Ray Alden

by David Gura (from NPR.org)

by Eugene Chadbourne (www. CMT.com)

With one foot in the early history of bluegrass and the other in Western swing, this historic Texas recording group of the ’20s and ’30s has earned a place in American musical history every bit as heroic as the epic last stand at the Alamo. Among many distinctions, the East Texas Serenaders were one of the few early Western groups to feature cello, played by Henry Bogan. Note the use of the word “early” in the previous sentence, because by the end of the ’30s, the cello had became a complete no-show in country music. The group also featured tenor banjo as well as the expected guitar and fiddle. The main recorded document of this group is the Complete Recorded Works issued by Document; but most listeners come into contact via a fleeting glimpse offered on any number of compilations, ranging from the narrow focus of old-time Texas string bands, in which the group certainly has historic presence, to massive multi-disc overviews of the entire history of American pop music, in which the East Texas Serenaders occupy a valuable niche as well.

The East Texas Serenaders posed for publicity pictures alternately as hillbilly rubes and smooth city-slicker types. Examining the music itself can help rectify the contradiction in images: the group was sophisticated and played without the sandpaper edge of other string bands from the region. The fiddler was of course something of the captain of the ship in any string band, and in this group it was the long-bow Texas fiddling style of Daniel Huggins Williams that was part of the ensemble’s personality, but inevitably not as much as the group’s choice of material. While most string bands of the time stuffed their repertoire faces on square dance tunes, the East Texas Serenaders avoided this part of the action like a crusty tuna salad at a buffet table. Rags, numbers that sounded like rags, and waltzes made up most of the group’s repertoire, with the latter type of number becoming some of the most frequently requested material. And the keys the group played in are also part of its unique sound; like the black Dallas String Band, the East Texas Serenaders would whip out tunes in the key of F, rather than sticking to easier square dance keys such as A and G.

Fiddler Eck Robertson, who in 1922 had become the first area fiddler to actually make recordings, was an important influence in the area of an extended repertory, a musical philosophy that was more than acceptable as far as the listening public was concerned. Robertson’s tiny nickname was not based on the sound of a negative audience reaction. Other groups that performed many rags and waltzes included the Texas Nighthawks, featuring the fine steel guitarist Roy Rodgers and the Humphries Brothers. Most Texas music writers point out the relationship between the Serenaders’ style and Western swing, which was coming up like mushrooms after a rainstorm. An eclectic repertoire was of course what this new genre was all about, carried to greater extremes than any of the string bands and with a heavier quotient of jazz influence, as well as electric instruments.

Other members of the group included the guitarist Cloet Hamman who, despite the sound of his first name, could hardly be accused of forming a “clot” in the flow of his single-string runs, some of which sound like he is using a chisel for a pick. Banjoist John Munnerlyn was mostly a timekeeper, his instrument offering the option of being audible above everyone else in case someone got off the beat. “Before I Grew to Love You’” was his main solo feature, perhaps dedicated to the violinist who moved out of the way to let the banjo play the lead melody for a change. The aforementioned Bogan is a real oddity among cellists, keeping company with unsavory Western swing types and not even playing an instrument with all the strings on it, as his specialty was a three-string model, actually making him sound a bit similar to several North African stringed instruments used to hold down the bass line.

By the time of the group’s final recording sessions in 1937, the Lester family seemed to be attempting something of a palace coup within the band. The diminutive Shorty Lester had replaced Munnerlyn, who had decided to pack up his tenor banjo and head for Houston, while fiddler Henry Lester also came in to add a doubled fiddle part on these later recordings, increasing the similarity to Western swing with one bow while retaining an allegiance to old-time sensibilities with the other. The lovely recordings by the group includes “Sweetest Flower,” “Meadow Brook Waltz,” “Three in One Two-Step,” the most-covered “Acorn Stomp,” the playful “Fiddlin’ the Fiddle,” and “Say a Little Prayer for Me,” the latter title a seemingly more egotistical version of what Burt Bacharach came up with later. The original recordings were issued by labels such as Columbia and Decca.

