who plays bluegrass?

"The Best Mountain Fiddler I Ever Heard"



Posted/Published on Sep 22, 2013, by David Hoffman*



To get the music special visit http://www.createspace.com/204609


This scene presents a fellow who lived way back up in the backcountry that they called lost John the fiddling man. Back in 1964, I went down to spend three weeks driving the backcountry around Madison County, North Carolina, in the center of Appalachia, with the 82 year old founder of the pioneer Asheville Mountain Music and Dance Festival, Bascom Lamar Lunsford. The resulting film, "Bluegrass Roots" lets you hear and experience the hard scrabbling, dirt road real people sounds that dominated the back country of the southern mountains 40 years ago. It presents a string of the most extraordinary singers, players and dancers the BlueGrass Mountains had to offer. Many later became famous. Some were never heard from again. Most of the songs are classics, including Lunsford's own tune, "Mountain Dew."
[Click to View YouTube Video]
When this film aired on Public Television in 1965, TV Guide gave it a full-page positive review, because Americans had never seen a documentary on the roots of Bluegrass and Country music. Today, the dirt roads and the moonshine counties are largely modernized, and Bluegrass Roots, stands as a record of a uniquely talented group of people at a time just before the coming of television, changed them. www.createspace.com/204609

harles and Denise Moscatello
2 months ago
I work for NJ Transit Railroad. The Madison, NJ connection for this is because of Benjamin F. ( Tex) Logan. Ben was one of Bills favorite fiddlers but Ben led a double life. **He was a Bell Lab research mathematician and ran that department for some 30 plus years.
( My Dad climbed at the Watchung wall with these guys around '67-8 i think, sic)
He moved to New Jersey around 1951 and stayed until his death about 2015-16. Ben was a Phd from Columbia Universuty in the field of electrical engineering.(GUNKS GANG,sic) He would take breaks from Bell Labs to tour with Bill Monroe. There are Madison, NJ articles about Bill Monroe parking his bus in Bens driveway and the neighbors would hear constant bluegrass music during huge barbecues Ben hosted. Good stuff folks. A scientist with a number of patents also a Bill Monroe bluegrass fiddler. Ya can't make this up!

Wintergrass before you know it.

What a difference a substantially better instrument makes, motivation wise!