William Smith Monroe was an American mandolinist, singer, and songwriter, and created the bluegrass music genre. Because of this, he is often called the "Father of Bluegrass".
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dance, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which along with the simple banjo–fiddle duet have historically been the most common configurations to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
West Virginia's folk heritage is a part of the Appalachian folk music tradition, and includes styles of fiddling, ballad singing, and other styles that draw on Ulster-Scots music.
John Cohen was an American musician, photographer and film maker who performed and documented the traditional music of the rural South and played a major role in the American folk music revival. In the 1950s and 60s, Cohen was a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, a New York–based string band. Cohen made several expeditions to Peru to film and record the traditional culture of the Q'ero, an indigenous people. Cohen was also a professor of visual arts at SUNY Purchase College for 25 years.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
Clarence "Tom" Ashley was an American musician and singer, who played the clawhammer banjo and the guitar. He began performing at medicine shows in the Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911, and gained initial fame during the late 1920s as both a solo recording artist and as a member of various string bands. After his "rediscovery" during the folk revival of the 1960s, Ashley spent the last years of his life playing at folk music concerts, including appearances at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.
Alexander Campbell "Eck" Robertson was an American fiddle player, mostly known for commercially recording the first country music songs in 1922 with Henry Gilliland.
Jonathan Allan "Jody" Stecher is an American singer and musician. He is best known as a bluegrass and old time musician, playing banjo, mandolin, fiddle and guitar and two of his albums with Kate Brislin have been finalists for the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album. He also plays sursringar in the Dagar gharana tradition of dhrupad.
Jim & Jesse were an American bluegrass music duo of brothers, Jim McReynolds and Jesse McReynolds. They were born and raised in Carfax, a community near Coeburn, Virginia, United States.
Hobart Smith was an American old-time musician. He was most notable for his appearance with his sister Texas Gladden on a series of Library of Congress recordings in the 1940s and his later appearances at various festivals during the folk music revival of the 1960s. Smith is often remembered for his virtuosic performances on the banjo, and had also mastered various other instruments, including the fiddle, guitar, piano, harmonica, accordion and organ.
Albert Green Hopkins was an American musician, a pioneer of what later came to be called country music; in 1925 he originated the earlier designation of this music as "hillbilly music", though not without qualms about its pejorative connotation.
Charles Thomas Bowman was an American old-time fiddle player and string band leader. He was a major influence on the distinctive fiddle sound that helped shape and develop early Country music in the 1920s and 1930s. After delivering a series of performances that won him the first prize in dozens of fiddle contests across Southern Appalachia in the early 1920s, Bowman toured and recorded with several string bands and vaudeville acts before forming his own band, the Blue Ridge Music Makers, in 1935. In his career, he would be associated with country and bluegrass pioneers such as Uncle Dave Macon, Fiddlin' John Carson, Roy Acuff, Charlie Poole, and Bill Monroe.
The McGee Brothers were an American old-time performing duo of brothers Sam McGee and Kirk McGee. Sam typically played guitar and Kirk usually played banjo or fiddle, although they were both proficient in multiple string instruments. The McGee Brothers were one of the most enduring acts on the Grand Ole Opry during the show's first fifty years. They made their initial appearance on the Opry in 1926 and the following year joined Uncle Dave Macon's band, the Fruit Jar Drinkers. In the 1930s, the McGees teamed up with early Opry fiddler Arthur Smith to form a string band known as the "Dixieliners," and in the 1940s they played and toured with Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys and several other notable acts.
James Benton Flippen was an American old-time fiddler from Mount Airy, North Carolina. He was one of the last surviving members of a generation of performers born in the early 20th century playing in the Round Peak style centering on Surry County, North Carolina. His contemporaries included Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham, Kyle Creed, and Earnest East.
"Cumberland Gap" is an Appalachian folk song that likely dates to the latter half of the 19th century and was first recorded in 1924. The song is typically played on banjo or fiddle, and well-known versions of the song include instrumental versions as well as versions with lyrics. A version of the song appeared in the 1934 book, American Ballads and Folk Songs, by folk song collector John Lomax. Woody Guthrie recorded a version of the song at his Folkways sessions in the mid-1940s, and the song saw a resurgence in popularity with the rise of bluegrass and the American folk music revival in the 1950s. In 1957, the British musician Lonnie Donegan had a No. 1 UK hit with a skiffle version of "Cumberland Gap".
Old timefiddle is the style of American fiddling found in old-time music. Old time fiddle tunes are derived from European folk dance forms such as the jig, reel, breakdown, schottische, waltz, two-step, and polka. When the fiddle is accompanied by banjo, guitar, mandolin, or other string instruments, the configuration is called a string band. The types of tunes found in old-time fiddling are called "fiddle tunes", even when played by instruments other than a fiddle.
Jerron "Blind Boy" Paxton is an American musician from Los Angeles. A vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Paxton's style draws from blues and jazz music before World War II and was influenced by Fats Waller and Blind Lemon Jefferson. According to Will Friedwald in The Wall Street Journal, Paxton is "virtually the only music-maker of his generation — playing guitar, banjo, piano and violin, among other implements — to fully assimilate the blues idiom of the 1920s and '30s, the blues of Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson."
HogMaw is an American band from York, Pennsylvania, United States. The music of HogMaw has been described as a combination of bluegrass, folk, funk, and heavy metal called "thundergrass".
Topanga Banjo•Fiddle Contest is a music festival and competition, held annually at Paramount Ranch, a unit of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, in Agoura Hills, California. It began in 1961 in Topanga Canyon, California. The main genre of music is bluegrass, but other acoustic music, folk singing and folk dancing are presented. The contest includes a random mix of beginning, intermediate and advanced players, professional players, string bands and dancers.
William Currie Watson is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, banjo player, actor and founding member of Old Crow Medicine Show. His debut solo album Folk Singer, Vol. I, was released in May 2014; its follow-up Folksinger, Vol. 2 was released September 15, 2017 on Acony Records. He has appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and other major music festivals. He released a self-titled album of his first collection of self-penned songs on September 13, 2024. He currently resides in the Woodland Hills district of Los Angeles.
