Search - Shady Grove Old Time Music from North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia on DVD

Anyone into old time music needs to buy borrow or steal this

Tony Thomas | SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA | 11/15/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is unbelievable. I saw some of these performers, Boggs and Holcomb I believe at folk music festivals in the 1960s when I was a callow, stupid young lad who thought in a few years he would be a banjo and guitar genius outdistancing these great men. It is 45 or so years later and I a lot wiser and a lot more practiced in this music and I find the playing here unbelieveable.

It is simply shocking to watch Roscoe Holcomb frail. You listen to that and you cannot believe anyone can play that strongly, that intensely, and sing as well, all with a straight poker face.

Seeing Dock Boggs play and speak with his quiet, strong dignity is also worth the price of the entire DVD. Listening to his and all the other music is great as well.

Tommy Jarrel plays so well, so gracefully, and you get to see his playing clearly. Also you get a glimpse of a youthful Mike Seeger with ultra-long 1960s hair!

Kilby Snow is the most forgotten person on this CD. He was a great player of the autoharp and his repertoire here includes songs identified with fiddle and banjo dances and some blues as well. He plays the autoharp in the traditional way, in the lap. The Carter Family began an approach of holding the autoharp in your hands and playing it standing which must have been required for their recordings and performances, but Snow's manner of putting the autoharp on a table or in his lap is the traditional way that dominated before folkies began to follow the Carter Family way of playing it. Anyone who plays banjo or guitar will be just impressed with Snow's right hand picking and rhythm on the autoharp which is a lot closer to banjoists and finger style guitar than a most other autoharp players I've seen.

It is too bad there are not more DVDs of these performers who represented a continuity of the music from the 19th Century.

But it is good that I own this. I hope you share my happiness ."