Recent Media Additions

Blind James Campbell String Band "John Henry"

John H. Scruggs (May 1855 – 5 March 1941), known as Uncle John Scruggs, was an African American banjo player who attracted attention for his singing and playing during the 1920s and '30s.

Scruggs was born to slave parents Henry and Betsey Scruggs in 1855, in Buckingham County, Virginia, where he spent almost his entire life. A film exists of him performing the folk ballad “Little Log Cabin Round the Lane” in a minstrel style.

During The Symposium on Affrilachia, CeCe Conway (Appalachian State University, author "African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia") & Dom Flemons (Carolina Chocolate Drops) gave a presentation on the Banjo, Black Banjo Gathering & the progression of the banjo through the creation of various genres of American music. Hosted by University of Kentucky's Africana Studies Program. Organized by Frank X Walker.

Blacks and Vaudeville

Jimmie Strothers was a blind banjo and guitar player from Virginia who recorded 15 tracks for Alan Lomax and Harold Spivacke in 1936. Biographical details are sketchy, but Strothers was apparently a medicine show entertainer for a time before going to work in the mines, where an explosion took his eyesight, forcing him to earn a living as a street singer.

John "Uncle" Homer Walker was born in 1904 in Summers County, VA, although he lived most of his life in Glen Lyn, VA (Giles County). A fine clawhammer banjo player in the archaic black Appalachian tradition, Walker was the subject of a short documentary film, Banjo Man, produced in 1977 by Seattle filmmaker Joe Vinikow and narrated by Taj Mahal. Walker also appeared in another documentary film, 1980's Morris Family Old Time Music Festival. Reported to have been playing banjo since he was seven or eight years old, Walker died on January 4, 1980, in Princeton, WV.

The first video was of Carl Johnson and Jim Lloyd performing at the Black Banjo and Fiddle Gathering at Appalachian State University in Boone NC on March 28, 2012. Black Banjo and Fiddle Gathering bring musician together to share the mix of music from Appalachia.

Appalachian Journey is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). It offers songs, dances, stories, and religious rituals of the Southern Appalachians. Preachers, singers, fiddlers, banjo pickers, moonshiners, cloggers, and square dancers recount the good times and the hard times of rural life there.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops from Greensboro, North Carolina

The Ebony Hillbillies from New York City