While running my banjo booth at Clifftop Stringband Festival back in 2018, I managed to play some good music with old friends as well as with new friends. I got into a session with Elizabeth Pittman where Uncle Norman Edmond’s Davis Unlimited LP was our inspiration. In our session, this tune was played only banjo and fiddle with as much detail as we could muster to sound like this recording. It’s still on my mind as I ponder a great example of a great crooked tune from here in the Blue Ridge where I am lucky to live. I hope you’ll agree after a couple of listens.
In that session we had no guitar and were glad of it since modern guitar chords seem to change the “rustic” nature of the original rendition heard here. The guitar was being experimented with but not enough to change the feeling of the banjo and fiddle.
So its Norman Edmonds on fiddle, Rufus Burnett on banjo and one of Norm’s sons (John, Paul or Cecil) on guitar.
I agree its pretty scratchy fiddling but there is something real about this. It’s so primitive sounding and feels like it’s from another time and place to me. Old time music for sure!
Here’s Chinquapin Hunting.