However insulting we may find the blacked faces and parodied diction of the minstrel show, the minstrel stage was a locus of creative American art and the source of innovations that shaped the popular art of our own century. Beginning in the 1820s, the minstrel show introduced a new and distinctively American song, dance, comedy, and performing style. Through the minstrel show syncopated music, both from black folk sources and from white composers such as Stephen Foster, became the dominant form of American popular music.

About the turn of the century, the minstrel show, which had entertained rural and urban Americans alike, yielded the city stage to vaudeville, but minstrel elements lingered in the rural South in the traveling medicine show. This often consisted of the “doctor” who peddled “Indianherb” cure-alls from a wagon or auto, and one or more musician-comedians who drew and entertained the crowd. Some of the white medicineshow musicians, such as Tom Ashley, continued the black-face tradition of the minstrel stage; some shows featured black talent of the caliber of Willie McTell or Pink Anderson.

Arthur Tanner, of Georgia, a member of the Gid Tanner-Clayton McMichen Skillet Licker string bands centered in Atlanta, likely had such medicine-show experience. In 1929 members of the Skillet Lickers recorded an authentic-sounding skit of blackface comedy and music,“The Kickapoo Medicine Show” (Columbia 15482). Tanner’s “Dr. Ginger Blue” descends from an actual minstrel recitation, one version of which was published in 1854. The performance here provides a microcosm of American humorous entertainment: the antic nonsense of the first two spoken stanzas looks forward to the surrealistic action of the Walt Disney animated cartoon; the elevated metaphors of the fourth hark back to the poetry of Mark Twain’s tall tales; and the fifth stanza anticipates the verbal non sequitur insults of Groucho Marx. The minstrel recitation to a musical accompaniment may also be the source of the “talking blues” popularized by Woody Guthrie.

Available here.

“For those on the path to discovering American roots music, Roscoe Holcomb’s sound seems to be the end of the line.  Listeners may start with bluegrass, folk songs, old-time string bands, or Appalachian ballads, but once they get ot his music, there is no next step.”   John Cohen, (From the liner notes to “An Untamed Sense of Control.”)

“Almost any line you could draw through the whole field of popular musical culture would have Alan Lomax somewhere on it – probably in several places. Without Lomax, it’s possible that there would have been no blues explosion, no R&B movement, no Beatles, no Stones, and no Velvet Undergound’.”    Brian Eno, (Quoted in the CD booklet of “The Alan Lomax Popular Songbook.”)

“The first CD I got after The Harry Smith Anthology was the Folkways stuff  with Dock Boggs in the 1960′s. I put it on the stereo for the first time, and when “New Prisoner’s Song” came on, I just burst into tears. I sobbed openly for a while. And then I collected myself and thought … “My musical tastes have CHANGED.”  Mike Seeger, (Quoted in “The Young Musicologist,” in The Celestial Monochord: Journal of the Institute for Astrophysics and the Hillbilly Blues

from www.myspace.com/georgiayellowhammers/blog/440029199

By 1926, the success of The Skillet Lickers (another string band from Georgia in the 20′s) was proving to America’s record companies that the hard-driving North Georgia fiddle band sound could be a commercial commodity. All kinds of string bands paraded through the studios in the late 1920′s, each seeking a piece of The Skillet Lickers’ action, and many bearing wild, extravagant names such as Dr. Smith’s Champion Hoss Hair Pullers, Seven Foot Dilly & his Dill Pickles, and the West Virginia Snake Hunters. Many of these groups made a handful of records and then faded away.

One that did not, though, was an outfit from Gordon County, Georgia, called The Georgia Yellow Hammers. Unlike many other bands, the Yellow Hammers generated a distinct style of music that was uniquely their own, and they recorded extensively & successfully. To a casual observer, the Yellow Hammers may seem merely another imitation of The Skillet Lickers.

After all, both bands were from  North Georgia, and both were built around a preexisting fiddle & banjo team. Both presented images of hard drinking, carefree rustics, and in both cases these images were the products of records company executives. both recorded comedy skits, as well as vocal & fiddle tunes. Both contained musicians who wanted to transcend the narrow confines of the old time string band. Both were in a sense studio groups, with personnel shifting from session to session, and both shared a common repertoire of north Georgia fiddle tunes.

