

The Armstrong Brothers Band



The Ebony Hillbillies (image source: Canberra Jazz Blog )



The Carolina Chocolate Drops (image source: MTV)

(2008),

Various Artist

Compilations:



Further Reading







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The first non-settlers ofand later, the, were of primarily of three ethnicities:, and. These hard-working farmers and craftsmen created a distinct culture which in thecame to be named “.” Although theroots of hillbilly are routinely acknowledged, even scholars on the culture are far less likely to recognize hillbilly’s other significant place of ancestral origin,Hillbilly music’s biracial parentage should be immediately evident to anyone with any knowledge of the music’s primary instruments, theand the. The modern fiddle (or violin) may have originated inbut similar bowed instruments preceded its development by several centuries and the violin made its way to thethanks tocolonists. The banjo, descended from the numerous plucked instruments of West Africa such as the, and, was introduced to the Americas byslaves.Famous slave owners like, androutinely required their forced laborers to learn to play violin to entertain their friends and themselves at plantation balls and the White House.The fiddle and the banjo soon made their way to the mountains of thewhere they were played at barn dances and frolics by free men. Although it’s probably a widely held assumption that free blacks all hightailed it to themost actually remained in the. Many free black southerners came from theor had lived in’swhere blacks were free until it was purchased by the. Even more were freed former slaves who either elected to remain or were unable to leave. In 1860, 84% lived not in the, however, but in the hilly, and).Although black musicians were influenced by white— often adding minstrel compositions to their repertoire — white minstrels of course took most of their inspiration from black culture. Although the earliest known document of the banjo and fiddle being played together is byin 1840, black banjo players were documented as having played both the banjo and fiddle in the proximity of one another as early as 1774 in southern. The Virginia Minstrels’ first banjoist,, also had learned his instrument from black musicians when he was a member of a traveling circus.Although hillbilly music, then, had revolved around the pairing together of the fiddle and banjo for many years, in the recording age record companies segregated music into racially-specific genres to simplify their marketing. Companies marketedto the black, record-buying public — which included, andmusic among other genres. “” was targeted toward the white public. Black hillbilly musicians, then, quickly learned some other tunes if they hoped to cut music for anyone besides field recorders and ethnomusicologists.Take the case of. Bailey was the first black musician to play on the, had a grandfather who’d been a champion Tennessee fiddler in the 1880s, and as a child played alongside relatives at thewith. In 1975 he revealed to an interviewer, “I never heard the blues till I came to Nashville to work. All I heard as a boy back then was what we called black hillbilly music.”Beginning in the 1910s, all of hillbilly culture had begun to vanish along the hillbilly highway, an exodus from the mountains in which many hill folk moved to cities in search of work in the industrial sector and led to a good deal of popular entertainment based on regionalist stereotypes. In the, field recorders documented some black hillbillies, whose music by then often blurred the lines between blues and. More musicians passed on and few of their descendants followed in their ancestors’ musical footsteps — although a few taught white musicians with whom hillbilly music came to be almost exclusively identified, musicians like(taught by),(taught by), and(taught by).If you’re interested in hearing black mountain music, here’s a discography which includes examples from all eras of recorded music:(1995)(2006)(2001)(1999)(1994)(2006),(2010),(2011),(2012),(1966)(1998)(2004),(2005), and(2011)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1995)(2009)(1972),(1974), and(1978)(1991), Mississippi Sheiks & Chatman Brothers - Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order: Volume 4 (26 March 1934 To 15 October 1936) (1991),(1991),(1991),(1991)(1993)(1985),(1996)(1991)(2006),(1989),(1996),(1996),(1997),(1999),(1999),(1993),(1999),(1998),(1993), and(1995)(2009) edited by George M. Curtis III and Harold B. Gill, Jr.(1995), by Cecelia Conway(2009), edited by William H. Turner and Edward J. Cabbell(2013), edited by Diane Pecknold(1974) by Ira Berlin(1977), by Dena Epstein(1987) and(1990), by Charles K. Wolfe