Hart & Blech
A Devil of a Row
(Swing Cat CD 1610)


(CD cover photography by John A. Gallagher)

Allen Hart and Sheila & Kerry Blech are very proud to announce the availability of our new CD project on the Swing Cat label. It consists of 25 old-time string band tunes and songs, coming in at just under one hour.

If you would be interested in ordering one from us, send a check or money order made out to Kerry at:

10832 Lakeridge Drive South
Seattle, Washington 98178

in the amount of $16.50 (U.S.) [$15 for the CD, plus $1.50 for shipping & handling]. Upon receipt, we will ship to you as soon as possible.

Here are some of our reviews.

And here is what people are saying about A Devil of a Row.

We learned Kicked Up a Devil of A Row from a tape of Charlie Kinney (1906-1991) of Lewis County, KY.

Next up is what we sometimes refer to as The Barnyard Suite. Crow, Little Rooster comes from the fiddling Collins family, originally of Branson, MO, specifically brothers Earl and Max. Wake Up, Chicken caught our attention as played by Roscoe Parish of Coal Creek, near Galax , VA, from a tape made in the early 1980s by Andy Cahan. We love its simplicity and feel these two tunes cackle to each other.

Tuck Me In comes from a 1928 recording of the WV string band, The Red Brush Rowdies that featured fiddler Miller Wikel from Summers County.

Allen and Kerry learned Rockin’ in a Weary Land from banjo player Bertie Mae Dickens of Ennice, NC in August 1988, when Wayne Martin and Alice Gerrard took us to Bertie’s house. Bertie had a beautifully fluid two-finger up-picked style.

Next, we’ll speed things up a little, for a waltz! Red, White and Blue is a reworking of the old song “Green Grows the Laurel.” We learned our version from Arthur “Cush” Holston of Otter Creek, Florida, who was recorded and accompanied by Marty Schuman in January 1962. Vocal: Kerry.

Allen learned the banjo solo Holly Ding from the playing of Wade Ward of Independence, VA.

Old Sharon was recorded by Harry “Tink” Queer on the fiddle in Ligonier, PA by Sidney Robertson in 1936. Russell “Tiny” Wise [probably the very same "Chubby" Wise of bluegrass fame] fiddled that tune, as “Sharon,” for Margaret Valiant, also in 1936, but at Cherry Lake Farms, Florida. Our version is a hybrid of the two, which are strikingly similar. Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers recorded “Cotton Baggin’,” on a Columbia 78 rpm record that is very similar to Old Sharon.

We always had thought that we had learned our version of Train On The Island from a recording of Matokie Slaughter, but upon attempting to play it with her at the Fiddle Tunes festival in 1988, we realized that she probably was not our source of this near-ubiquitous tune. One can hear in our interpretation very faint echoes of the Norman Edmonds/J.P. Nestor version, however.

Allen learned French Waltz, neither a waltz nor from France, from the late Clyde Troxell of Rocky Branch, KY. This tune was quite popular at one point in Clyde’s area, having been played by his banjo-picking peers such as W.L. Gregory and Virgil Anderson, among others, often under other titles (or none at all).

We learned Chinquapin Hunting from a tape of Hiram Stamper of Hindman, Knott County, in Southeastern KY, an area rich in fiddling. The chinquapin is a shrubby chestnut (Castanopsis pumila) whose nut was a source of nourishment to the hunter/gatherers on the frontier. Hiram still was a relatively strong fiddler at that time, but it is difficult to decipher exactly what he may have sounded like in his prime from those recordings, though when his son Art Stamper was asked how Hiram sounded as a young man, he responded, "About the same." Hiram also was known to reinvent many of his tunes each time he played them.

California Cotillion was recorded by the Bog Trotters band by John A. Lomax in Galax, VA in 1937.

Hook & Line is a common dance tune in both Black and White string band traditions. Our version comes from the African-American banjo and fiddle duo from Mebane, NC, Odell and Joe Thompson. Vocal: Kerry

Yearlings in the Canebreak came to us from a 78 recorded by Capt. Moses J. Bonner, a Civil war veteran then living in Fort Worth, Texas, but born in 1847 in Alabama.

We learned this unnamed number from the playing of Roscoe Parish and decided to call it The Roscoe Parish Waltz.

This version of the perennial favorite Buffalo Gals came to us from famed banjo player Matokie Slaughter of Pulaski, VA. An ancestor of our tune can be found as “Midnight Serenade” in Knauff’s Virginia Reels, published in Baltimore in 1839. Sam Bayard made a strong case that the melody is of international – probably German – origin. The song composition credit usually is assigned to Cool White, a black-face minstrel with the Virginia Serenaders who published his version in 1844 as “Lubly Fan.” In its present setting, however, we feel it is fully an American tune.

Battle in the Horseshoe was learned from one of Tommy Jarrell’s neighbors, Jeff Hiatt.

Tie Your Dog, Sallie Gal was fiddled solo by the African-American Will Adam, who was recorded near Rockville, Maryland, a place called Kengar, by Mike Seeger in 1952. Mr. Adam can be heard playing it on the anthology of Seeger’s field recordings, Close To Home (Smithsonian Folkways 40097).

Will Davenport’s Tune. We learned this from a videotape of Clyde Davenport made by Bobby Fulcher, where Clyde plays it on the banjo. Clyde can be heard playing this as an unnamed tune on his tape Puncheon Camps (Appalachian Center 002).

At Fiddle Tunes in 1986, Melvin Wine of Copen, WV surprised everyone in the house (not least of all his accompanists) by pulling All Young out of the back storage of his prodigious memory while performing on stage.

This setting of the venerable dance tune is based on a 78 made by the wild and frenetic Earl Johnson & His Dixie Clodhoppers. It has been reissued on a CD of Johnson’s music, Document 8005.

Go and See Your Own True Love, Leave Mine Alone is an intriguing sentiment and an interesting tune. We learned it from a tape that Andy Cahan made of Roscoe Parish, and also from Andy’s fine playing.

The Scolding Wife was played by J.D. Dillingham (fiddle) in Austin, Texas in 1935 (AFS 578 B1) for the recording pleasure of John A. Lomax.

We learned Lightning in the East from a tape of Sammie Walker, from Barren County, Kentucky recorded by our friend Liz Harzoff.

The Mirabelle Waltz was composed by Sheila shortly after the birth of Sheila and Kerry’s older daughter, Mirabelle, in February 1993. Sheila conceived of the lyrics as a lullabye to ease the chronic nightowl into slumberland. Sheila taught Kerry the melody – though Sheila envisioned more of a Scandinavian setting than the Appalachian treatment we give it. We felt it appropriate to end this recording with a waltz, as we do our dances. Vocal: Sheila