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FRC Store – 2009 CDs

Our 2009 issues can be all found on this page. You can browse individual issues on our index page. Please follow the links to our Special CD Sets, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and Other Label CDs.

Ordering information

PLEASE NOTE:
US orders will have $4.95 added for shipping via standard US mail and international packages will have $7.95 added for shipping via USPS 1st Class International.

For track listings and sample sound clips, click on the links below.

2009 CD Releases
 

FRC2009 13-CD set $136.50.
(see below for descriptions)

 
Shelor-Blackard Family

FRC112 – The Shelor-Blackard Family(From the collection of Ray Alden & Dave Spilkia)   $15 per disc
In 1918 Cecil Sharp found Joe Blackard a rich source as he collected songs for his book English Folksongs from the Southern Mountains. Joe Blackard’s daughter Clarice learned to play piano by listening to her father play banjo and, after her marriage to fiddler Jesse Shelor, they formed a family band. In 1927, along with Jesse’s brother Pyrhus, the band traveled to Bristol, Tennessee to record four songs for the famous session that has been described as the “big bang of country music.” In the summer of 1975, Dave Spilkia and I rented a house in Meadows of Dan, Virginia to spend time with this marvelous family. On Sundays, Jesse and Clarice’s children Joe, Paul, Jimmy along with nephew Bill and granddaughter Susan would come for a visit and tunes would result. For more information about this abundantly musical family, read my essay about them at www.fieldrecorder.com – Ray Alden   Track list   Sound clip   Additional Notes
 
Obray Ramsey Byard Ray FRC113 – Obray Ramsey & Byard Ray (From the collection of Ray Alden)   $15 per disc
Fiddler Byard Ray and his banjo picking cousin Obray Ramsey were “discovered” during the folk revival of the 1960s at the Asheville Folk Festival in North Carolina. The time of their discovery coincided with the psychedelic rock period, which led to their music being incorporated in the rock movie western “Zachariah.“ This concert, recorded in NYC, was part of a tour to promote their LP recording “White Lightning,” which used a band of studio musicians. Fortunately for us this lovely concert on this CD featured Obray Ramsey and Byard Ray, accompanied only by guitar, doing home-based traditional songs and instrumentals. – Ray Alden   Track list   Sound clip    Additional Notes

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Unions Grove FRC114– Union Grove 1969 (From the collection of Ray Alden)   $15 per disc
During Easter Week of 1969, my wife Diane and I took a two-day trip down then incomplete Interstate 81 to smaller roads leading to the small town of Union Grove, North Carolina. We arrived late at night to the last Fiddler’s Convention to be held at the old school house. On stage in the school gym was an older man fiddling up a storm and wriggling his body to his music. It turned out to be the legendary Clark Kessinger, heard here on four tracks. The next day we recorded the remarkable Buffalo Ford Boys, from Asheboro North Carolina, with Glenn Davis picking a top tension Mastertone banjo in a bouncy Charlie Poole style. We then wandered over to Bob Douglas, from southern Tennessee and who in 1928 had worked with the Allen Brothers, playing some lovely fiddle music. I then had a pleasant discussion with Wade Ward. This was followed by recording a succession of musicians, including fiddler H.A. Harold of Winston-Salem, North Carolina and a group of old time musicians from whom I neglected to get names. I felt I had landed in southern old time music paradise, causing me a hard time when I returned back to teaching in New York. – Ray Alden    Track list   Sound clip     Additional Notes
   
Unions Grove FRC115– Ray's Dream- Ray Alden and Many Friends   $15 per disc
Just one person’s words aren’t enough to describe Ray Alden’s contribution to old-time music. About everywhere you go, from the Blue Ridge of North Carolina and Virginia and in every direction, you’ll meet musicians who have been touched in some way by Ray’s love of mountain music and his lifetime of devotion to it. His own field recordings of older generation players and younger, more “modern” players illustrate his belief that folk music is there for everyone, a language and expression that anyone can grab on to. Ray was a great banjo player, a prominent music collector, a beloved member of the old-time music community. And above it all, he loved just sharing music － Ray wanted everyone to be moved by the magic he heard in the old tunes.

