Slippery Hill’s Jon Bekoff (RIP) Audio Archive

from https://www.slippery-hill.com/collection/jon-bekoff

Jon Bekoff (1959-2015) was a generous teacher and patient mentor to lovers of Old Time, Cajun, and World music. Although Jon never made commercial recordings, he profoundly influenced and inspired Old Time musicians throughout the US and internationally, particularly after he permitted YouTube documentation of his music. Larry Warren collaborated with Moonshine to create an archive of the audio recordings of Jon. This is a work in progress as there is still much yet to upload (so keep checking back). Much of the music shared here was collected or recorded by Nate Paine, Jon’s protege and closest jamming partner during Jon’s last decade. We students and friends of Jon wish that ALL recordings ever made of him could be posted here, publicly, free, and downloadable – as an archive for posterity and most importantly, for future music students’ learning. Because the recording settings were largely informal, private lessons or jams, we have opted to leave out the names of Jon’s accompanists, listing only the tune name, key, session location and year. The intention is to allow Jon’s music to inspire others, with the hope that others might also contribute private recordings of Jon that are not listed here, even if the accompanists might sound imperfect.  

Where there are multiple versions of Jon playing a tune, Larry selected a 3 minute sample from one of them for streaming. However, as any of you who played with Jon know, he never played the same way twice, and within a melody, a single 3-minute clip could be different than the rest of the recording. For this reason, all full versions of the recordings are also available for download at the bottom of the page.

post script: Jon died a year ago today, leaving behind elderly parents. His father Sy (almost 90) is sadly this month moving to Canada, for financial reasons. Let us hope the move goes well, because he is a kind man, who practices what Jon also practiced, cultivating affection for all beings.

post post script: The Jon Bekoff Project  was set up by Moonshine to support informal Georgia oldtime music learning projects. The first recipients to complete the JB Project scholarships can be seen with their Georgia oldtime mentors here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30515YDijB0 and here doing what Jon also liked (jamming on world music)

 

JB photo credit: Matt Betz

Slippery Hill (Larry Warren) has posted MP3s of the entire Milliner/Koken collection

Larry Warren of http://slippery-hill.com/ has been maintaining a public digital collection of C, F, and Bb tunes for some time.  He has now added to his site digital audio versions of most or all of the 1404 fiddle tunes in Claire Milliner and Walt Koken’s collection. 

As a result, everyone on planet Earth has easy access to virtually the entire old time repertoire via the internet.

When you see Larry, please give him a warm “thank you.”  Below is a description of the project in his own words.

The Slippery-Hill site really started at an Old Time party in Newfound Lake, NH back in 2005 I think. There was a C tune session that went on for 3 or 4 hours. I got thinking that I only knew 6 or 8 tunes in the key of C. So I started collecting C tunes. I have traded out of print LP’s and cassettes for years so I have quite a big collection to choose from.

Then I decided to make the C Tune web page so other people could listen to them. I started with a couple hundred tunes. Well, people started coming across the site and sending me suggestions and if I didn’t have the tune they’d send it to me. The F tune and Bb pages came shortly after that. The DDAD, GDAD and Calico pages are more recent additions. As of today (08-22-2011) there are 465 tunes on the C tune page. To me that’s amazing.

Before I started that C tune page it was hard to find people to play in C. Now it seems like everybody places C tunes. Or maybe it’s my imagination.

The Milliner-Koken idea came to me the day I got the book in the mail. Even if you don’t read music the book is worth the price of $90. It’s an incredible resource.

I can read music, but learning a tune from dots on a page, is to me, far far to much work. I have to listen to the tune. So why not have a web page with all the tunes from the book on it. Try to get the exact source Clare and Walt cite in the book. I must say I’m still working on that part. I didn’t want to get too carried away until I could get Clare and Walt’s blessing on the project. I got that at the 2011 Mt Airy music festival. When I left the festival I had my lap top with me and I got to work. My goal was all 1404 tunes up there by CliffTop.