This week, Virginia based old-time string quartet The Earl White Stringband recorded live at the Ozark Folk Center State Park’s annual Stringband Music & Arts Festival. Also, interviews with Earl White.

Every October, the Ozark Folk Center State Park holds its annual Stringband Music & Arts Festival. It’s two days of lively stringband music & dance, handcrafted art, fine Southern cuisine, and old-fashioned fun. The festival includes live shows on Friday and Saturday featuring acclaimed bands from the Ozarks and beyond.

“Fiddling Earl White has been a mainstay in the old-time, folk and dance community for more than 45 years.  An original and founding member of the famed Green Grass Cloggers, he is one of few Black Americans preserving and playing Appalachian old time string band music, which was an intricate part of Black communities and formed the foundation of American music of today.  Earl is well known for his extensive repertoire of tunes, and his heartfelt, compact, driving style.  He has played in numerous old time string bands, and he currently leads the Earl White String Band, featuring Victor Furtado (banjo), Jim Nelson (guitar), and Dido Norris (bass). White runs the Big Indian Farm Artisan Bakery with his wife in rural Virginia. He also teaches private lessons, hosts jams and (when we’re lucky) comes down to Raleigh to play a PineCone Square Dance.” - https://pinecone.org/artists/earl-white/

In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, OHR producer Jeff Glover offers a 1974 archival recording of legendary balladeer Aunt Ollie Gilbert, performing the traditional song “A Rock in the Weary Land,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

In his segment “Back in the Hills,” writer, professor and historian Dr. Brooks Blevins profiles Ollie Gilbert’s husband, folk singer Oscar Gilbert.