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Ray Alden Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music Jeff Goehring Peter Hoover

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CDs From the FRC

		FRC101		Fred Cockerham - (From the collection of Ray Alden) This CD honors one of North Carolina’s great traditional musicians, Fred Cockerham. Fred was born in 1905 in the Round Peak community of Surry County, North Carolina. He learned to fiddle by sneaking practice on his brother’s fiddle, later becoming a professional musician. Fred changed his original “framming” banjo style to emulate the high precision rhythmic technique of Round Peak’s great clawhammer player, Charlie Lowe. This CD presents a wide ranging sample of Fred’s expressive fiddle, banjo and singing abilities.

		FRC102		Band in Transition - (From the collection of Ray Alden) This CD concentrates on the band rather than the individual and addresses what happened to the sound of one of old time music’s great modern bands when certain members left and others joined. Benton Flippen joined North Carolina’s Camp Creek Boys in the late 1960s and shortly after formed his own band, the Smokey Valley Boys, circa 1971. Although Paul Sutphin endowed both bands with his strong vocal lead, the new banjo and mandolin players, along with Benton’s leadership on fiddle, changed the sound. Finally, the last six tracks hint at what the Camp Creeks Boys would have sounded like if Tommy Jarrell had joined the band.

		FRC201		Roan Mountain Hilltoppers In Concert (From the collection of the Brandwine Friends of Old Time Music) The Roan Mountain Hilltoppers are a world-famous old-time band from the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Birchfield family members learned the old tunes and ballads from their father and uncles and continue to play in a style popular in the early 1900s. This 1986 concert at the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music features Joe on fiddle with his brother Creed on banjo and his son Bill on guitar. Bill’s wife Janice Birchfield plays washtub bass. As Janice said, “We play the way our family always has: straight, traditional sounds.” Their music has been called “mesmerizing, raw, rapid-fire, and trance-inducing.” The surviving members of the original Hilltopper band continue to play in the same hard-driving East-Tennessee style, making the band a favorite among dancers.

		FRC202		Old-Time Music from Clay & Calhoun Counties, WV (From the collection of the Brandwine Friends of Old Time Music) Four master traditional musicians from central West Virginia performing live at the 1975 Brandywine Mountain Music Convention. Skilled banjoist and singer Phoeba Cottrell Parsons (1908-2001), champion fiddler Ira J. Mullins (1902-1987) and popular mountain artist and banjo player Jenes Cottrell (d. 1980) play alongside Wilson Douglas (1922-1999), an accomplished fiddler who possessed an ancient repertoire. The Morris Brothers accompany these artists and act as MC during the concerts.

		FRC301		Norman Edmonds and the Old Timers, Volume 1 (From the collection of Andy Cahan) These recordings feature Norman Edmonds, (1889-1976) of Hillsville, Virginia, on the fiddle. He is accompanied by The Old Timers, with Rufus Quesinberry on banjo and his sons John, Cecil and Paul Edmonds on guitars. The selections were gathered from 15 minute programs made from January to September 1958 for Galax radio. The “Old Timers Show,” recorded by Edmonds’ son Rush, began in the mid 1950s and was on the air “for fifteen minutes every Saturday morning” until circa 1970. The Edmonds family generously granted Andy Cahan permission to copy the original tapes during the 1980s.

		FRC302		Norman Edmonds and the Old Timers, Volume 2 (From the collection of Andy Cahan) These recordings feature Norman Edmonds, (1889-1976) of Hillsville, Virginia, on the fiddle and accompanied by his band The Old Timers (Rufus Quesinberry on banjo and his sons John, Cecil and Paul Edmonds on guitars). The selections are remastered from copies of the original tapes, recorded by Edmonds’ son Rush for 15 minute programs heard on Galax radio every Saturday morning from the mid 1950’s until around 1970. On the last few tracks, Nelson Edmonds plays bass and Charles Hawkes plays bluegrass banjo. The Edmonds family generously granted Andy Cahan permission to copy the original tapes during the 1980s.

		FRC401		Jimmy Wheeler - (From the collection of Jeff Goehring) These recordings feature Jimmy Wheeler on fiddle and Jeff Goehring on guitar, and were made at Jimmy’s home in Portsmouth, Ohio in the mid 1980s when Jimmy was in his late 60s. Jimmy’s fiddling was typical of a very articulate, melodic style prevalent in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio. Some of the older fiddlers Jimmy mentioned as influences were his father Jim Wheeler, Jesse Large, Asa Neal, Forrest Pick, Morris Allen, and Freddy Edwards. Jimmy worked as a stringed-instrument repairman and as a musician, performing fiddle for dances, and guitar and bass for more popular music at local clubs. He also played guitar with Forrest Pick on fiddle for many years as “the Personality Boys” on radio station WPAY in Portsmouth.

		FRC402		Ward Jarvis - (From the collection of Jeff Goehring) These recordings feature Ward Jarvis on fiddle, Dana Loomis on banjo, and Jeff Goehring on guitar, and were made at Ward’s home in Stewart, Ohio in 1977. James Ward Jarvis, born in 1894, moved to Athens County, Ohio from Calhoun County, West Virginia in the late 1940s to work in the timber industry. Ward’s repertoire reflects his West Virginia origin, with many archaic open- tuned pieces, as well as several more melodic pieces popular in the 1920s and 30s, including his wonderful rendition of the 1950s Tommy Jackson composition, Tomahawk.

		FRC501		Uncle Charlie Higgins, Wade Ward & Dale Poe (From the collection of Peter Hoover ) These recordings are a small sample of the bread-and-butter music-making of Charlie Higgins (fiddle and banjo), Wade Ward (banjo and fiddle), and Dale Poe (guitar), three accomplished old-time musicians from Grayson County in southwestern Virginia. A couple of times a month for years, they would huddle together on the flat bed of a pickup truck and play locally familiar tunes to draw in customers for a country auction service. These recordings, made by Peter Hoover in Charlie and Wade’s living rooms in 1959, document the facility and ease, and broad scope, that they brought to their repertoire.

		FRC502		Marcus Martin - (From the collection of Peter Hoover ) These recordings, made by Peter Hoover in the late fifties and early sixties near Swannanoa, North Carolina, document the seminal fiddling of Marcus Martin. Recorded first by field workers from the Library of Congress in the thirties, Marcus combined in his repertoire the archaic tunes he learned from Manco Sneed with jazzy numbers from then-contemporary recordings of Arthur Smith. A primary source for many of the crosstuned fiddle tunes that were such a novelty to the folk revival, his recordings remain a singular insight into Appalachian fiddling.

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