Hi Dear Folk,
I've been thinking of America and it's immigrant folk, who they are and what they've bought with them adding to the diversity. I'm an immigrant and everyone here is except for the Native American Tribes and what a diversity of language and culture they have.
I've also been thinking of music on Podcasts and Vlogs, which led me down the rabbit hole of remembering I had an old cassette tape recording of Kentucky Appalachian music. The recording had been given to me in the late eighties. So last night I routed through a number of drawers and eventually came up with it.
How did I come to have this, well in the late eighties I went to eastern Kentucky as a volunteer with some friends and stayed with a local family the Stamper's. He was the son of I. D. Stamper.
Isaac "I.D." Stamper was born in Arkansas, but raised in Letcher County, Kentucky, where he lived until his death in 1986. He worked nearly forty years in the mines until he left the "bad air" for a safer and better paying job as a maintenance man in a Louisville children's hospital.
The harmonica was his first instrument, followed quickly by the banjo, guitar and fiddle. I.D. and his brothers had a band that played at many of the local dances. Which reminds me of my grandfather from the thirties in the Hedingham area of Essex, he also had a band and played guitar and banjo, playing at local dances and events.
The legendary Uncle Ed Thomas, was his mother's uncle, the roving dulcimer builder and player, that struck his fancy to the instrument that was to become his hallmark. It wasn't until the 1940's that I.D. finally put together his first dulcimer, from a butternut log his father brought in for firewood. His first instrument was fashioned after his recollection of Uncle Ed's design, but, by his own admission, "improved on it." I.D. Stamper constructed over 500 instruments during his lifetime with buyers from California to England.
I.D. had a brief career in his retirement, playing at Folk Festivals, Folklife events at National Parks and dances until he was cut short by Parkinson's disease as was my father.
I ran across this and I think you'll enjoy listening to his music. His blend of white dance music and black blues, offers the only blues dulcimer music most people have ever heard. His rarely-heard versions of "Darlin Corey," "Lost John," and "Little Pink" act as a musical milestone, to a time and a life that you can only read about.
He only made one album recording and this was "
Red Wing" I think you will enjoy listening to his music. What a wonderful rich heritage from Eastern Kentucky, many songs derive from English, Scottish and Irish ballads brought over with these immigrants, such as "Pretty Polly."
I enjoyed my time there and remember I was told to never pull in front of a loaded coal truck coming down the mountain. Now over thirty years later you probably wouldn't see a loaded coal truck, the coal industry was on the wain even then.
Christine