Yet there were some important difference too. The Yellow Hammers were based not in Atlanta, but in rural Gordon County, some sixty miles to the northwest. The Yellow Hammers stressed singing more than the Skillet Lickers (their records are full of fine quartet work), and boasted among their ranks two formally trained musicians who were adept at reading and composing all sorts of music. Yellow Hammers members were more ecumenical in their music, recording gospel quartets, sentimental songs, blues, pop, fiddle breakdowns, and even a couple of sacred harp tunes.

At one session they recorded with the fine Afro-Cherokee fiddler Andrew Baxter, in one of the first integrated sessions of old-time music. While the Yellow Hammers “covered” several Skillet Lickers hits during their first year as a band (1927), they soon moved out of this shadow and established their own identity. Indeed, by November 1927 the Skillet Lickers were themselves having to record cover versions of the Yellow Hammers hit “Johnson’s Old Gray Mule.”

The History of the Yellow Hammers begins on a chilly November day in 1924 when banjoist Bud Landress and fiddler Bill Chitwood boarded a train at Resaca, Georgia for a trip to New York. Bud Landress was forty two years old; he had been born in Gwinnett county, but since 1905 had lived in Gordon County. Bud was versatile on all stringed instruments, but preferred banjo & fiddle; he was also a songwriter & singer and was often an officer in the Gordon County singing conventions.

His partner, Bill Chitwood, was thirty three years old, lived in Resaca, and was known locally as a fiddler; he could also sing a passable bass. Both Chitwood and Landress had played for years in Gordon County. They were not necessarily known as a team, though they did sometimes play together, occasionally being joined by another luminary, Fate Norris, later to be banjoist for The Skillet Lickers. Now the duo was going to New York to record twelve numbers for a recording company just discovering country music; the results included the versions of “Whoa Mule” and “Pa, Ma, and Me” on the Brunswick label. They were the first fruits of the two most traditional members of the yellowhammers.

Meanwhile two other key members of the Yellow Hammers were making music of a different sort in nearby Calhoun, the county seat of Gordon County. One of these was Charles Ernest Moody, who had the good sense to trade a shotgun for his first fiddle, and who also played banjo and harmonica. Moody came from a family of church singers, and recalled his father and uncles debating whether the “new” seven shaped notes would ever replace the older Sacred Harp four shape variety.

In 1916 he attended an intensive singing school in Asheville, North Carolina, where he studied formal music-harmony, voice, and even directing. Soon he was himself writing hymns, and by 1924 he had produced two of the most popular sacred songs of the 20th century, “Drifting Too Far From the Shore” and “Kneel at the Cross”. Bob Dylan recently cited that “Drifting Too Far From the Shore” as being an early inspiration to pursue music. One of Moody’s local friends was Phil Reeve, a piano tuner, manager of the local music store, and director of the local brass band.

Reeve, though, was interested in other music as well; as early as 1916 he was yodeling, and by 1925 he was organizing radio programs for Atlanta’s WSB that featured old time musicians from Gordon County. It was Reeve, in fact, who was to become the central figure in the Yellow Hammers; he got them their first recording contract, maintained rather close contacts with recording executives, and looked after copyrights and royalties.  Reeve also served as manager for The Baxters, Jim and Andrew, the Afro-Cherokee fiddle-guitar team from Gordon County.

These diverse influences were first brought together in a studio in Atlanta Febuary 1927; Landress recalled that a technician for the record company though up the name “The Georgia Yellow Hammers.” Soon the officers from the Gordon County singing conventions found themselves bellowing “Pass Around the Bottle and We’ll Take a Drink” as anxious engineers watched their dials. The Georgia Yellow Hammers were born.

One of the odd and delightful songs the band recorded in 1927 was “Fourth of July at a County Fair,” a wild, surrealistic account of farm animals and a balloon ride. One of the early best sellers was the old spiritual “Mary Don’t you Weep,” backed with the familiar “Goin’ to Raise a Ruckus Tonight,” later to become a favorite of the folk music revival and a featured song in the epic film how the west was won.

