Great Real Names of Old-Time String Bands I Have Loved

if you want to vote for any other "ramblers" band please vote prince albert hunt (whose name is remarkable becuz he is a prince not so much because of the ramblers part, which is common.)
if you want to vote for earl johnson's clodhoppers, please vote for the binkley brothers.
if you want to vote for the mississippi possum hunters, please vote for dr. bate.

skillet lickers i just love

I don't know what a Buckle Buster is but that one

there was one major serious omission and i apologize for it: Seven Foot Dilly & His Dill Pickles.
If you wish to vote for Seven Foot Dilly, please post in this thread.

i think gully jumpers & joy boys are the two to beat, imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvoRT4HDegA

Dr. Smith's Champion Hoss-Hair Pullers are the boys for me

Gid Tanner & The Skillet Lickers imo

Two of the Pep-Steppers (Hoyt and Rozelle, fiddle and guitar) were great-grandparents of mine, so I'll recuse myself, but the Gulley Jumpers would have to receive my disinterested vote.

wow!! those Pep-Steppers records are really great!! very cool. do you have any photos of them?

kinda love everything about the name Floyd Ming's Pep-Steppers

I guess Hoyt was his real name and Floyd was a misprint on the record label!

Yeah, Hoyt Ming was his real name, but I think the typo carried over to Harry Smith's Anthology. I never met Hoyt or Rozelle, and I don't have any photos or memorabilia of them, though my grandfather might (they were his wife's parents).

wow, love the pep-steppers so much. i think it was rozelle with the foot thumping you can hear through most of their music? so great!

if permissible, write in vote for: da costa woltz's southern broadcasters

i thought about including them! but i didn't know if broadcasters was goofy enuff to compete.

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these are really great.

"Champion Hoss-Hair Pullers" sounds good the way I'm imagining it pronounced w/northern english enthusiam, but I would guess "Joy Boys" as elongated by an old-time american would be the best. always liked "Pep-Steppers" & "Gully Jumpers" def deserve an honourable mention.

did any of these guys record anything else like indian war whoop or was it a miraculous one-off?

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if there is anything approaching iww i'd love to know too. i find that song totally haunting...

Joy Boys got robbed.

well... there are lots of masterpieces in the string band genre; indian war whoop is just one of 'em!
but if you're looking for that kind of wailing, there's nothing that really comes to mind immediately.

it's the wild one chord strumming kind of thing, so good. would love to have some recommendations though!

if'n you want hauntin, this one is pretty haunted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Say254HTyLE

i was going to post fiddlin bob larkan's 'beautiful belle' but it's not on youtube :(

if you want wild & reckless, you can't do much better than the carter brothers & son:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAKxIqUCPOo

for hard drivin' string duo music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fszqdp5yYao

the stripling brothers recorded some great breakdowns along with a number of waltzes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1511gO7SWw

clark kessinger was one of the finest fiddlers of his generation imo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7mQ_tUOE40

rare bascom lamar lunsford side, one of his best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOL4GtyWWQs

great african american string band"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lpLlpLhlgk

these are pretty much all fantastic. john hammond's little birdie is v similar to roscoe holcomb's, mb the inspiration?

some of the fiddle playing sounds so close to british stuff, the kessinger brothers track is great, but that skanking guitar on the offbeat changes it completely. the stokes & whitten one is really cool too.

ok, this is only tangentially related, but apparently czech bluegrass is a thing. can anybody recommend me some of it?

did any of these guys record anything else like indian war whoop or was it a miraculous one-off?

lack of wacky name notwithstanding: narmour & smith aren't a million miles away

and in the spirit of the thread title (second one probably best appreciated by antipodeans)

seven foot dilly his dill pickles
the swamp rooters

thanks for posting that, love the narmour & smith. that blissful strumming is what i'm about.

boy do i love fine old-time fiddlin!!!!!!

Any suggestions for good compilations of this stuff, Ian?

recently found a copy of the kessinger brothers collection that county put out which is excellent!

yes -- these will get you started. these are links to CDs, but if you collect LPs I can draw up a nice list of those as well. pretty much anything in the County Records 400 or 500 series is essential to me.

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Old-Time-Texas-String-Bands-Volume-One-Texas-Farewell/release/7214349
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Mississippi-String-Bands-Volume-One/release/3246537
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Hard-Times-In-The-Country/release/12350571
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Music-From-The-Lost-Provinces-Old-Time-Stringbands-From-Ashe-County-North-Carolina-Vicinity-/release/3629139
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Kentucky-Mountain-Music-Classic-Recordings-Of-The-1920s-1930s/release/6284696
https://www.discogs.com/Grayson-Whitter-The-Recordings-Of-Grayson-Whitter/release/6144319

this 8 volume series mixes old-time string bands with rural gospel, country blues, jug bands etc from the 1920s-30s-
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Times-Aint-Like-They-Used-To-Be-Early-American-Rural-Music-Classic-Recordings-Of-The-1920s-A/release/3869795

i love the kessinger brothers. though i think they might not have actually been brothers? i want to say it was a nephew and uncle, they were just marketed as brothers, i think.

and, of course, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music.

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Work-Hard-Play-Hard-Pray-Hard/release/4365195

Yeah, I have Anthology of American Folk Music, I'm just starting on listening to the 1920s now and there is either way too much stuff out there or not enough for each year, so will check these out, cheers!

in my mind, and i think it's the general consensus, is that the golden age for this music begins in 1926 or 1927 when electrical recording became the standard. a few exceptions to the rule are the 1922 recordings by Eck Robertson and some of John Carson's earliest records. Also of course tons of great jazz from this era.

It's for this sorry - http://centuriesofsound.com"> http://centuriesofsound.com - don't want to be spamming it too much, but just realised what I'm saying makes no sense without the context. So yes, I was quite excited by everything in 1917 but there seems to have been a leveling off since then, I just got done with 1920 and a few blues songs aside it's not progressing much, I can see all this great stuff coming up from '25 or' 26 onwards, but feel like I have to be missing something in the meantime. There is some of this music going back really far, I'm putting some Polk Miller in my 1909 mix, shame he was such a terrible racist.

The Kentucky Mountain Music series is so unbelievably good.