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JAMES HENRY REED
&
Alan Jabbour
Learning Henry Reed's music is also learning about the man who sought old-time Appalachian musicians and devoted his life to learning and sharing their music. That man is Alan Jabbour (1942 - 2017). Henry (1884 - 1968) was in his 80's when Alan "discovered" him. Reed had lived all his life in Giles County, Virginia. The many, many recordings of Henry's fiddle became the foundation for a group called the Hollow Rock Stringband which were based in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina in the 1960's -- the hotbed for old-time music. Alan was fundamental in preserving music in the Library of Congress, available for anyone to search on-line today. The old tunes Reed had learned from his family are included in the staples of old-time music today. Here is a small sampling, arranged by me for clawhammer banjo with tabs available on this site.
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Quince Dillon, Civil War fifer
Henry Reed knew Quince Dillon as an elderly fiddler, and learned tunes from him that were pre-Civil War. Henry in turn passed them on to a young Alan Jabbour. Now the music is passed around by today's old-time musicians. There's even a Henry Reed Memorial Festival
held once a year, boosted by its founder Chris Via and his family and neighbors for the past 16 years.
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