It was Ray’s wish that there be a document of his music that spanned time and place. So here’s a collection of music featuring Ray with his distinctive, percussive, wonderful banjo style. The tunes were played at different times, with different folks and in different settings, but together they paint a single big picture of someone a bit larger than life. Ray’s curiosity and enthusiasm seemed limitless; he turned his passion for music into opportunities to connect with people and to celebrate life. Listen to the music on this CD and you’re bound to do the same! – Bruce Molsky    Track list
   
Dink Roberts FRC209 – Dink Roberts (From the collection of Bob Winans)   $15 per disc
In the mid-1970s, while I was researching and writing about the connections between minstrel banjo and clawhammer/frailing banjo, other researchers (Bruce Bastin, Kip Lornell, Cece Conway, Tommy Thompson, and Mike Seeger) had been discovering and recording African American banjo players. Early in 1978, feeling a need to gain first-hand knowledge of these banjoists, I embarked on a trip to interview and record a number of them, with the assistance of Kip and Cece who generously introduced me to players they had been working with. One of the most important of these African American banjo players was Dink Roberts (1894-1989), whom I recorded outside his home in Haw River, NC. His playing sounds noticeably different (among other things, more rhythmically complex, i.e., “syncopated,” for lack of a better term) than that of southeastern white banjoists contemporary with him, so much so that when I first heard recordings of his playing I mistakenly thought he did not know what he was doing. But further listening and then visiting him convinced me that he was fully in control of the musical effects he wished to create; he was just operating from a different aesthetic. His playing was, in the most positive sense, “archaic,” and an essential link to an earlier African American playing style (he learned from black banjoists born in the 1870s). Dink’s music is truly “roots music.” – Bob Winans    Track list   Sound clip    Additional Notes

   
Tommy Jarrell Volume 1
FRC211 – Tommy Jarrell, Volume 1 (From the collection of Jerry Epstein)   $15 per disc
with Paul Brown and Mike Seeger
By the early 1980s, Tommy Jarrell was known around the world as the grand figure of the Round Peak fiddling and banjo-playing tradition of Surry County, North Carolina. And thanks to his gregarious nature, sharp mind and desire to share, thousands of people had met him and considered him to be the living definition of the southern rural musician. Of course, Tommy represented one set of styles among many in the south. But how well he represented it! He welcomed visitors into his home. He relished traveling and meeting people. He appeared at festivals around the country. In 1984, he agreed to ride hundreds of miles to Pinewoods Camp in Massachusetts to be on the staff of American Music & Dance Week, hosted by the Country Dance & Song Society of America. Tommy moved into an old house at camp, complete with a pot of beans and fatback that simmered all week. Each day, he held forth on the porch, rather than conducting formal classes. He played at a concert or two in the evenings. The music you hear on these albums was recorded by Jerry Epstein. Mike Seeger and I accompanied Tommy, who was at a high point of creativity and virtuosity just months before the end of his life. Included are unforgettable renditions of “Jimmy Sutton” and “Drunken Hiccups”, and the story behind “Sail Away Ladies”. – Paul Brown   Track list   Sound clip    Additional Notes1    Additional Notes 2
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Tommy Jarrell Volume 2

FRC212 –Tommy Jarrell, Volume 2 (From the collection of Jerry Epstein) $15 per disc
With Paul Brown and Mike Seeger
Tommy Jarrell, at the time the oldest living carrier of North Carolina’s powerful Round Peak music tradition, rode with me all the way to Massachusetts in the summer of 1984 to stay a week at Pinewoods Camp. There an annual American traditional music and dance week was sponsored by the Country Dance and Song Society of America. Tommy loved to travel and meet people. But at age 83, he was at first a little hesitant about a two-day journey into New England, and a week-long stay in a place with food and traditions he could only imagine would be very different from those of his longtime Surry County home. When I told him he could live in an old house in the woods at camp, where he could cook as much of his own food as he wanted and keep his own schedule, he said he’d go. We packed fiddles and banjos, and also pinto beans, fatback, country ham and corn meal, into the car for the long ride. Tommy held no formal classes. Instead, he sat out on the porch of the old house each day, often with Mike Seeger and me, playing his fiddle, clawhammering the occasional banjo tune, and reeling out his great yarns to a devoted group of campers. He played in a couple of concerts and dances. And he did sometimes walk over to the camp dining hall. Here, in Volume 2 of this FRC set, you’ll hear more of Tommy’s classics including great performances of “Forked Deer”, “Polly Put the Kettle On”, and “God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign”. Tommy, Mike and I were closest to Jerry Epstein’s microphones. But you’ll hear others as well from time to time, including Jackie Spector on banjo. – Paul Brown   Track list   Sound clip    Additional Notes 1    Additional Notes 2

