Re: [ARSCLIST] Old-time fiddle records

["Nelson, James S." <JSNelson@xxxxxxxxx>]

I suspect that John is correct in surmising that the great majority of post-war old-time fiddle records are vanity issues, or were issued on small independent labels. Rounder, County, Voyager, Kanawha, American Heritage, Vetco, and occasionally, Folkways are a few of the labels that issued several fine LPs of old-time fiddling in the 60s and 70s.

Here is an incomplete list of Missouri fiddle recordings, most of which are vanity releases, including a few cassettes amongst the LPs.

http://www.missourifiddling.com/Missouri_Fiddling_Discogra.htm

Jim Nelson



-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Bondurant
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 8:48 AM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Old-time fiddle records

For pre-WWII era recordings, I would check out the following sources:

Country music sources : a biblio-discography of commercially recorded traditional music / Guthrie T. Meade, Jr. ; with Dick Spottswood and Douglas S. Meade. Chapel Hill, NC : Southern Folklife Collection, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries in association with the John Edwards Memorial Forum, c2002.

Country Music Records [electronic resource] : a discography, 1921-1942 / by Tony Russell ; with editorial research by Bob Pinson, assisted by the staff of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2004.

Also, Philip Jamison's thesis, "The southern Appalachian square dance : African-American influence on European-American dance in Appalachia" from Appalachian State University sites a good deal of Old-Time 78s that are pretty obscure.

Of course these deal with commercial recordings of the first half of the 20th Century. I am not aware of any comprehensive discography of latter 20th century fiddle recordings (yet).

Hope this helps,

John H. Bondurant
Sound Preservation Archivist

Berea College
Hutchins Library
Special Collections & Archives
CPO LIB
Berea, KY 40404
(859) 985-3389 - voice
(859) 985-3912 - fax

mailto:bondurantj@xxxxxxxxx

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-----Original Message-----
From: John Ross [mailto:johnross@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 1:02 PM
Subject: Old-time fiddle records

Two related questions:

First, I've just acquired an LP by the great Texas fiddler Benny 
Thomasson, entitled "Benny Thomasson Volume Two" on the John's label 
(BT-48015A), copyright 1980, "recorded at Gillian Studio, Chandler, 
Oklahoma." I can't find anything about this record -- I knew Benny 
Thomasson, and I work closely with Voyager Records in Seattle, who 
issued several other BT records, but I'd like to know more about this 
one. Anybody know this label? Any other information? Has anybody ever 
seen Volume One?

And second, a more general question about fiddle records. Is there 
any kind of comprehensive discography of old-time fiddle recordings? 
It seems like many of them were vanity issues, on tiny labels, issued 
by local fiddlers' groups or contests, or otherwise out of mainstream 
distribution. Has anybody assembled a list of these things?

John Ross