Dirt Band’s John McEuen to be Honored with Charlie Poole Award

Eden North Carolina is continuing to keep the legacy of Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers alive with the 18th annual Charlie Poole Music Festival.

This year, John McEuen, a founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, will receive the 2013 Charlie Poole Lifetime Achievement Award and will be performing Friday, June 14th – the first day of the Charlie Poole Music Festival

The Charlie Poole Music Festival is offering three unusual freebies this year—not just great old-time music and not just fabulous competitions for paid patrons— but also, FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, you can hear Alice Gerrard (last year’s award recipient), one of the established authorities in the field, tell what it takes to put a band together and run it, and then, also FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, you can get your picture taken and participate in a pictorial and oral history project.

Here is how Alice describes her presentation, which she will share with her colleagues Kay Justice and Gail Gillespie:

“We'll demonstrate what goes into an old-time string band and demonstrate fiddle, banjo, guitar; we'll talk about how we make decisions regarding material, arrangements, etc. We'll play some tunes to demonstrate different genres such as waltz, hoedown, etc. We'll talk about songs, the role of mandolin in facilitating songs, adjusting instrumentation to fit song, vocal ranges, styles, etc. We'll demonstrate different types of songs from unaccompanied through accompanied trios.”

The Charlie Poole Music Festival, now celebrating its 18th year, is a project of Piedmont Folk Legacies, Inc., a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote and preserve the musical and cultural legacy of the Piedmont region and to celebrate its influence on the development of American vernacular music, as exemplified by Charlie Poole. The festival is held each year on the second weekend of June in Eden, North Carolina, home and final resting place of Poole.

Charlie Poole – Wikipedia

Charlie Poole (March 22, 1892 - May 21, 1931) was an American old time banjo player and country musician and the leader of the North Carolina Ramblers, an American old-time string band that recorded many popular songs between 1925 to 1930.

Poole’s music enjoyed a revival in the 1960s, and his renditions have been rerecorded by numerous artists, such as John Mellencamp with "White House Blues", The Chieftains and Grateful Dead with "Don’t Let the Deal Go Down", Holy Modal Rounders and Hot Tuna with "Hesitation Blues", and Joan Baez with "Sweet Sunny South". His recordings have also appeared on numerous compilations of old-time music.