Obray Ramsey

Obray Ramsey may be the banjo-picking cousin of old-time music instrumentalist Byard Ray, and both worked regularly like a duo until these were “discovered” taking part in in an Asheville folk event through the folk music revival from the ’60s. In the future, both men’s musical profession took a strangely twisted route. Late-night tv mongers and also require made it completely the unusual psychedelic rock traditional western Zachariah, may question who both old-time music artists are that arrive in another of this epic’s many unusual musical miracles, and the solution will be Ray and Ramsey. Exactly the same viewer could also question why they will have become mounted on their chair with cement, the only real condition under which a smart individual would endure along these film. In 1962, maker John Simon asked the duo to NEW YORK, or “thawt New Yawk,” as it is well known south from the Mason-Dixon Series. The players had been swept into experimental documenting projects using a unusual mix of players, although probably something a little more threatening when compared to a broom was had a need to obtain these old-timers to choose alongside players such as for example avant garde traditional guitarist Sam Dark brown, studio room pro and funkmeister Chuck Rainey, tempo and blues program drummer Supplement Lovelle, sarcastic pianist Dave Frishberg, and also a dark gospel group, the Wondrous Pleasure Clouds. Document Under Rock and roll was the name from the initial album edited jointly from these periods, the players collectively provided the random group was presented with the name Light Lightnin’, in those days a slang term for a kind of LSD along with the traditional name for home-brewed liquor in the mountains. Another album entitled OXYGEN was also released, significant for a nice Bob Dylan cover edition offering the old-time music artists performing using the collegiate folkies Judy Collins and Eric Anderson, producing a unforgettable meeting from the outdated and brand-new in folk music. Ramsey in addition has recorded by himself, including an record of folk music for Prestige International. He’s considered among the finest banjoists for associated singing and it has been likened favorably with Doc Boggs. In the past due ’50s, he was an associate of fiddler Tommy Hunter’s Carolina String Music group using the leader’s sister Nan Hunter and her hubby George Fisher. The archival type Deadheads may have his name on the end of the tongue (alongside lord understands what else) via Pleased Dead’s cover edition of Ramsey’s tune “Cold Rainfall and Snow,” among the many traditional Appalachian quantities this band utilized to jam from. Ramsey and his music can be acknowledged with having a big influence within the article writer Manly Wade Wellman, a inventor of technology fiction, experience, and mystery tales who once defeat out William Faulkner inside a composing contest. Via a companionship with folklorist Vance Randolf, Wellman fulfilled Ramsey during one of the collecting and documenting journeys in hillbilly place. Ramsay can be an associate of at the very top club of music artists that have experienced songs discussed them, in cases like this the ditty “Ballad of Obray Ramsey,” documented by Matthew’s Southern Comfort and ease on the 1970 recording Second Springtime. Ramsey also offered some music lessons to Mel Lyman, a musician who eventually sign up for the Jim Kweskin Jug Music group as an alternative member and continue to supposedly type his own brain control cult within the Bay Region. Despite basically being truly a farmer and banjo picker, Ramsey simply couldn’t appear to avoid connections with strange ’60s stuff.