Going Down to Raleigh: Stringband Music in the North
CarolinaPiedmont 1976-1998 is
a two-disc anthology that presents field recordings of stringband music from
the central Piedmont of North Carolina. The musicians featured in the project
are fiddlers, banjo players, guitarists, singers, and a hammered dulcimer
player who first learned their music from family and friends in the early
decades of the twentieth century. Going
down to Raleigh includes performances by Virgil Craven, Lauchlin Shaw, A.C.
Overton, Joe and Odell Thompson, Leonard Eubanks, Marvin Gaster, Jack Jones,
Smith McInnis, Fred Olson and Wade Yates, among others. Wayne
Martin, who is Folklife Director of the North Carolina Arts
Council and an old-time fiddler, made many of the field recordings and produced
the anthology, which includes a forty-page booklet with notes and photographs
of the musicians.