Old Timey Music Download

Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle (see old time fiddling) and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which has historically been the most common configuration to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.

Reflecting the cultures that settled North America, the roots of old-time music are in the traditional musics of the British Isles and Europe. African influences are notably found in instruments such as the banjo.[1] In some regions French and German sources are also prominent.[citation needed] While many dance tunes and ballads can be traced to European sources, many others are of North American origin.[citation needed]

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Fiddlin' John Carson made some of the first commercial recordings of traditional American country music for the Okeh label in 1923.[2] The recordings became hits. Okeh, which had previously coined the terms "hillbilly music" to describe Appalachian and Southern fiddle-based and religious music and "race recording" to describe the music of African American recording artists, began using "old-time music" as a term to describe the music made by artists of Carson's style. The term thus originated as a euphemism, but proved a suitable replacement for other terms that were considered disparaging by many inhabitants of these regions. It remains the term preferred by performers and listeners of the music. It is sometimes referred to as "old-timey" or "mountain music" by long-time practitioners.[3]

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tunes originating in minstrel, Tin Pan Alley, gospel, and other music styles were adapted into the old-time style. People played similar music in all regions of the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, but in the 20th century it became associated primarily with the Appalachian region.

Important revivalists include Mike Seeger and Pete Seeger, who brought the music to New York City as early as the 1940s. The New Lost City Ramblers in particular took the revival across the country and often featured older musicians in their show. The band was originally Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley. When Tom left the band, he was replaced by Tracy Schwarz. New Lost City Ramblers sparked new interest in old-timey music.

Old-time music is played using a wide variety of stringed instruments. The instrumentation of an old-time group is often determined by what instruments are available, as well as by tradition. The most common instruments are acoustic string instruments. Historically, the fiddle was nearly always the leading melodic instrument, and in many instances (if no other instruments were available) dances were accompanied only by a single fiddler, who often also acted as dance caller.

By the early 19th century, the banjo had become an essential partner to the fiddle, particularly in the southern United States. The banjo, originally a fretless instrument made from a gourd,[4] provided rhythmic accompaniment to song, dance and the fiddle, incorporating a high drone provided by the instrument's short "drone string." The banjo used in old-time music is typically a 5-string model with an open back (i.e., without the resonator found on most bluegrass banjos).Today old-time banjo players most commonly utilize the clawhammer style, but there were numerous styles, most of which are still used to some extent today. The major styles are down-picking (generally referred to today as "clawhammer," though historically myriad names were used to describe it), two-finger index lead, two-finger thumb lead, and a three-finger "fiddle style" that seems to have been influenced in part by late-19th century urban classical style. Young players might learn whatever style a parent or older sibling favored, or take inspiration from phonograph records, radio, traveling performers and migrant workers, local guitarists and banjo players, as well as other musicians they met when traveling to neighboring areas. Having a fiddle play the lead melody with a banjo playing rhythmic accompaniment is the most common form of Appalachian old-time music today.

Individualistic three-finger styles were developed independently by such important figures as Uncle Dave Macon, Dock Boggs, and Snuffy Jenkins. Those early three-finger styles, especially the technique developed by Jenkins, led to the three-finger Scruggs style created by Earl Scruggs in the 1940s, which helped advance the split between the old-time genre and the solo-centric style that became known as bluegrass. Jenkins developed a three-finger "roll" method that, while obviously part of the old-time tradition, inspired Scruggs to develop the smoother, faster and more complex rolls that are now standard fare in bluegrass music.

There are numerous regional styles of old-time music, each with its own repertoire and playing style. Nevertheless, some tunes (such as "Soldier's Joy") are found in nearly every regional style, though played somewhat differently in each.