Another ersatz gospel song that became a big seller was “I’m S-A-V-E-D,” which had earlier been featured by Gid Tanner of the Skillet Lickers. But the real career song for the band came in the session on August 9th, 1927, at Charlotte. Here they recorded two sweet sentimental songs, “My Carolina Girl” and “Picture on the Wall.” It was the latter that propelled the record to sales of almost 100,000 copies.

Years later, in 1953, Bud Landress gave Atlanta newspaper writer an account of its composition: Landress who has spent a good deal of his life farming, said he was inspired to write the song one night after he had plowed corn one day. After going to bed, he became fascinated with a picture hanging on the wall of his bedroom and the idea to make a song about it was born. The picture, however, was not of his mother, about whom the song was written. He got out of bed, wrote the words, and sawed out the tune on his fiddle. Several hours later when the composition was finished, he awakened his wife and sang it to her for an opinion, which probably wasn’t very good at that time of night.

Throughout the next three years Phil Reeve booked the band into a bewildering variety of recording sessions for a number of different companies. There were several sessions for one company that were issued as Bill Chitwood and his Georgia Mountaineers, and another as Turkey Mountain Singers. Songs the group liked such as “Fourth of July at a County Fair,” How I Got My Wife,” and Don’t You Hear Jerusalem Mourn,” were recorded two or three different times for different companies under different names. The personnel seldom remained constant from session to session, and the basic four of Chitwood, Landress, Reeve, and Moody were seldom all together on the same session.

In later sessions, Landress took over some of the fiddling (when Chitwood wasn’t present), and did a lot of the solo singing. Landress was not the fiddler Chitwood was; he was often restrained, almost polite, and pushed the group more in the direction of a Charlie Poole sound. Chitwood was a more typical north Georgia fiddler-hard driving, a bit rough, grabbing for wild, high harmonies. Two other regulars who often played with the band include guitarist Clyde Evans, probably from Atlanta, and guitarist Melvin Dupree, from Rome, who also recorded with fiddler Bill Shores and mandolin player Fred Locklear.

The Yellow Hammers were not as successful as the Skillet Lickers in selling records; most of their records averaged 10,000-15,000 copies each–certainly an impressive figure for the late 1920′s, where million sellers were almost unheard of. The one big hit the band had–”The Picture on the Wall”/ “My Carolina Girl”–sold well over 100,000 copies, and, significantly, featured well-mannered quartet singing. In fact, the Yellow Hammers in general had fewer traditional numbers in their repertoire than did the Skillet Lickers.

Reeve, Moody, and Landress were all good songwriters, and Reeve had enough business sense to see the value in using as many original compositions as possible. Thus the Yellow Hammers forte for strong singing, and for original songs. Most of the songs, to be sure, were cast in an old time style, but to some member, like the distinguished Moody, writing and recording pieces like “Song of the Doodle Bug” at the expense of “Kneel at the Cross” must have required considerable reserves of tolerance and humility.

The Depression ended the Yellow Hammers as a group; most of the boys “grew up” and went into other lines of work. The one exception was Uncle Bud Landress, who continued to play music in local groups up through the 40′s; one of his friends commented, “Bud had a hard time getting over show business.” Phil Reeve died in ’44, Chitwood in ’62. Researcher Bob Pinson got to Bud Landress about 1965, but Bud was too sick to talk very much, and he died the following year. Moody died in ’77, wryly amused and a little puzzled at the researchers who kept wanting to talk to him about his role in the Yellow Hammers rather than his life as a hymn writer.

John Dilleshaw (left)

John Dilleshaw and The String Marvel play “Spanish Fandango.”

Recorded March 22, 1929, Atlanta, GA.

Thanks to Jas Obrecht for permission to share his research on “Spanish Fandango,” excerpted below from his wonderful site http://jasobrecht.com

In times before radio, records, and electric lights, people often played music to amuse themselves after dinner and at social gatherings. “Parlor guitar,” a favorite European musical fare during the late 1700s, caught on in America. Played with bare fingers on small-bodied instruments, parlor guitar became immensely popular, as evidenced by the stacks of musical scores published during the 1800s.

