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”. Ole has been into playing Appalachian old time fiddle music since the 60s and long ago zeroed in on the more primitive and rustic sounds in his taste for American fiddle music that is truly from the heart and that is old time without a doubt.

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 Galax area.

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. I am always going back to their recordings for great listening music and to learn special versions and new ‘old’ tunes from.

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 a cut by one of my favorite true clawhammer masters, Glen Smith of Hillsville in Carroll County. Here he plays a fretless banjo in an energetic and very danceable style. He implements great slides and hard driving right hand technique in the cool g#BEBE tuning.

Here’s a cut by one of my favorite true clawhammer masters, Glen Smith of Hillsville in Carroll County. Here he plays a fretless banjo in an energetic and very danceable style. He implements great slides and hard driving right hand technique in the cool g#BEBE tuning.

Here’s a solo fiddle piece by Floyd County fiddler, Sam Connor, who was from the Copper Hill section towards Roanoke, Virginia. I visited him in his home one time with Jay Griffin and Susie Crate back in the mid 1980s. He was not able to play any more, he said then, but we talked quite a bit and I think we may have played a few tunes for him.

Here’s a cut by one of my favorite true clawhammer masters, Glen Smith of Hillsville in Carroll County. Here he plays a fretless banjo in an energetic and very danceable style. He implements great slides and hard driving right hand technique in the cool g#BEBE tuning.

For this week’s tune I have decided to share a rare and unique tune called Old Tommy Kimpleton. It was recorded during the LP era, I think, by the long running group from Franklin County called the Original Orchard Grass band. I have never seen the LP and have tracks from it in my files with no information. I wonder if anyone has it.