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Books > Music > Musical instruments & instrumental ensembles > String instruments > General
In 2015 University Press of Mississippi published Mississippi
Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s by Harry Bolick and Stephen
T. Austin to critical acclaim and commercial success. Roughly half
of Mississippi's rich, old-time fiddle tradition was documented in
that volume and Harry Bolick has spent the intervening years
working on this book, its sequel. Beginning with Tony Russell's
original mid-1970s fieldwork as a reference, and later working with
Russell, Bolick located and transcribed all of the Mississippi 78
rpm string band recordings. Some of the recording artists like the
Leake County Revelers, Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers, and Narmour
& Smith had been well known in the state. Others, like the
Collier Trio, were obscure. This collecting work was followed by
many field trips to Mississippi searching for and locating the
children and grandchildren of the musicians. Previously unheard
recordings and stories, unseen photographs and discoveries of
nearly unknown local fiddlers, such as Jabe Dillon, John Gatwood,
Claude Kennedy, and Homer Grice, followed. The results are now
available in this second, companion volume, Fiddle Tunes from
Mississippi: Commercial and Informal Recordings, 1920-2018. Two
hundred and seventy musical examples supplement the biographies and
photographs of the thirty-five artists documented here. Music comes
from commercial recordings and small pressings of 78 rpm, 45 rpm,
and LP records; collectors' field recordings; and the musicians'
own home tape and disc recordings. Taken together, these two
volumes represent a delightfully comprehensive survey of
Mississippi's fiddle tunes.
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