When
I was first learning about fiddling, there were still some old timers
around in Kentucky who remembered back to the early days, when in
most rural communities just about the only musical instrument people
had was the fiddle. In those times, change happened very slowly from
one generation to the next, and the fiddling styles were probably
much like they were when the settlers carried them across the waters.
Many of the tunes they played were so well filled out that they were
complete in themselves without accompaniment, even when played for a
dance, and some were what they called listening pieces, meant to be
played solo.
Those old timers are pretty well all gone
now, and gone with them is a way of life that will never be seen
again. Their world was a place where the past and the present stood
side by side, and I had the good fortune to share in their memories
of that now long ago time and to witness through them the passing of
an age. These were people who were born and raised in the agrarian
days before automobiles and electricity, who experienced more social
and technological upheaval in their lifetime than any other
generation of people in history, yet who never forgot who they were
or where they came from.
They enthralled me with the nearly lost
tunes and songs and their tales of the olden times, and filled me
with wildly romantic longing to keep those memories alive.
Every long forgotten tune remembered, and every eccentric hitch
of the bow learned, was a way of briefly stepping back into that time
with those people and reclaiming a little bit of the grace and
dignity that was always present in the old fiddle tunes played in the
traditional way.
- Bruce
Greene
What the critics say about
Five Miles of Ellum Wood...
"Bruce's playing never fails to transport me
back to the lost and ancient world of Old Kentucky. His style is
smooth as silk, his delivery exciting, his use of ornamentation harks
back to the melding of Old World and New World that has occurred in
Southern music a century and a half ago."
-
David Lynch, Old Time Music Top Ten
"...This tape by Bruce Greene must sit at the
top...of the year's pile of old time fiddling recordings. Bruce is an
elegant bow artist who has modeled his very personal style on some of
the legends of the Kentucky fiddling pantheon...So much subtlety goes
into making (his tunes) shine, so much dynamic, that when you hear
them, you will have to marvel at the beauty of the tune structures
and also at the skill of the fiddler in pulling some of the obtuse
phrases together into a cohesive unit." -
Kerry Blech, Old Time Herald
The
Songs
|
Five Miles of Ellum
Wood
[WAV][AU]
|
Old Christmas
|
Viney Lusk
|
|
Kiss me Quick,
My Papa's A'Coming
|
The Kentucky
Winder
|
Going Across the
Sea
|
|
Young Edward
|
Squire Campbell
|
The Wild Goose
Chase
|
|
Fontaine's Ferry
|
Old Joe Williams
|
The Old Blue
Bonnet
|
|
The Banks of the
Arkansas
|
The Brush Fork of John's
Creek
|
Old Time Brickyard
Joe
|
|
The Last of
Sizemore
|
Trouble On the
Mind
[WAV][AU]
|
Betty Baker
|
|
Jack's Creek
Ridge
|
Across the Plains
|
Old Bob
[WAV][AU]
|
|
The Big Mule
|
|
|
[Order this
CD!]
Thanks for encouragement and help to
Ross Jerabeck, Steve Green, Lynwood Montell, Buddy Salyer, Steve
Rice, Zola Campbell Watts, Hardin Campbell, Nell Walker Fernandez,
Steve Millard, Don Pedi, and always and above all, Loy
McWhirter
Dedicated to the memory of
Grover Salyer (1910 - 1994). A teacher, mentor, and
friend.
Web Editor:
Champagne