Old-time music

Roots

Old-time music grew from the traditional music of the British Isles and Europe and from African American music. The banjo, originally a fretless gourd instrument, was adopted from Black musicians by white players before the Civil War, and by the early 19th century it was the fiddle's essential partner in the South. Scottish fiddling helped shape the short-bow "sawstroke" of Appalachian fiddlers.

The first records

In the 1920s record companies began recording Southern fiddle bands and singers. Okeh coined the labels "hillbilly music" and then "old-time music" for these records; Fiddlin' John Carson began recording in 1923. Stars of the era included Uncle Dave Macon, the first star of the Grand Ole Opry, and the Carter Family.

The string band

The heart of old-time music is the fiddle-and-banjo duo. Guitar, mandolin and double bass were added in the 19th and early 20th centuries to make the "string band". Compared with bluegrass the sound is sparser: all the melody instruments play the tune together, players rarely take solo breaks, fiddles use cross-tunings, and the banjo is usually played clawhammer style on an open-backed instrument. Bluegrass, by contrast, grew up in the 1940s as concert music built around solos.

Regional styles

Every region has its own sound: North Georgia's Skillet Lickers, the Round Peak style of Mount Airy, North Carolina, the music of Galax and Grayson County, Virginia, and the fiddling of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, the Ozarks and Texas, as well as Canadian traditions such as Cape Breton.

Revival and festivals

Pete and Mike Seeger brought string-band music to New York in the 1940s, and the New Lost City Ramblers carried the revival across the country. Today old-time players gather at events such as the Old Fiddler's Convention in Galax (since 1935), the Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention (since 1972) and the Appalachian String Band Music Festival at Clifftop, West Virginia (since 1990).

Tunes to learn: Soldier's Joy · Old Joe Clark · Cripple Creek · Shady Grove. Compare with bluegrass.

Artists to start with