Bluegrass & Oldtime

Interviews

Here is an unpublished interview with John Herald.

John Herald (of The Greenbriar Boys) (1981)

Transcriptions

Wind Chimes and Nursery Rhymes

This is a lovely banjo solo by Tony Ellis, from an excellent anthology.

Jackson Stomp

One of my first transcriptions: a banjolin solo by the New Lost City Ramblers, from String Band Instrumentals.

Bonaparte’s Retreat

From the playing of the amazing Molly Tuttle.

British Bluegrasssunk without trace

Strange though it may seem, England in the late 1960s and early ’70s had a thriving Bluegrass scene. The sound of English accents requesting to be carried back to their old mountain homes in Virginia is, inevitably, bizarre to American ears; but the instrumental standard, and in fact the musical standard generally, were pretty high.

Some of it made its way on to the BBC’s Country and Folk programmes, whence these recordings. I apologise for the quality of them: but they were done on a reel-to-reel tape recorder around fifty years ago!

Malcolm Price’s Trio at that time consisted of Ian McCann (mandolin & autoharp), Roger Churchyard (fiddle), and John Field (banjo).

I was fortunate enough to go to university with John (who was also an excellent fiddle-player and instrument-maker); we became lifelong friends, and I learned a lot from him.