|
Tom McCarroll & Tammie
McCarroll-Burroughs
James T.
“Tom” McCarroll, born in 1928, worked in city maintenance in Lenoir City
for over 30 years, all the while playing fiddle, guitar, and banjo. His daughter Tammie, the only one of
Fiddlin' Jim McCarroll's 13 grandchildren to take up music, was making
45 rpm
records in junior high school, recording Rockabilly songs and some of
her own compositions, as well as playing with her grandfather’s band
throughout his life, later performing with her father in the “Bonnie
Lou and
Buster” show on WJHL-TV in Sevierville, and at RV rallies and parks
from
Florida to Ohio. In recent years they've been frequent guests at
the Laurel Theater and on WDVX, performed at the Festival
of American Fiddle Tunes in July 2004, and released a CD Generations.
|
Clint Howard
The oft told tale of Clint
Howard,
Clarence
"Tom" Ashley, and Fred Price's meeting with Ralph Rinzler at the Union
Grove, NC Fiddler's Convention in 1960 led to Howard traveling and
recording with Price, Doc Watson and others, making friends and
developing fans in all parts of the country.
In the early 60's, playing with Ashley, Price and Watson at Carnegie
Hall and the Newport Folk Festival, among other venues, Clint was the
front man for the group, telling jokes and introducing songs with a
natural ease that audiences loved. Two albums made at that time
Old-Time Music at Clarence Ashley's and Old Timey Concert are still
popular today, and his now classic 1961 recording of "Maggie Walker
Blues" with Fred Price and Doc Watson is regarded as the basis for Bob
Dylans' "Long Time Gone." In the 70's he formed a band called Clint
Howard, Fred Price &
Sons, which became well known as a great mountain music band. They had
show dates at the Smithsonian, Washington, DC, the 1982 World's Fair in
Knoxville and the National Folk Festival Wolf Trap Farm Park in Vienna,
VA. They traveled with a tour that had performances in 14 different
cities sponsored by The Gabier Folklore Society.
Now 74, Clint Howard of Mountain City, Tennessee still performs
mountain bluegrass. His intense vocals make revelations of old-time
music warhorses such as "Footprints in the Snow" and "The Old Man at
the Mill." |
Donna Ray Norton
The acapella ballad singing
tradition of Madison County,
North Carolina has been an object of fascination for ballad enthusiasts
for
generations, from the visits of Cecil
Sharp and Olive Campbell in the early 20th century
(fictionalized in
the movie _Songcatcher_) to the remarkable recordings of John Cohen in
1965
(released on the Rounder album _High Atmosphere_) to the present day.
25-year-old Donna Ray Norton
counts herself among eight
generations of ballad singers and musicians, among them her mother Lena
Jean
Ray, cousin Sheila Kay Adams and grandfathers Byard Ray and Morris Norton.
|
Charlie Acuff
Near home Acuff has
been a mainstay of music programming at the Museum of Appalachia
and at Jubilee Community Arts events. Farther away, he’s a regular at
the
annual Breakin’ Up Winter old-time gathering, and has traveled to Washington State where he was featured at
the
Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. |
 The Carawans
The Carawans perform traditional and topical songs in their
characteristic unprepossessing style. Guy and Candie played a key role
in the folk music revival and Civil Rights movement in the 1960s (Guy
is credited along with Pete Seeger as one of the authors of the Civil
Rights Anthem "We Shall Overcome" developed from an African American
spiritual) and have been associated with the Highlander Center since
1960, an institution with a controversial past which continues to
promote social change and popular education in Appalachia. Guy and
Candie have also done extensive work researching and documenting
traditional music throughout Appalachia, the Georgia Sea Islands, China
and Central America. Their son Evan Carawan is a second-generation
hammer dulcimer player from the foothills of the Blue Ridge, who has
absorbed both Appalachian and Celtic influences and developed a
weaving, improvisational style of his own. Evan has been highly praised
by top hammer dulcimer players John McCutcheon and Malcolm Daglish and
has released several CDs featuring his original compositions as well as
Celtic and Appalachian standards.
|
Henry Perry & Jaimie Cameron
 Guitarist
Jaimie
Cameron, veteran of area bands
the House Rockers, Big Kabluey, and Jacqui and the Tumble Kings, adds
his
signature compositions to a danceable and distinctive sound, with harp
player
Henry Perry, who took early instruction from Deford Bailey, the only
African
American member of the early Grand Ole Opry. Slow
Blind Hill has been a favorite at Old
City clubs, the KMA's
Alive After
Five, and at late night swing dances at the Laurel Theater
and other venues.
|
|
 Roy
Harper
A retired brakeman
from Manchester, Tennessee,
Roy Harper has been performing old-time country music for more than
fifty
years. Roy has devoted his life to
continuing the
traditions of the style of country music he grew up listening to. Much of the inspiration for his songs comes
from the many years he spent working on the railroad.
Compared by his fans to Jimmy Rogers, Roy has developed quite a
following among people who find this style of music preferable to
modern
“country” music. “County music gradually
got citified, and I stayed the same.”
|
 Jim
Turley
|
Danny
Gammon & The Tool Benders
While known
chiefly as a fiddler, Danny Gammon
is equally at home playing guitar and singing with a mellow authority.
He works
at refining his musical taste and broadening his musical experience. He
enjoys
playing music with people of many tastes, and strives to be inclusive
musicians
of any level of talent. He is the
primary organizer of Music Therapy, an unlikely group of musicians who
meet
twice monthly for the pure joy of playing with other musicians |
 The
Lantana Drifters
|
|
The
Attic Rattlers
After
they gave up counting the bands they've been in together and
separately, David Lovett,
Kathleen McGregor Williams, and Greg Horne 
decided to rattle the attic
with old-time music. They're all
regulars on the contradance
band schedule, and are among the last to leave the basement at every
Jubilee Festival. With tunes from North Carolina, West Virginia,
Kentucky, and an East Tennessee style, this old-time power trio makes the
strings sing and the feet fly.
|
 The
Mumbillies
oldest
continuing band in Knoxville (by the second oldest, the HQ Band), the
Mumbillies have stuffed old time fiddle tunes and banjo riffs into
every crack
in the Laurel Theater's walls for the last quarter century
and more. |
.
 The
Maid Rite Stringband
|
 The Epworth Old Harp Singers
|
 Informal
sessions People enjoying themselves in the basement of
the Laurel
|
The Carawans
Guitarist
Jaimie
Cameron, veteran of area bands
the House Rockers, Big Kabluey, and Jacqui and the Tumble Kings, adds
his
signature compositions to a danceable and distinctive sound, with harp
player
Henry Perry, who took early instruction from Deford Bailey, the only
African
American member of the early Grand Ole Opry. Slow
Blind Hill has been a favorite at 
Roy
Harper
Jim
Turley
The
Lantana Drifters
The
Mumbillies
oldest
continuing band in Knoxville (by the second oldest, the HQ Band), the
Mumbillies have stuffed old time fiddle tunes and banjo riffs into
every crack
in the Laurel Theater's walls for the last quarter century
and more. 
The
Maid Rite Stringband
Informal
sessions People enjoying themselves in the basement of
the Laurel
