2 posts tagged “mandolin”
Here's all you need to know about the Dallas String Band, a superlative group with a distinctive mandolin sound. No, I do not own the above 78. I, uh, found the jpeg, um, on the sidewalk.
The first part of the beginning exchange goes like this.
Unknown guy: Say, Coley, can you sing?
Coley Jones (mandolinist): No!
Unknown guy: Why?
Coley Jones: I lost my voice in jail. I'm always behind a few bars, and can never find a key.
Har!
Not really a blues, but string bands were the antecedents of blues, jazz, country, and ragtime, so shoehorning them into the blues tradition isn't that hard. The Three Stripped Gears are another mystery group, with the curious distinction of having names (R. W. Durden on mandolin, and Cliff Vaughn and Marion Brown on guitars... we probably know this because of surviving company records from their label, the Okeh recording company), and the state of Georgia as a likely point of origin, but, again, no real way to discern who they were or whether they were black or white. The Three Stripped Gears were a sharp group of musicians. their playing is crisp and tight throughout the four sides (so far, that's all that's been found) they recorded.