African Americans, who were not only slaves but also free blacks working in timber, coal mining, and other industries, influenced Appalachian music as the banjo was adopted from African Americans by white musicians (such as Joel Walker Sweeney) in the years leading up to the Civil War.[9]

Appalachian old-time music is itself made up of regional traditions. Some of the most prominent traditions include those of North Georgia (The Skillet Lickers) Mount Airy, North Carolina (specifically the Round Peak style of Tommy Jarrell) and Grayson County/Galax, Virginia (Wade Ward and Albert Hash), West Virginia (the Hammons Family), Eastern Kentucky (J. P. Fraley and Lee Sexton), Middle Tennessee (Uncle Dave Macon, The McGee Brothers, Thomas Maupin, and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith), and East Tennessee (Charlie Acuff, The Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, G.B. Grayson).

The banjo player and fiddler Bascom Lamar Lunsford, a native of the North Carolina mountains, collected much traditional music during his lifetime, also founding the old-time music festival in Asheville, North Carolina. Notable North Carolina traditional banjo players and makers include Frank Proffitt, Frank Proffitt Jr. and Stanley Hicks, who all learned to make and play fretless mountain banjos from a family tradition. These players, among others, learned their art primarily from family and show fewer traces of influence from commercial hillbilly recordings. The Proffitts and Hicks were heirs to a centuries-old folk tradition, and through the middle to late 20th century they performed in a style older than the stringbands often associated with old time music. Their style has been recently emulated by contemporary musician Tim Eriksen.[citation needed]

States of the Deep South such as Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana also have their own regional old-time music traditions and repertoires, as does the Ozark Mountains region of Arkansas and Missouri. While the music of the Louisiana Cajuns has much in common with other North American old-time traditions it is generally treated as a tradition unto itself and not referred to as a form of old-time music.

Old-time music has also been adopted by individual Native American musicians including Walker Calhoun (1918-2012) of Big Cove, in the Qualla Boundary (home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and Matthew Kinman of the Apache Tribe. Calhoun played three-finger-style banjo and sang in the Cherokee language.[10]

The New England states, being among the first settled by Europeans, have one of the oldest traditions of old-time music. Although the Puritans (the first Europeans to settle in the region), frowned upon instrumental music, dance music flourished in both urban and rural areas beginning in the 17th century. Primary instruments today include the fiddle, piano, and guitar, with the wooden flute sometimes also used. As with Appalachian folk, a number of classical composers have turned to New England folk music for melodic and harmonic ideas, most famously Charles Ives, as well as Aaron Copland, William Schuman, and John Cage, among others. Rhythmically, this style is more diverse than most southern old time, featuring schottisches, hornpipes, and waltzes in addition to reels.

Beginning in the early 19th century, when the Midwestern states were first settled by immigrants from the eastern United States and Europe, the Midwest developed its own regional styles of old-time music. Among these, the Missouri style is of particular interest for its energetic bowing style,[11] while Michigan is one of the few areas in North America with a continuous hammered dulcimer tradition through the twentieth century.[12]

Texas developed a distinctive twin-fiddling tradition that was later popularized by Bob Wills as Western swing music.[15] Fiddle music has also been popular since the 19th century in other Western states such as Oklahoma and Colorado. The National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest has been held each year in Weiser, Idaho since 1953.

Among the prominent styles of old-time music in Canada are the Scottish-derived tradition of Nova Scotia (particularly Cape Breton Island), the French Canadian music of Quebec and Acadia, the old-time music of Ontario, and the prairie fiddling traditions of the central-western provinces. It is here (primarily in Manitoba and Saskatchewan) that the fiddle tradition of the Mtis people is found. The traditional folk music of Newfoundland and Labrador, though similar in some ways to that of the rest of Atlantic Canada, has a distinct style of its own. As such, it is generally considered as its own genre.

The current old-time music scene is alive and well, sparked since the mid-1990s by the combined exposure resulting from several prominent films, more accessible depositories of source material, and the work of a few of touring bands, including The Freight Hoppers, The Wilders, Uncle Earl, Old Crow Medicine Show, and the Glade City Rounders. 17dc91bb1f