Banjo Hangout Top 100 Clawhammer and Old-Time Songs

For the TOTW Marmaduke's Hornpipe/Cricket on the Hearth, this one is based on Kenny Baker's fiddling.

A poor attempt at one of my favorite songs

Melvin Wine, the great West Virginia fiddled learned this from his father and it goes back to one of his great-grandfather Smithy's favorite tunes. This is for TOTW.

Goldtone wl-250~ played in F

Tradesman fretless~

Enoch tradesman fretless..played in the key of D.

John Salyer of Kentucky is credited most with this song. Pete Sutherland's slow version on "Banjo Gathering" inspired me to learn it, listening both to his 3-finger picking and the original fiddle recording of Salyer in 1940. Thus I'm playing it slow first, then fast; picking, then clawhammer.

For a region that has seen generations of young people move away to find work in far away auto plants and steel mills, and in uniform, the song Home Sweet Home has a deep meaning lost on most of us today. The song has been around since before the Civil War, and you will find it in the repertoire of most musicians whose roots are in Appalachia. It is most often played as an instrumental; the song is so familiar, the singing of it is unnecessary. This is from our Clifftop jam with West Virginia fiddler Ralph Roberts. Don Couchie is playing rhythm guitar, and I am following along with some three finger style old time banjo.

The first MP3 I ever did. In 2002, a student asked me to record this for him, and I shared it on BANJO-L.