Traditional Music From The Cumberland Plateau Vol. 1 & 2

Traditional Music From The Cumberland Plateau

Here’s another record in Down Home Radio’s continuing “Awesome Out-of-Print Records” series. This is a collection of field recordings made in Tennessee in the 1970’s by folklorist Bobby Fulcher. Included here are volumes 1 & 2. If anybody has vol. 3, send it along!

This album is actually available to buy, please check out Sandrock Recordings!

www.sandrockrecordings.com

These are incredible records, and very hard to find. They were digitized and sent to me by Norm over at www.juneberry78s.com, an awesome website which is well worth checking out. Huge Thanks to Norm!

I first heard brief selections from these records while listening to a podcast of an interview with Bobby Fulcher.
When Bobby played a bit of one of his field recordings of Retta Spradlin, I was completely floored and had to find the record as soon as possible! She sings and plays banjo and is incredible.  The whole record is great but she really hit me hard.

Another of my favorite musicians is banjo player Virgil Anderson, also recorded by Bobby Fulcher.  Anderson appears on three cuts in this collection.  Fulcher released a full LP of Anderson which is really great.  I have posted it here: Virgil Anderson – On The Tennessee Line.

6 Comments

  1. Interestingly, Dave Freeman has the Music of the Cumberland Plateau set as well as the Virgil Anderson LP available as dead stock for $8 apiece–suggest writing to him via county sales.

  2. Alfred

    I don’t think there’s a ‘Vol. 3’ , except of course the other LPs of Cumberland music that mr. Fulcher did :

    scroll down this page:

    http://www.tennesseefolklore.org/publications.html

    Other than the above page and remaining Vinyl copies at Countysales (I think though email or just ‘mail’ County, anyone could get a list of such out-of-print LPs and 78s etc that’s still left, as Ian suggested).

  3. FWIW, Bobby Fulcher has reissued both of these albums, and Clyde Davenport’s Clydeoscope on CD. I’m not sure how they are being distributed, but I bought them last week from Cleff’d Ear (John Hatton) at the Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention.

  4. ADAM EWING

    The above recordings, Clydeoscope and a slew of other music from this area is being made available by way of Sandrock Recordings these days, which is a labor of love by Bobby and and the Friends of the Cumberland Trail, worthy of support. The Bob Douglas tunes they just worked on are well-worth picking up, and that is only the beginning, friends.

    http://sandrockrecordings.com

    On the off chance that you live in that area and happen to read this today or tomorrow, they have organized an event in Maryville, TN tomorrow night. Clyde will be playing tunes, which is a rare treat these days.

    https://www.facebook.com/events/315426775286920/

  5. Bobby Fulcher

    Sandrock Recordings is a nonprofit label devoted to the release of great mmusic from the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountain regions of Tennessee and Kentucky. We are depending upon album sales and downloads to raise the funds necessary to make new projects available. We pay royalties to artists and their families and know them. Please remove the download link in the interest of supporting our project. Thanks. We all love this music and should support the folks who created it.

  6. admin

    Hi Bobby, sorry about that, I have updated the website to direct people to Sandrock Recordings. Best regards – Eli

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