Mountain music legend Ralph Stanley said of six-time Grammy nominee Mike Seeger, "He's got his own style. He's an old-timer, and he does his style just fine." From the fertile ground of American folk music, through the roots of field recordings, vintage discs, and personal encounters with traditional artists, Seeger's creative spirit finds flower again on this solo album. True Vine reflects his connection to deep musical roots and represents the latest blossoming of his life-long exploration of diverse traditional musical styles.

A survey of traditional Southern banjo techniques, styles, instrumentals and songs played solo on a variety of 23 mostly vintage banjos. Styles range from 19th-century African-American Mississippi style to a song played in the style evolved in the 1940s by Northern Carolinian Earl Scruggs. Recorded and annotated by Mike Seeger.

Fly Down Little Bird, recorded shortly before the influential "old-time" Southern music practitioner and folklorist Mike Seeger's untimely 2009 death from cancer, celebrates the authentic sound and spirit of the traditional American folk songs that first inspired Mike and his younger sister Peggy's equally significant musical career. It is suffused with love, of the music and each other, a poignant summation of a deep-rooted musical and family relationship.

Mike and Peggy were raised in a Depression-era household steeped in traditional acoustic folk songs then unfamiliar to all but a few Americans. With their mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, serving as transcriber of song collectors John and Alan Lomax's "field recordings" from the East Coast's mountains and hollows, her children absorbed the real music of our country. (Their much older half-brother, Pete Seeger, also visited occasionally, adding his music to the household.)

The fourteen songs on Fly Down Little Bird were, as Peggy says, "learned in childhood, recorded in adulthood." Sharing lead and harmony vocals, Mike (banjos, harmonica, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, mandolin) and Peggy (banjo, guitar, piano, lap dulcimer) transport listeners into a world of spare arrangements, plainspoken and frequently pointed lyrics, and acoustic instruments. It's a world they have helped to maintain as performers and documentarians as well as inspirations to young musicians over the last half-century.

Fly Down Little Bird, the third duo album by Mike and Peggy, contains still-valid social commentary on the greedy ways of the world, including "The Farmer is the Man," the cheerfully amoral "The Dodger Song," and the racially aware "Big Bee Suck the Pumpkin Stem" ("Black man hoe the cotton patch/And the white man tote the money"). There are mischievous, if somewhat frustrated, reflections on love (including "Old Bangum," "Cindy," and "Jennie Jenkins") and the pangs of loneliness ("My Home's Across the Blue Ridge Mountains," "Poor Little Turtle Dove," "Little Birdie"), plus the playful nonsense song, "Fod!" and the instrumental "Red River Jig."

The guitar fostered great creativity in the South as it evolved from a small gut-string instrument in polite parlors to the big, loud, steel-string guitar now found in our homes and onstage. Mike sings and plays a variety of the styles that were played in the rural South from about 1850 to 1930 on 25 different types of guitars. Featured are: banjo-like styles, rags, blues, parlor and parlor-based styles, slide guitar styles, and many song accompaniment styles. The booklet includes a fresh look at the history of the guitar and its travel South, notes on songs and styles, and photographs of all the instruments used. 28 tracks, 36-page booklet, 74 minutes

After researching, learning, and polishing songs found on early recordings of country music, multi-instrumentalist Mike Seeger laid down these rousing tracks in 1962 at his home in New Jersey. His liner notes include lyrics and indicate the sources from which he learned each song.

No Description Available.
Genre: Country & Western
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 4-JUN-1996