String Bands

American Studies 63 HILLBILLY HIGHWAY: APPALACHIA AND AMERICA Dr. Whisnant Fall 1997 STRING BANDS

Main points:

String bands arose fairly late in the region's history and were widespread for only about twenty years (ca. 1920-1940), but have proved to be a permanent fixture of the region's music

Although they took many forms, the most frequent aggregation was fiddle, banjo, and guitar
With very few exceptions (mainly family groups), string band performance was an exclusively male phenomenon, but there were a few bands in which women played, such as the Virginia Reelers: and Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls (videotape)
Within the region itself string bands were logistically feasible (small group, easily portable instruments) and socially adaptable / useful (e.g., for local public performance, private and public dances, political gatherings, etc.)
String bands existed throughout the US (e.g., Cajun, cowboy), but the Appalachian version became the most widely disseminated one
Some reasons why this is so:

they happened to arise in the 1920s, when radio and recording were developing as mass media
a major mass media form of the 1920s/30s, the "radio barn dance (especially WSM's Grand Ole Opry," promoted the form and image
the mass media image that emerged was congruent with pre-existing stereotypes of the region
string band repertoire and styles drew from and synthesized a wide variety of familier popular culture repertoires and styles (e.g., vaudeville, jazz, swing, cowboy), and so appealed widely beyond the region itself
string bands therefore proved to be a fairly easily reproducible and marketable phenomenon
1920s/30s string band repertoire and style appealed for a variety of reasons to folk revival musicians of the 1950s and afterward, generating a multitude of folk revival string bands that perpetuated the form

Bluegrass music, which arose after World War II, preserved, transformed, and extended major aspects of the string band image, repertoire, and style, and brought it to a growing post-war audience

Regionally based string bands still exist in considerable numbers: Many of them continue to play at such annual festivals as North Carolina's Union Grove (videotape)

Films:

To Hear Your Banjo Play

(Pete Seeger with a late 1940s Greenwich Village band and square dancers)

Goin' to Cades Cove

(Mike Seeger and the New Lost City Ramblers in a National Park Service "documentary")

Lily May Ledford

(Appalachian Film Workshop film on leader of early "all-girl" string band)

High Lonesome (documentary on Bill Monroe and Bluegrass music)

Some recent revival bands:

Fuzzy Mountain String Band (Chapel Hill NC) [with sound files]

Chapel Hill NC)