Billy, You are not off topic at all for me. That Fiddle Music of the Old Frontier site you sent us may be the closest we get to the music of our ancestors. Last spring, I found the Henry Reed fiddle site at the Library of Congress doing a Google search for a geneaological query. I typed in the key words "Mullins" and "Clinch", hoping to find more about a Rachel Mullins who m. Thomas Johnson in Washington>(later)Russell/Lee Co VA in 1785. Turns out Henry Reed's wife is a Mullins! Never-the-less, I got side tracked and had to listen to Breakdown in A, both versions (which is the Clinch Mountain Backstep) and watch the video of Alan Jabbour teaching us how to make the bow scratch just so. Tis a fun place. I've told all the BC fiddlers I know about it, and you never know in what unexpected place you will find out more about your cousins. Katie PS, I was later kind of disappointed to find out that Rachel Mullins was not my ggggg grandmother, because she married a different Thomas Johnson and they lived somewhere else later. Oh sigh! I am not a cousin-in-law 7x removed to the fiddler, Henry Reed. Too bad! KA ----Original Message Follows---- From: BJMarkland@aol.com Subject: Off Topic-Fiddle Music of the Old Frontier Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 17:33:47 EDT A little background. While hunting down some info on the new Mark Knopfler album to be released tomorrow, I went to his web site. Following various links, I ended up at the Northumbrian Pipes & Fiddles page and thence to the Library of Congress...don't ask me to reproduce THAT journey! Anyway, the LOC has a musical archive entitled, Fiddle Music of the Old Frontier recorded by Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, VA in Giles county. It is well worth the visit and time if one likes "old time" music. There are 184 recordings at the site made by Alan Jabbour in 1966-67 when Mr. Reed was 80. The link is: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hrhtml/hrhome.html Get there, then click on Sound Recordings then the music is cataloged in 3 alpha entries: Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder-Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel Jawbone-Swannee River Sweet Sunny South - Witch of the Wave Reel Some fantastic stuff. He must of been one fantastic performer when younger. As a bonus, click on the presentation by Alan Jabbour who gives background about Mr. Reed as well as an overview of his style. Some of his stuff brought back some vestige of memory of trips to Elizabethton,Tennessee when I was a very young one. Pappy (Roy Marshall my great-granddad) would bring his banjo over, grandma and Dad would play guitars and often someone Pappy knew who played a fiddle would come over and join them. As they say, "and a good time was had by all". Myself, I take after g-granddad Bond Markland who I heard could not carry a note in a bucket. Enjoy, Billy _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com