{"id":322,"date":"2017-01-06T23:51:20","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T05:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drdosido.net\/drdsblog\/?p=322"},"modified":"2017-01-07T18:33:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-08T00:33:09","slug":"indiana-fiddle-bands-i-ddcd-112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drdosido.net\/drdsblog\/2017\/01\/indiana-fiddle-bands-i-ddcd-112\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana Fiddle Bands I (DDCD-112 )"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Though I am a few days late, I would like to kick off this planned series of posts with an item that honors my native state of Indiana. In 2016, Hoosiers celebrated 200 years of statehood. My commemorative gift to my home state is an album of old-time fiddling recorded by musicians from Indiana, all of it recorded in Indiana between 1928 and 1933. With this, I begin a series that is the fruit of my long love affair with\u00a0 old-time music as recorded during the era of 78rpm phonograph discs. For a number of writing projects over the last 15 years, I have been compiling and editing sounds and data from that period into playlists that shed some light on Midwestern contributions to American folk and vernacular music. With this offering, I turn my studious playlists into virtual CDs for all to share.<\/p>\n

Of the 24 sides included in this first posted album, 13 have never been commercially reissued on LP, cassette tape, or CD. And about half of those that have been reissued for modern consumption can be found only on non-American labels. The portion of the music business in the United States that is interested in old-time rural music has largely ignored the Midwest. I like to think of this series as centered on what Frank Fairfield calls “The Outsiders of Old-Time Music.” I will explain more in future posts.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, enjoy listening. I have written up introductory sketches of these outsider artists. And I have compiled basic discographic information in a file that can be accessed and downloaded in the link that follows. (The conventions and forms of my discographic entries are shown in the DrDosido CDs<\/strong> page linked in the menu bar above. A list of instrument abbreviations can also be found there.)<\/p>\n

112 Indiana Fiddle Bands I<\/a> (discography, plus album cover).<\/p>\n

In a not-yet published article, country music historian Pat Huber described Floyd Thompson & His Home Towners<\/strong> as an Indianapolis-based studio band of \u201ctrained, sight-reading professional musicians\u201d who, with the addition of transplanted Kentuckian Emry Arthur<\/strong>, presented \u201ca colorful blending of Midwestern urban jazz and popular music and Southern rural vernacular traditions.\u201d What is implied here is a strict separation between not only Midwestern and Southern musical styles, but also between trained musicians and folk musicians, as well as between urban and rural sensibilities. I am not convinced that musical experience can be so neatly compartmentalized. And then, after agreeing with Tony Russell\u2019s assessment that the Home Towners, were inspired by the \u201cBroadway hillbilly music of Carson Robison and Frank Luther,\u201d Huber further claims that it is Arthur that gives the Home Towners genuine old-time credibility (Russell, 2007, p. 97; Huber, np).<\/p>\n

Where to start? Russell is correct in suggesting that Floyd Thompson was probably inspired by the commercial success of Robison and Luther, leading him to bring together the Home Towners,\u00a0an ephemeral and changing assemblage of violinists, vocalists, guitar pickers, and harmonica blowers, in order to make recordings of old-time music. However, it is not fair or accurate to reduce the band\u2019s music to an act of copycatting. The Home Towners<\/strong> were clearly comfortable with a variety of vernacular material, plus they brought with them a number of Thompson\u2019s original compositions (several will be heard on another offering in this series). While fans of old-time music might respond differently to the various sounds that constitute the genre, individual aesthetic preferences do not provide a sound definitional basis.<\/p>\n

Huber, also, is on the right track in describing the music of the Home Towners as a colorful blend. But he is mistaken in suggesting that the different strands of that blend can be ascribed to the regional provenance of individual members of the group. In other words, what differentiates the music of the Home Towners from other contemporary popular styles was not the mere presence of Emry Arthur. “Trained, sight-reading, professional musicians” are not necessarily divorced from the vernacular music of their communities. In my generation, most trained professional musicians know rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and the American songbook. In the 1920s, it would have been natural for such musicians to be familiar with string band music, social dance music, and square dance tunes. Yes, even in Indiana and the whole of the Midwest.
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