This list of old time resources is a beginning - our bare bones. We are working on a database and your ideas are encouraged. Please let us know what you would like to see here. So speak up. You can send us email through this site, or put your query on the FolkWorks Yahoo Group. Thank you…AND MANY THANKS TO KELLY MARTIN, OF TRIPLE CHICKEN FOOT, WHO RESEARCHED THE OLD TIME SCENE TO GET US STARTED!
Labels are necessary components of the ideas and experiences we fit into our lives. With labels, we differentiate. Where would marketing be without them? Some labels have the ability to be simultaneously pleasing and/or pejorative, depending on one's point of view. Such a label is ‘old time music.’ We may interpret it to denote (A) hopelessly outdated music or (B) deeply authentic music. Could it be both, music rooted in pre-video (even pre-radio) rural America and thus heroically anachronistic?
Old time music may suggest sounds rooted in pre-mass media Americana, but it is no less a marketing label than is ‘urban’ (contemporary black music) or ‘young country’ (post-Garth Nashville pop). It's just an older sales hook. This one can be traced to 1923, when Georgia’s Fiddlin’ John Carson waxed The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane and The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow for the OKeh label. Legendary A&R [Artist and Repertoire]-man Ralph Peer deemed Carson’s performance “pluperfect awful,” but enough rural Americans disagreed to make the record a hit, the first in the history of what’s now called country music. (Ever the pragmatist, Carson remarked at his first whiff of success: “I’ll have to quit making moonshine and start making records.”) Carson’s paean to barnyard fertility rites and bucolic cabins initially appeared in OKeh’s popular music catalog, where it kept uneasy company with slicker stuff. Where to put such downhome keening and sawing? The company which had three years prior pioneered ‘race’ recording with Mamie Smith’s Crazy Blues opted for ‘old time music’ as a descriptive moniker for records by artists of Carson’s ilk, and OKeh’s label has prevailed. Tony Russell, a leading authority on old time music (he once edited a magazine named Old Time Music), reports that several other record companies took up the ‘old time tunes’ tag in their record catalogs, or variants such as ‘Old Familiar Tunes.’78s of this music were often labeled ‘old time singing and playing.’ As a generic description, ‘old time music’ in those exact words may not have become common till the folk revival decades later, though John McGhee recorded Bring Back the Old Time Music in 1928.
Legends of Old Time Music - Features performances by Pete Steele, Tommy Jarrell, The Walker Family, Jean & Edna Ritchie, Sam McGee, Doc Watson, and more.VEST-DVD13026
Sprout Wings and Fly – Tommy Jarrell, FlowerFilms 1111
Alan Lomax's American Patchwork- Appalachian Journey:From the Original Ballad of Tom Dooley to the Origins of Bluegrass,VEST-V13079
Melvin Wine: Old Time Music Maker by Robert S.Boles
Shady Grove -Old time music from N.Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky featuring Kilby Snow, rare footage of Dock Boggs and more, VEST-DVD13071
Traditional Music Classics - Doc Watson, Kilby Snow, Roscoe Holcomb, and Buell Kazee, YAZ-DVD516
Elizabeth Cotton: In Concert 1969, 1978, & 1980- VEST-DVD13019
Legends of Traditional Fingerstyle Guitar -MerleTravis, Elizabeth Cotten, Mance Lipscomb, Brownie McGhee, Doc & Merle Watson, Rev. Gary Davis, and more,VEST-DVD13004
Legends of Country Blues Guitar, Vol. 1, 2, & 3 -Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Reverend Gary Davis, Big Bill Broonzy,, Mance Lipscomb, and more, VEST-DVD13003, VEST-DVD13016, VEST-DVD13037
Mr. Kyozo Watanabe, proprietor of this home-based shop,has saved my musical butt countless times. He works not only on violins but onother instruments in the string family. He does all my bow rehairs andfunctions as my Center For Emergency String Procurement. Definitely call aheadto let him know you're coming.
