjo with the skin of a cat used for the head, according to NPR . GBB has been following the news of Watson's hospitalization after he fell at his home last week. Watson was always one of those musicians whose albums I never owned, but that I keep meaning to buy. His influence on the 1960s folk revival and later generations of musicians is evident in the work of today's bands like Old Crow Medicine Show, whom Watson is credited with discovering, and the Avett Brothers. Over the weekend, my wife wanted to listen to the Avett Brothers "Live, Vol. 2,...