Many of these compositions called for the guitar strings to be tuned to an open chord. The most common of these tunings, open C (with the strings tuned C, G, C, G, C, and E, low to high) and open D (D, A, D, F#, A, D), clearly had European origins. The origins of open G, a favorite banjo tuning, are more difficult to trace. Two parlor compositions in particular would play a crucial role in the development of the blues.

On June 29, 1860, Worrall walked into the Clerk’s Office of the Southern District Court of Ohio and filed copyrights for two instrumental guitar songs. “Worrall’s Original Spanish Fandango” called for the guitar strings to be tuned to an open-G chord (D, G, D, G, B, D, from low to high), with the explanation that the music was to be read as if the guitar were in standard tuning. Some of the song’s flourishes sounded like watered-down versions of earlier nineteenth-century European music. Its little alle vivace finale, for instance, could have worked as a Rossini opera coda. But with its lilting melody and easy chord changes, this song is clearly the direct ancestor of one of the most common blues strains.

Two words stand out in Worrall’s title. “Fandango,” thought to be of African origin, first appeared in the English language in the 1760s, used to describe a “native ball,” or dance. Then the term was applied to a lively 3/4 time dance that originated among Spanish-speaking people. An April 1796 playbill for New York’s John Street Theatre, for instance, advertised a “Spanish Fandango” between the play and the afterpiece, listing four dancers and five singers who did not appear in the play. Eventually the word was used to describe the music itself.

A prime example of an early recording of “Spanish Fandango” is John Dilleshaw & The String Marvel’s 1929 version  Dilleshaw, a 6’7” giant of a man, had learned the song while growing up in north Georgia’s rural hill country. On the recording, one guitarist fingerpicks leads in open G while the other flatpicks basic accompaniment. The musicians have changed Worrall’s sedate 6/8 to a more swinging 2/4 and added alternating bass and bluesy bends, but the final chorus’ droning bass recalls the feel of older parlor guitar pieces.

John Durang (1768–1822) was the first U.S.-born professional dancer of note, best known for his hornpipe dance.  The son of Jacob and Catherine Durang, he was born on January 6, 1768, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but grew up mostly in York, Pennsylvania.  He went on to spend much of the rest of his life as a dancer, acrobat, actor, mime, rope dancer, and blackface comic. He was a part of a group called Ricketts’s Circus, which traveled throughout the northeastern United States and into Canada.

For much of his career his hornpipe dancing was both his and his audience’s favorite.  He boasted in his memoirs that, around 1790, he danced “a Hornpipe on thirteen eggs blindfolded without breaking one.” Durang is also credited with popularizing the nautical-style hornpipe dance that is still thought of as the ‘Sailor’s Hornpipe’.  It is the hornpipe that bears his name for which fiddlers remember him, however, and, according to his memoirs it was composed specifically for him by one “Mr. Hoffmaster, a German Dwarf, in New York, 1785.”

Durang had taken violin lessons from Hoffmaster, who was all of three feet in height and who was married to a wife of similar stature.  Hoffmaster had “a large head, hands and feet,” yet must have been an accomplished musician. The hornpipe became famous in his own time, for Durang noted (again, in his memoirs) that it was written “expressly for me, which is become well known in America, for I have since heard it play’d the other side of (Pennsylvania’s) Blue Mountains as well as in the cities.”

Bruce Greene and Don Pedi play “Durang’s Hornpipe”:

Mississippi String Bands, Volume One and Two: Traditional Fiddle Music of Mississippi (County Records)

reviewed by Kerry Blech (Old Time Herald, volume 6, number 7)

One of the benchmark events in my lifetime of acquiring old-time records was the issue in the 1975 of the two LPs on the County label of Mississippi string bands. Up until that time, I had only heard a smattering of music from Mississippi here and there, and I had heard some of the artists included in the set, but had not known at the time that they were from Mississippi. Now we are ready to roll again with such excitement, for County Records has released a new and improved version with these two CDs.

All of the selections, save one (The Leake County Revelers’ “Been to the East, Been to the West”) that were on the LP are found here, as well as numerous additional cuts from the same artists that were issued on vinyl, and a couple of new artists to the CD medium at least Clardy & Clements and the Newton County Hill Billies. There was a wide variety in fiddling styles to be found in the Magnolia State at the time these recordings were made (1927-1935) and most of them can be savored between these two discs.