   
Dock Boggs

FRC312– Dock Boggs 1966 –(From the collection of Wilson Roberts)  $15 per disc
hese selections are from a Dock Boggs concert at Appalachian State University (Boone, NC) on November 11, 1966. Accompanying Dock on guitar and singing is Kate Peters Sturgill. Both were from near Norton in Wise County, Virginia (Kate helped her cousin, A. P. Carter collect songs in the 1930s). Dr. Cratis Dearl Williams, founding Dean of the ASU Graduate School, and who is considered the father of Appalachian studies, arranged for the concert. Wilson Roberts was in attendance and recalls, “…the room was small, the lighting allowing for easy eye to eye contact between audience and performer.” There are several references to Doc Watson who, with his son Merle, was in the audience.” Dock also talks about the origins of some of his songs and how he came to make them his own. Three tapes of the concert were made, all of which were misplaced over the years until Wilson Roberts tracked down the one remaining copy represented on this CD. – Lynn Frederick, from information provided by Wilson Roberts & Mike Seeger    Track list   Sound clip    Additional Notes 1   Additional Notes 2
   
Walter Raleigh Babson FRC313 – Walter Raleigh Babson (From the collection of Andy Cahan)    $15 per disc
Walter Raleigh Babson (1900-1987) grew up in Ash, a settlement in Brunswick County, on the North Carolina coast. At an early age he began to develop a unique and eclectic musical personality on the banjo and fiddle, and also created a form of knuckle tapping in which he would knock out elaborate, syncopated rhythms that uncannily resembled the sound of a dancer. Stylistically, Walter’s banjo playing was unclassifiable. He finger picked in several styles, using two and three fingers, and he also frailed. Often, he would combine and vary the styles within a single tune. While Walter was a soft-spoken man with an unpretentious nature, his music was extroverted and entertaining. His banjo playing contained dramatic visual elements in which strings were plucked in unorthodox ways (which he referred to as “sleight of hand banjo playing”), graceful hand movements were used, and percussive taps on the banjo head accentuated the rhythm. Old-time dance tunes, hymns, waltzes, turn of the century popular songs, minstrel songs, blues, and any melody that interested him were included in a repertory that expanded throughout his life. – Andy Cahan  Track list   Sound Clip    Additional Notes
   
Albert Hash FRC411 – Albert Hash –(From the collection of Kilby Spencer)   $15 per disc
Albert Hash was an old-time fiddle player and luthier from the Whitetop Mountain area of Grayson County,VA. His primary influences on the fiddle were Corbett Stamper, G.B. Grayson, and his uncle George Finley. Albert began playing at a very early age and founded the Whitetop Mountain Band which continues to the present day. He influenced a great many people, many of whom still play his tunes and style today. He is remembered not only for his great fiddling, but also for his kindness to all. – Kilby Spencer    Track list   Sound clip

   
Van Kidwell FRC412– Fiddlin' Van KIdwell –(From the collection of the Hot Mud Family)   $15 per disc
My father came from Rockcastle County, Kentucky. My mother was born and raised in Madison County. Dad played the fiddle and I picked the banjo with him. He just played a few of the old ones—Soldier’s Joy, Tennessee Wagoner, Black Eyed Susan. We’d play for square dances—just banjo and fiddle. Then I got started on the fiddle and eventually quit the banjo. There used to be a lot of fiddlers around and some of ‘em was pretty fair. I’d catch a lot of these tunes off them. Me and Doc Roberts, I’d say we kinda learned together off old Charlie Walker, a colored fellow. I figure he was about eighty when I was twenty-five or thirty. Dealin’ livestock and farming—that’s what I done all my life, now I’m just fiddlin’ around. – Van Kidwell, 1974    Track list   Sound clip
   
Addie Leffew & Claude Wolfenbarger FRC509 –Addie Leffew & Claude Wolfenbarger - Tennessee Banjo –
(From the collection of Peter Hoover)   $15 per disc
One day in the early sixties, on the way to track down the maker of my old mountain dulcimer (a fruitless task, as it turned out) in Mountain City, Tennessee, I stopped at the general store in Thorn Hill, Tennessee, and asked if they sold banjo strings. Having heard that they did indeed sell such things, I asked, “Who buys them?” That was my introduction to Claude Wolfenbarger and Addie Leffew, who played 5-string banjo in two very different styles, both learning experiences for me as a budding banjo player. Listen for yourself! – Peter Hoover    Track list   Sound clip

