Our Episode #96 features the guitar in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. We focus on a two-CD album of guitar recordings old and new, assembled by The Crooked Road, Virginia's Heritage Music Trail. We have an interview with Jack Hinshelwood, Executive Director of The Crooked Road and a fine guitarist and fiddler himself. Jack tells us about the many complications in assembling such a massive collection as this. And he helps us understand the place of the guitar in old time, country, gospel and bluegrass music. The instrument was a late comer to many areas, with the fiddle and banjo arriving first with European and African settlers and enslaved people. Guitars became widely available around 1920 with the advent of mail order catalog stores.
The Crooked Road sponsors a public album kickoff event with workshops, jamming and presentations on Saturday, November 4 at the Wayne C. Henderson School of Appalachian Arts in Marion, Virginia.