Let me stray from the music itself for a moment. Commendations must be given to the County production staff, Chris King in particular, for its selection of the music, as not one piece is a clinker – all are superb. Richard Nevins must also be commended for his excellence in walking the tightrope of 78 rpm record remastering. He has suppressed noise just enough to clarify a great deal of the music, without being heavy-handed and destroying some of the subtle music signal that is necessary to fully enjoy this material. Dave Freeman has written enjoyable and informative notes. The cover art, by graphic artist David Lynch, is stunning and attractive (and color-coded so you know which disc goes with what package – what a concept!) and the photographic reproduction of band photos in the booklet is stellar.

Volume One kicks off with the Mississippi Possum Hunters, who had two distinct sounds because they had two different fiddlers playing in different styles. Lonnie Ellis starts off this series on “Mississippi Breakdown” (a variant to the Leake County Revelers’ “Saturday Night Breakdown” and The Newton County Hill Billies’ “Nine O’Clock Breakdown”) with his breakdown bowing style (also heard on “Possum on a Rail”) that contrasts with the more raggy playing of John Holloway on “Rufus Rastus” (done here as an instrumental version of the Tin-Pan Alley ragtime song by Sterling and Von Tilzer, “Whatcha Gonna Do When The Rent Comes ‘Round?”) and “The Last Shot Got Him” (which is an instrumental rendering of a song John Hurt, who lived near them, recorded as “The First Shot Missed Him”).

Holloway bows the cello on the cuts where Ellis fiddles, and Ellis plays mandolin on the cuts that Holloway fiddles. One band, much diversity. The Carter Brothers & Son were one of the more raucous groups to record old-time fiddle music, with brothers Andrew and George on the fiddles and George’s young son Jimmie on a powerful guitar, with his bass runs often emulating the melodic structure of these tunes. The fiddles had a great rhythmic component, freeing the guitar to be nearly melodic.

The Carters sometimes played in standard tuning, as with “Nancy Rowland,” and sometimes in cross-tuning, like the rest of their pieces heard here, but always with lots of energy. They must have been enjoying themselves too, getting carried away so that George would sometimes forget lyrics and do a form of “lilting,” and other times where the fiddles, which played in octaves on some of these pieces, would go out of phase a bit, seeming to almost play in a round! None of this detracts from any of my enjoyment of the Carters, who are one of my favorite old-time ensembles of all-time. The rhythms they conjure with those fiddles should be enough to get anyone up and dancing.

Surely one of the oddest of old-time band names would be Floyd Ming’s Pep-Steppers. With a surname shared by the villain in a Buster Crabbe outer space serial of the time, these records must have enticed many a browser. Hoyt (his actual first name) Ming’s music must have seemed as alien to many old-time music fans of the era, and even by today’s standards. His “Indian War Whoop,” with its odd timing and gradual blend of a long-bowed fiddle drone into a vocal whoop still must reign as one of the great “spacey” tunes of all-time.

Roselle Ming supplied a shuffling foot scuff that caused the record company to come up with their band-name. When Hoyt and Roselle appeared at the National Folk Festival about 1973, they were still able to enthrall with that distinctive sound. Their “Tupelo Blues” also uses an odd timing device, which must also have contributed to their underground fame amongst the purveyors of crooked fiddle tunes.

Next up are the Ray Brothers, Will on fiddle and Vardman on guitar, from Choctaw County. (A photo of the earlier five-member Ray Brothers band graces the cover of the booklet for Volume One). Their tunes also tend to eccentricity, with a strong cant towards a raggy yet bluesy feel. Will has some wonderful bowing action during the string transitions, smooth and articulated at once. Tony Russell in his magazine Old Time Music (issue 20) compares some of Will’s fiddling style with that of Gene Clardy (about whom we’ll hear more later) who lived for a time in Choctaw County.

