You’ve heard the cliche “pickin’ and grinnin’” since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. To non-musicians it’s more-or-less a hint that you’re in for a night of good old-timey music fun. But what does it really mean? And why do certain musicians, especially Bluegrass banjo pickers grin while they pick?…
Most people who talk about “Folk music” today are really thinking of a mid-century movement in which people who did not grow up with Folk songs per se went out of their way to learn something about Folk songs and their heritage. And they also began singing the songs and…
With yesterday’s astonishing events in Hoboken, NJ, I can’t help thinking of other train wrecks. It’s probably not fair, but the crash at the ending of the movie Silver Streak, which starred the late Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jill Clayburgh, and Patrick McGoohan gives some idea of what the Hoboken…
Most Americans are blissfully unaware of the Skiffle movement, which was Britain’s late-1950s-early-1960s parallel to North America’s Folk Revival. Like US teens and twenty-somethings who abandoned the Fabians and Bobby Vintons for the more authentic sounds of the Weavers and Leadbelly, young Brits in the late 1950s were starving for…
Originally posted September 18, 2015 So, I learned 5-string banjo in the 1960s, following the example of a variety of folk artists, especially Pete Seeger, who – despite being basically a frailer – had mastered several other techniques, and didn’t feel bad about adjusting his playing style to the song.…
Originally posted August 23, 2015 Folks working with traditional music often run into fake copyright notices on the sheet music they buy. One particular publisher often gets credit and even publishing royalties for recordings of songs that were written long before that company existed, only because they affixed a copyright…
