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Rural Black String Band Music by Charles Wolfe

The first time I think I ever seen Arnold Schultz … this square dance was at Rosine, Kentucky, and Arnold and two more colored fellows come up there and played for the dance. They had a guitar, banjo, and fiddle. Ar­nold played the guitar but he could play the fiddle-numbers like "Sally Goodin." People loved Arnold so well all through Kentucky there; if he was playing a guitar they'd go gang up around him till he would get tired and then maybe he'd go catch a train.

Crossing Country - by John Morthland

Black people began adapting white music to their own ends almost as soon as they arrived in America. The earliest African-Americans, forced into slavery in New England around 1619, were allowed but one communal respite from work: the white man's church. Blacks sang the same religious musics as whites, most of it written by Methodist ministers from England and brought to this country by missionaries. Before long, blacks has grown especially partial to the stern but redemptive hymns of Dr. Isaac Watts, which were published in America during the Great Awakening of the 1730s.

Links To My Other Websites

The following are other websites that I have built and maintain. Unity Bluegrass - This website predates African Bluegrass (in fact African Bluegrass began as a Tab on Unity Bluegrass). It came about after my house flooded and I found a packet of information given to me by fellow bandmate David Neidig telling the history of the band we were both members of. In it you will find pictures, short (out of date) biographies of those who were members when I was a part of the band, other memoribilia and RECORDINGS of the band.

Jimmy Collier

Jimmy Collier stands out in a crowd with his trademark cowboy hat. But it's the sound of the tall, sturdy troubadour's music that has magnetized listeners across the land. Today with the technological ease of CD recording and internet communication, Collier can bring his music to fans without leaving his ranch in rural Mariposa. That wasn't always the case.

Yee Haw! The Rise of Black Country

Thanks to Darius Rucker, Rissi Palmer and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, black folks are finally rediscovering their country roots. There’s long been an assumption that black folks and country music just don’t mix—even though that assumption completely erases from history the music and success of Charley Pride, Ray Charles and even the Pointer Sisters: To many blacks, country music is seen as synonymous with rednecks and white supremacists, its incongruity with pigmented people, relegating it to little more than a bad punch line in pop culture. (Cue Samuel Jackson and Bernie Mac stranded at a country juke joint in Soul Men! Two brothers singing country and dancing the two-step! Hilarity ensues.)

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