“Jake Leg Wobble’s” odd meter most likely is a musical re-creation of the odd gait that afflicted those who suffered from the side effects of partial leg paralysis, attributed to prohibition-era imbibing of Jamaica ginger extract, a legal beverage then with a high alcohol content. “Choctaw County Rag” is a distant variant of the ragtime piece “At a Georgia Camp Meeting.” “Mississippi Echoes” is a lovely C tune with much blues feel, rather reminiscent of some of the Stripling Brothers material from that era.

One of the most popular groups in Mississippi, and among the earliest to record, were the Leake County Revelers, renowned for their waltzes and for their multi-part vocals (rivaling the vaunted Georgia Yellow Hammers in this category, in my opinion). One of the questions raised by Dave Freeman in his notes is a seeming lack of vocals by Mississippi string bands. I think if one looks at the entirety of the Revelers output, one might not bemoan that, for they recorded many, many songs, with lush harmony treatments. We do not get a chance to hear that in this collection however. The compiler of this collection may be partly to blame for that. [The Document label recently has reissued the entire recording output of the Revelers on two CDs (8029 and 8030).]

The Revelers aside, I would agree with Mr. Freeman’s assessment that not many Mississippi bands issued vocal recordings, but I surmise that this had a lot to do with the wishes of the record labels and their A&R men. Perhaps the songs that many of these bands knew were already issued by other groups on other labels. It also is obvious that the instrumental repertoire from this state that did make it onto shellac is rather special, so perhaps the labels then had decided that would be their strong suit? In any case, many of these musicians were known to sing, but did not do so for posterity.

But back to the Revelers. “The Old Hat” is a nice variant of “Lynchburg Town,” featuring guitarist Dallas Jones’ strong lead vocal and the vaunted fiddling of Will Gilmer. Jim Wolverton’s five-string banjo and R.O. Mosley’s banjo-mandolin (and sometimes mandolin) round out their usually easily-recognizable sound. “Dry Town Blues” is a ragtime-influenced instrumental. Their “Mississippi Breakdown,” hardly a breakdown at all, is a stately parlor-like piece, highly reminiscent of their “Texas Fair,” which was recorded at the same 1930 session (though not heard in this set).

The Revelers also appear on Volume Two, with their first cut there being “Molly Put the Kettle On,” a fiddle tune with intermittent singing (Dallas Jones here, too, I believe). “Lonesome Blues” has a melody that does its title justice. “Wednesday Night Waltz,” their only waltz in this set, was their biggest seller and one of their first two records issued in 1927. It was covered by many, many other artists and has become a staple at dances. Its opening strains of third position double-stops is instantly recognizable.

Their sudden segue into “Texas Quickstep” may seem jarring to us in this time and place, but may have been representative of dance tunes that changed tempo from that era, such as “The Rye Waltz.” Many have recorded wonderful versions of this, but I do not feel that anyone has fully surpassed the beauty and elegance of Will Gilmer’s gem. Their final number on Volume Two is “Johnson Gal,” a rousing breakdown in the key of G that features a rare solo vocal by fiddler Gilmer. “See those girls / dressed so fine / ain’t got Jesus on their minds; Want to go to heaven / want to go straight / want to walk through those pearly gates” sort of tells it all.

If not the most popular string band from Mississippi, Narmour & Smith certainly had one of the biggest sellers and most-covered in “Carroll County Blues.” Willie Narmour and Shel Smith were from Carroll County and were rather prolific. What is most interesting is that very few of the tunes they committed to wax sound much like other pieces that were recorded (except for those covered by other artists after N&S cut them). “Carroll County Blues” has a rather odd meter that must have made it quite appealing to their contemporaries and still entices fiddlers and audiences alike even today. It can be heard on Volume Two here.

Another odd meter piece, “Avalon Quickstep,” is found on Volume One. And speaking of Avalon, it was home to the great songster and bluesman, John Hurt, who was a friend of Narmour & Smith’s; in fact they are the ones who recommended to the recording company that he be signed to a contract. Another of their fine but odd-timed pieces also is caught on Volume One, “Sweet Milk and Peaches.”

