A.C. Overton

This NEW YORK banjo player picks in a method which was unfortunately basically wiped out with the incredible popularity of bluegrass and its own banjo calisthenics within the ’40s and ’50s. He’s mainly known for his playing romantic relationship with the old fiddler Lauchlin Shaw, with whom he received the 1992 Folk Traditions Award through the NEW YORK Arts Council. Overton found his method of playing the banjo along with his thumb and initial finger from his uncle and dad, and in addition received encouragement from his performing mother. She evidently stressed the significance of putting a whole lot of sense and power into one’s playing on a musical instrument, a lesson Overton certainly got to heart. Even though many old-time players basically going for the hillsides when they initial heard the noises of bluegrass breakdowns, Overton attempted to use a number of the newer music’s methods and been successful, adding another finger to his selecting hand. Twelve years his older, Shaw was an ideal playing partner for Overton, even though banjoist also managed a duo for seven years with fiddler Wayne Martin, including a overall performance at the Event of American Fiddle Music in Slot Townsend, WA. The banjoist is definitely deeply worried about preserving the history of music he discovered from his family members, essentially a musical background of the eastern Piedmont area of NEW YORK. As his playing partner Shaw became housebound in his last couple of years of his existence, Overton spent increasingly more period trying to keep in mind and jot down songs from your old days, as well as fragments of these. He started to have heart disease in his early seventies but continuing producing recordings of old-time music around the banjo, creating his personal archive of tunes that he sensed no younger performers were actually understanding how to play properly. He drove the main one hour visit to Shaw’s house almost every time to go to and spending some time recollecting about their playing profession together, which started at an American Legion hut within the middle-’50s but didn’t really expand beyond the informal regional level until fascination with old-time music begun to mushroom within the Chapel Hill region within the ’70s. Their state arts council and NEW YORK Folklife Institute helped create a recording from the duo between 1988 and 1992. This Compact disc, entitled Sally Using the Rundown Sneakers, was released for the Marimac label and contains the name tune in addition to songs such as for example “Dark Eyed Daisy,” “Dixie Darling,” and “Good Home for the Hill.” The Fayetteville Observer released an emotional accounts of Overton’s trips to his ailing coach Shaw, compiled by Doug Miller. Overton continued to be the official touring musician from the condition of NEW YORK in his declining years, but stipulated gigs cannot become more than 200 mls from his house in Wake State.