The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Earlier this year, the Field Recorders' Collective released a new album by Teodar Jackson , an old-time fiddler from Texas who was recorded in the mid-1960s. Yesterday, the FRC announced four more albums to round out their 2020 offerings.  The Field Recorders' Collective is a non-profit organization established by the late Ray Alden that is dedicated to preserving and distributing non-commercial recordings of American traditional music that would be otherwise unavailable to the general public. Each year, the FRC releases a handful of a albums from a variety of musicians that are available on CD or as a digital download via Bandcamp. Not only does the group provide excellent music, but it's a cause well worth supporting.  This year's releases represent musicians from Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Kentucky and Ohio, including a reissue of a long out of print Rounder recording. The following is a quick summary of the 2020 FRC albums. For now, only the the Teodar Jackso...

Let's play show and tell. If you've been reading me for any length of time, you know that the Glory-Beaming Banjo home office is in Northeast Ohio. As such, old-time music from the Buckeye State is of particular interest to this author. Without much to report on during these days of COVID-19, it seemed like a good time to show off my Ohio old-time music collection. Many of these items have appeared on this blog in the past, but I've never shown everything all in one place. Most of these albums are solely by artists from Ohio, with the exception of the two Young Fogies volumes and Visits , each of which feature only a couple of Ohio musicians. A couple of these musicians are not native Ohioans, such as Ward Jarvis, Rector Hicks, Cecil Plum and Dan Gellert, but they lived here for a significant period of time. Gellert apparently no longer lives in Ohio, but he did when his Old-Time Tiki Parlour album came out. The following is a rundown of the collection ... Bad D...

This past weekend brought sad news for the old-time music community. We lost Mac Benford on Saturday and Clyde Davenport on Sunday. I first saw a post on Facebook that Davenport, 98, seemed to be on his deathbed, so it was a bit of shock to learn later that day that Benford, 79, had died. Benford, of course, was the banjo player in the Highwoods Stringband. According to his website , Benford began playing banjo in 1960, when he was a student at Williams College. He sought out living masters of the time to learn from, including Wade Ward, Kyle Creed, Tom Ashley and Roscoe Holcomb. Benford moved from the East Coast to California’s Bay Area in 1967 and began his professional performing career with Dr. Humbead’s New Tranquility Stringband and Medicine Show, which contributed a version of "Dubuque" on the 1985 compilation Young Fogies . The band specialized in recreating the old-time music found on 78-rpm records from the 1920s. The band played all up and down the West Coast...

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 note...

M y latest Ward Jarvis tune is "Tomahawk." Jarvis learned this tune from Tommy Jackson , either on record or radio, according to the field recordings David Brose made in the 1970s. Jackson was a prominent Nashville session fiddler during the 1950s. The tune appears on Jackson's " Square Dance Tonight " album, released in 1957. Jarvis can be heard playing it on the Field Recorders' Collective album ( FRC402 ), from the recordings of Jeff Goehring. Brose's recording of Jarvis can be heard on the Slippery-Hill website. Jarvis plays "Tomahawk" in AEAE tuning and is credited for making the tune old-time. There's another variant usually attributed to Missouri fiddler Bob Holt , available on the 1998 Rounder release "Got a Little Home to Go To." I took my first crack at "Tomahawk" on June 18. Below is my first attempted recording of the tune, which is only twice through because of a major flub in the third repeat of ...

-photo source- Ever since embarking on my Year of Ward Jarvis , I've made a concerted effort to collect as many recordings by him and by those who were influenced by him. I already owned the Field Recorders' Collective release ( FRC402 ) of tunes collected by the late Red Mule String Band fiddler Jeff Goehring in the 1970s. And as mentioned in a recent post , I received digital copies of the David Brose recordings from some charitable folks at the Fiddle Hangout . The files also included the associated albums Brose produced " Rats Won't Stay Where There's Music " (1979, Ohio Folklife OF-1003) and " Traditional Music of Central Ohio " (1979, Ohio Arts Council TALP-001). I'm still looking to acquire physical copies of these albums, as well as " Visits " (1981, Heritage Records), produced by Ray Alden. I believe that would complete my collection of the recordings made of Ward Jarvis. I have not heard of any others. In the meanti...

T hree months have passed since I provided my last update on my "Year of Ward Jarvis" project. As you may recall, I targeted six tunes to learn by Athens County, Ohio, resident and West Virginia native Ward Jarvis. The first one I learned was " Head of the Creek ." Next up is "Icy Mountain," another AEAE tune. My source recordings were from Jeff Goehring via the Field Recorders' Collective and from David Brose via some kind folks at the Fiddle Hangout. I also referred to the notation from the Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes and a YouTube video by David Bragger . I took my first crack at "Icy Mountain" back on April 22, but I didn't really focus too hard on learning it until mid-May. I struggled with it for weeks, but then my progress took a major leap on June 6. I feel like I finally have a handle on the full tune, though I’m still working out some kinks in the B parts. A quick banjo note: I have also figure...

A s we did last year, here is a holiday gift guide for the banjo nerd in your life. Here are five glorious ideas for you last minute shoppers.

Don't you just love tax return season? While the bulk of this year's IRS and state tax refunds went to pay for grownup stuff, I squirreled a little bit away to use on new music. I got my own copy of the new Dan Gellert CD/DVD set from Old-Time Tiki Parlour, and then kept the Ohio old-time connection going with four albums from the Field Recorders' Collective , referred henceforth as the FRC. Great Ohio old-time. Those four albums were: Rector Hicks Jeff Goehring Lonnie Seymour Cecil Plum Hicks was recorded by Kerry Blech and Joe LaRose. The Goehring disk includes members of the legendary Red Mule String Band, as well as other notable musicians. The Seymour and Plum recordings come from Goehring's field recording collection. As an Ohio boy, born and raised, these four albums have been on my wishlist for a long time.