“Charleston #1″ might be related to a showpiece of the era, “Done Gone,” but it certainly plays well in Narmour’s smooth and bluesy style. Like its flip side, “Carroll County Blues,” “Charleston” seems to have been covered by everyone and his fiddling brother. Such was the compelling nature of their music. A couple more oddities from their vast repertoire of same are included on Volume Two: “Captain George. . .” and “Mississippi Breakdown” (which is not the same tune as the Mississippi Possum Hunters have on Volume One).

The piece that kicks off Volume Two is hands-down my favorite tune from Mississippi, “Sulllivan’s Hollow” (to learn more about the legend and lore of that rough parcel mostly in Smith County, I highly recommend you delve into your local public library’s collection and read Sullivan’s Hollow by Chester Sullivan, University Press of Mississippi, 1978). Freeny’s Barn Dance Band was a two-fiddle affair that recorded six sides in 1930 (only “Leake County Two-Step” from that session is not included here). Leslie Freeny’s elegant and fluid lead fiddling on “Sullivan’s Hollow still gives me the shivers.

Guitarist Fonzo Cannon provides the vocals on the “anguished titled,” “Croquet Habits,” which also features some fine fiddling. He also provides calls on the two Mississippi Square Dance sides (I now forget which one is Part 1 and which is Part 2). One of them is also known as “Sally Anne,” the other seems to be a tune that has one part resembling “Fire On the Mountain” and the other reminiscent of “Little Brown Jug.” Carlton Freeny, the tenor banjoist, also was part of the group that recorded five years later as the Freeny Harmonizers.

Deeply into a bluesy sound were Lincoln County’s Nations Brothers, Shelton on fiddle and Marshall on guitar. Of the 10 sides they cut in 1935, 8 were issued and half of those are found here on Volume Two, all gems. “Magnolia One-Step” is nothing short of being a precious jewel, with some complex bowing licks. Shelton executes similar technique in “Negro Suppertime.” The timing idiosyncrasies some say delineate much of Mississippi’s golden age of fiddling are brought to a head in “Sales Tax Toddle.” Great bowing, left hand slides, eccentric pauses and timing. . . wow, the whole nine yards. “Bankhead Blues” is simply one of the most beautiful and most slippery blues pieces ever recorded.

I had not heard Gene Clardy (fiddle) and Stan Clements (guitar) until I received this recording. They only cut four sides in a commercial career abbreviated by the Great Depression. Clardy hailed from Carroll County and was older than most of the others on this recording. He is said to have taught Willie Narmour and may well have been the creator of “Carroll County Blues,” according to Tony Russell.

I previously had heard the Nations Brothers rendition of “Little Black Mustache” and thought it grand, but it really pales next to Clardy’s phenomenal rendition. I surely wish we had more of his playing to savor. It is abundant in ornaments and intricacies not found in the playing of the other fiddlers in this set, hearkening back more to a style that was more prevalent in the 19th century. Tony Russell adds: “Clardy died at a dance during the mid-’30s or thereabouts. One of his audience asked him to go on playing after he’d finished for the night, and, when Clardy refused, killed him.” Let this tragedy be a lesson to us all. . . don’t stop playing.

At the time the Mississippi LPs came out, not one of the Newton County Hill Billies’ six OKeh recordings had been located by collectors of old-time music, I believe. Fiddler Alvis Massengale was located and visited about this time by several researchers, who interviewed and recorded him. They got him to play several of the pieces he had committed to 78s in 1930 by requesting titles found on the OKeh ledgers, which greatly astounded him.

Soon afterwards, in 1974, he was invited to play at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife. And then the recordings started to surface. And what beautiful numbers. “The Little Princess’ Footsteps” is a gorgeous little C tune and “Going to the Wedding” is a dandy dance tune in G, with the guitar making some surprising chord changes. What an ensemble, as Massengale’s fine fiddling meshes so nicely with the mandolin of Marcus Harrison and Andrew Harrison’s solid guitar playing.

That covers the musical content, but this is an excellent package all around, with great sound reproduction, fine graphics, nice notes and photographs. It is not as earth-shattering an event as the issuance of the original LPs, but this reissue is still one of the great musical projects of the year, or even the decade. For those who crave something a little out of the ordinary, you cannot do any better within the old-time genre. And for those who simply like great old-time music, well, here it is.