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Nee Ningy Band FRC610 – The Nee Ningy Band–(From the collection of the Nee Ningy Band)   $15 per disc
Between 1978 and 1981 the Nee Ningy Band performed their strange, sweet, surreal music on the folk, college, and festival circuit along an axis between New England and North Carolina. Time magazine (August 1979) even cited them as exemplifying the best of American street music. They played authoritatively in an astonishing variety of traditions: Cajun, Irish, Appalachian, African, English, French, calypso, Tex-Mex, classical, pop, and, of course, blues—playing true “world music” even before there was a term for it. They produced one album, Get Nung, on the famed Biograph label, and a handful of promotional singles. One of the most amazing aspects of their sound is this: no guitar! But the variety of other instruments they played is mind boggling—from harmonicas of all kinds to mandolin, fiddle, washtub bass, flute, kazoo, mandola, pennywhistle, slide whistle, siren, nose flute, cornetto, shahnai, raita, and accordion. And that doesn’t include percussion. Though the musicians—and even the band’s name—might change from gig to gig, the core members were Hohner All-Europe Harmonica Champion Chris Turner; mandolinist and multi-instrumentalist Ted Porter; old-time/Irish fiddler Rachel Maloney; washtub bassist and percussionist Rob VanVeld (and later, Robbie Phillips); and master bodhran player Mance Grady. A note on their name: apparently an elderly man approached them at a festival one time and said, “You know, all that fiddle music sounds the same to me: just a lot of nee-ningy nee-ningy nee-ningy.” And the name stuck. – Bob Hudson    Track list   Sound Clip    Additional Notes
2009 DVD Video Releases
 

Kentucky 3-DVD set $50.
(see below for descriptions)    Video Clip

   
FRC1003– Clyde & Ralph Troxell –(Video from the collection of Ray Alden)   $20 per disc
I came to know the fiddle and banjo duo of Ralph and Clyde Troxell through my visits to Clyde Davenport when he lived in Monticello, Kentucky. The two brothers lived several miles out in the countryside in their hometown of Rocky Branch, Kentucky. Little known before the 1980s, the brothers gained some notice when they appeared around the USA with the Cumberland Music Tour, a project organized by the Southern Arts Federation. My favorite memory of the Troxell brothers was when I took them to the dinosaur room in the Museum of Natural History in NYC during one of their tours. After a time examining the skeletons, Clyde turned to me and asked; "Now, were these animals alive at the time of Christ… or a little bit afterwards?" － Ray Alden    Track list    Video Clip

Please Note: This DVD is encoded ONLY for REGION 1 (USA, Canada)
   
Heywood Blevins FRC1004– Clyde Davenport –(Video from the collection of Ray Alden)   $20 per disc
Clyde Davenport (1921- ) was raised on a mountain farm near the Tennessee line around Mt. Pisgah, the son of William Davenport and Lucy Boston Davenport. Both Clyde’s grandfather, Francis Davenport, and his father, Will, played fiddle. Clyde played clawhammer-style banjo at home for his own amusement, and learned most of his fiddle tunes from old men born before the Civil War. As a youngster, on many weekends he would walk many miles into town to hear Dick Burnett and Leonard Rutherford play fiddle and banjo on the Monticello courthouse steps. Although neither his father nor anyone else showed him how to play, he was a careful observer and always endeavored to get a clear tone and a smooth fiddle sound. – Ray Alden   Track list    Video Clip

Please Note: This DVD is encoded ONLY for REGION 1 (USA, Canada)
   
Heywood Blevins FRC1005– Virgil Anderson & Clyde Troxell –(Video from the collection of Ray Alden)   $20 per disc
On many trips to Monticello, Kentucky Clyde Davenport and Clyde Troxell would take me to visit Virgil Anderson (1902-1997), whose house could only be reached by a swinging bridge over a river’s fork. Virgil had played banjo respectably enough to entertain logging camp men at age 10 while serving as water boy. Virgil also learned a great deal from African-American musicians Cuge and Cooney Bertram around Pall Mall, Tennessee. This influenced Virgil’s banjo style towards a bluesy chord technique. In 1923 Virgil married Clyde Troxell’s sister Mabel and they soon moved to their fancifully named Wildcat Rock City farm. In 1931 Virgil formed the Kentucky Wildcats with Clyde Troxell and fiddler John Sharp going to different railroad camps to perform evening musical shows. Given this close relationship, we include here four banjo pieces by Clyde Troxell – Ray Alden   Track list    Video Clip

Please Note: This DVD is encoded ONLY for REGION 1 (USA, Canada)
   
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