Eldia Barbee - Cumberland Gap 1978 field recording

Eldia Barbee on fiddle, I'm (Ron Williams) playing clawhammer banjo. Field recording by Pine Breeze Traditional Music Project - probably 1978

Category:

Music

Tags:

• old
• time
• fiddle
• clawhammer
• banjo
• traditional
• citico
• chattanooga
• Tennessee
• field
• recording

[dbadagna]

Great playing from both fiddle and banjo! Maybe you could add a bit in the video description about the players.

Did the fiddler not have a chinrest on his fiddle?

[citicoron]

@dbadagna Eldia did have a chin rest but rarely ever played the fiddle under his chin - almost always he had it braced on his chest. He had 2 fiddles, the main one was a Stratavarious copy and the other an Amanti (?) copy. About half of the tunes he played in what he called "flat key" where he tuned his fiddle AEAE of GDGD - Ron

[shal0mnurh0me]

Love that picture of him standing by his dogs. Reminds me of a good time out running rabbits with the dogs.

[HugeJohn51]

wow- that is incredible foresight to record this stuff and now you can share on youtube...thank you so much

[citicoron]

I'm pretty sure Eldia played it in standard. He used what he called "flat key" (AEAE) for a lot of the tunes in A. We played this in G. I used the sawmill tuning (gDGCD) capoed to second fret on banjo

[jubiloaf]

This is the way to play this tune. I have enjoyed.

[doccalley]

This is amazing! Try to listen Ricky Skagg's cuts on the 2 CD project entitled "Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza" On one of his cuts Ricky talks about learning Cumberland Gap "...a whole new way" from an oldtime fiddler from Kentucky named Sanford Kaylee. This is the SAME tune. This is just great -- this is the way I am going to lay it from now on.