Mac’s Tune of the Week

This week’s tune is a revisit to “Angeline the Baker.” Thanks to Molly Stouten for helping me hunt this down. Here is a link to the song version that I heard many years ago on a WPAQ Saturday afternoon broadcast called the Blue Ridge Spotlight.

Thanks to old time fiddler Ole Rossel of Copenhagen, Denmark for this take of Carroll County’s Uncle Norman Edmonds and band playing the melody to the old folk song “Lonesome Dove.”

I was impressed by one our young clawhammer banjo players in our local JAM program, Hannah Cantrell from Floyd County. She played this tune for me at a gathering this past weekend on my fretless banjo. She told me she had learned this tune Poplar Pole secondhand from banjo player and fiddler Mike Gangloff who knows a lot about the music of our local “unknown” players of the past.

Here’s a tune for this week played by Stuart Lundy, one of the sons of fiddler Emmet Lundy of the …

Pumpkin Head, The Fella That Looks Like Me Read More »

This week’s tune is called “Callahan”. This one is from the playing of William (Bill) Shelor. I first heard it on the LP recording on the Heritage label called “Eight Miles Apart” that features two of the families from our local area that were prolific players of our kind of music in their lifetimes, namely, the Kimbles and the Shelor families.

Here’s the other tune known as Twin Sisters that is nothing like the D tune called Twin Sisters or Jennie Baker. Here’s old-time clawhammer banjo player Sidna Meyers of Carroll County playing Twin Sisters as a solo. He has some cool melodic right hand techniques not unlike his contemporaries on banjo Glen Smith and Wade Ward. This is not a dance tune in my opinion.

So I want to feature a local version in D of the tune “Twin Sisters”. This rendition was a part of the Old Originals LP that has so many great tune versions played by mostly unknown players who were found in their elderly years still able to remember tunes from their community. Thanks to the work of Blanton Owen and Tom Carter who collected these tunes in the early 1970s.

Here’s the Kimble Family from Carroll County playing a nice tune. I have been liking and playing this version on my fiddle lately. This is a distinctive version of the tune they call Liza Jane. It’s not the common version which is the root of such tunes like Sugar Hill and Chicken in a Bread Tray.

Here’s the Kimble Family from Carroll County playing a nice tune. I have been liking and playing this version on my fiddle lately. This is a distinctive version of the tune they call Liza Jane. It’s not the common version which is the root of such tunes like Sugar Hill and Chicken in a Bread Tray.

Here’s a solo fiddle piece by Floyd County fiddler, Sam Connor, who was from the Copper Hill section towards Roanoke, …

Dance All Night with the Fiddler’s Gal Read More »

Here’s the Kimble Family from Carroll County playing a nice tune. I have been liking and playing this version on my fiddle lately. This is a distinctive version of the tune they call Liza Jane. It’s not the common version which is the root of such tunes like Sugar Hill and Chicken in a Bread Tray.

Here’s the Kimble Family from Carroll County playing a nice tune. I have been liking and playing this version on my fiddle lately. This is a distinctive version of the tune they call Liza Jane. It’s not the common version which is the root of such tunes like Sugar Hill and Chicken in a Bread Tray.