Morehead State University did a similar project in the 70’s in Eastern Kentucky. Unfortunately,it was audio only, no film. They interviewed my Grandfather. He and his friends did a little pickin’ session for them. I can remember my grandfather watching Porter Waggoner or Flatt & Scruggs on TV and hearing a song or two he liked, then going in his room with his fiddle. Later he would play them for us.
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It’s hard to understand how anyone could not enjoy this authentic, vibrant, music straight from the heart and soul. I too was blessed as a young man to have a grandfather as a fiddler. He and I would play music (I on guitar) whenever we could get together. He would lean back in his rocking chair, arthritic fingers on the fiddle’s keyboard, and with eyes closed would whip off a twenty-minute streak of fiddle tunes. He could slide smoothly into one tune after the other. He used to play for barn dances as a younger man in my upper Midwest neck of the woods. However, the original authentic stuff came out of Appalachia which is where my granddad got most of his tunes.
2 words.....
Billy Strings.....