A complete survey of traditional banjo styles complete with tunings, playing tips, and the author's deft drawings. Progresses from easy tunes for the beginner to more difficult pieces. The styles include up-picking or Pete Seeger's basic strum; two-finger picking; three-finger picking; and what had variously been called frailing, clawhammer, knocking, rapping, overhand, fram-style, flayin' hand, andother Appalachian names, here called down-picking. Audio download available online

An Instruction Method for playing the old-time five-string mountain banjo based on the styles of traditional banjo-pickers.

Art Rosenbaum is one of America's foremost performers and teachers of traditional five-string banjo playing. He has a long-time interest in the myriad old-time tunings that give breadth and richness to mountain and old-time banjo picking, and has learned first-hand from old-timers in the South and Midwest. Pete Seeger (whose pioneering book How to Play the Five-String Banjo gave Art his start in the 1950s) praised the inclusion of 23 tunings in Art's 1968 Oak Publications book Old-Time Mountain Banjo. This book and 2-DVD set doubles (plus one!) that number of tunings. Art groups the tunings into families and shows how they can be used, with various picking styles, in playing banjo tunes and string band music and in song accompaniment. Experienced players will broaden their knowledge of unusual and interesting tunings and styles, and novice players can get started with common tunings for easy pieces like Cripple Creek and Shout Lulu, the first tunes many old-timers learned.

This friendly book is filled with clawhammer banjo instruction, tablature, lyrics, tune histories, chords, playing tips, vintage photos, and more. Includes such classid oldtime tunes as, Soldier's Joy; Cluck Old Hen; Arkansas Traveler; Leather Britches; Mississippi Sawyer; Chicken Reel; Shady Grove; Red Rocking Chair; John Henry; Uncle Joe; Little Rosewood Casket; the State of Arkansas; Hogeye; the Old Spinning Wheel; and When You and I Were Young Maggie. A companion recording, Southern Mountain Classics, is available on CD.

Finally, clawhammer banjo instruction that is for 100% beginners! Originally written in 1973, this book has taught more people to play clawhammer banjo than any other book. This brand new 40th Anniversary Edition is newly updated and improved, complete with spiral binding. It contains the same friendly, clear and simple instruction as the original book, and it will teach you to play 31 old-time classics from the ground up. You will learn to play: Buffalo Gals, Cluck Old Hen, Cotton-Eyed Joe, Cripple Creek, The Cuckoo, Cumberland Mountain Deer Chase, Darlin' Cory, Down in the Willow Gardens, East Virginia, Groundhog, Handsome Molly, Little Birdie, Little Sadie, Lynchburg Town, Muley's Daughter, New River Train, Old Holly Hare, Old Blue, Old Joe Clark, Polly Put the Kettle On, Poor Wayfaring Stranger, Rain and Snow, Red Rocking Chair, Shady Grove, Shortening Bread, Sugar Hill, Swannanoa Tunnel, Sweet Sunny South, Wild Bill Jones.

Classic old-time tunes as played by the New Lost City Ramblers. Hundreds of rare photographs, annotations and discographies.

In the summer of 1972, a group of young people in Bloomington, Indiana, began a weekly gathering with the purpose of reviving traditional American old-time music and dance. In time, the group became a kind of accidental utopia, a community bound by celebration and deliberately void of structure and authority. In this joyful and engaging book, John Bealle tells the lively history of the Bloomington Old-Time Music and Dance Group -- how it was formed, how it evolved its unique culture, and how it grew to shape and influence new waves of traditional music and dance. Broader questions about the folk revival movement, social resistance, counter culture, authenticity, and identity intersect this delightful history. More than a story about the people who forged the group or an extraordinary convergence of talent and creativity, Old-Time Music and Dance follows the threads of American folk culture and the social experience generated by this living tradition of music and dance.

Graced by more than 200 illustrations, many of them seldom seen and some never before published, this sparkling volume offers vivid portraits of the men and women who created country music, the artists whose lives and songs formed the rich tradition from which so many others have drawn inspiration. Included here are not only such major figures as Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Fiddlin' John Carson, Charlie Poole, and Gene Autry, who put country music on America's cultural map, but many fascinating lesser-known figures as well, such as Carson Robison, Otto Gray, Chris Bouchillon, Emry Arthur and dozens more, many of whose stories are told here for the first time. To map some of the winding, untraveled roads that connect today's music to its ancestors, Tony Russell draws upon new research and rare source material, such as contemporary newspaper reports and magazine articles, internet genealogy sites, and his own interviews with the musicians or their families. The result is a lively mix of colorful tales and anecdotes, priceless contemporary accounts of performances, illuminating social and historical context, and well-grounded critical judgment. The illustrations include artist photographs, record labels, song sheets, newspaper clippings, cartoons, and magazine covers, recreating the look and feel of the entire culture of country music. Each essay includes as well a playlist of recommended and currently available recordings for each artist. Finally, the paperback edition now features an extensive index.