I’m happy to announce the publication of a new CD entitled A HENRY REED REUNION. It features me on fiddle, Bertram Levy on banjo and concertina, and James Reed on guitar. We recorded the CD following our appearance at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington, last summer.
The CD has (if I may say so) attractive fold-out cardboard packaging (no jewel case). The package includes my essay describing our relationship to Henry Reed, telling how we came to make this CD together, and talking about some of the tunes. There are some photographs, too.
THE TUNES. The CD has 21 tracks and 22 tunes, all from Henry Reed:
Shoes and Stockings
Jump Jim Crow
Stony Point
Reel in
A
Schottische
George Booker
James Reed’s Favorite
Georgia Camp
Meeting
Shady Grove
High Yellow
Jawbones
Peekaboo
Waltz
Ebenezer
Frosty Morning
The Girl I Left behind Me/I’m Going Away
to Leave You, Going to Tennessee
Hell among the Yearlings
Santa Anna’s
Retreat
Quince Dillion’s High-D Reel
Betsy
Flop-Eared Mule
Dean
Reed’s Favorite
THE PERFORMERS. My mentor Henry Reed (1884-1968) taught me these tunes and many more when I visited his home in Glen Lyn, Virginia, in 1966-67. My recordings of him, along with an accompanying essay, photographs, and musical analysis, are available on the Library of Congress website FIDDLE TUNES OF THE OLD FRONTIER: THE HENRY REED COLLECTION ( http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hrhtml/).
In the 1960s I taught Henry Reed’s tunes to a group of musicians in Durham and Chapel Hill, NC. Some of us became the Hollow Rock String Band, which introduced some great Henry Reed tunes to the world with an album in 1968, just after Henry Reed passed away. Bertram Levy was a member of that band and carried the tunes off to the West Coast in 1968. He is now a doctor in Port Townsend, Washington, where he founded the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in 1977.
James Reed learned to accompany his dad on guitar when he was a youngster in Glen Lyn, and Henry Reed carefully instructed him about the proper chords. A retired boilermaker, he now lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He and I have been playing together since the 1990s. We gather every Labor Day weekend at Dean Reed’s house in Rich Creek, VA, for a musical reunion with other members of the family. On Labor Day weekend in 2000 I took Bertram with me, and the rest is – well, music.
HOW TO ORDER. You can purchase copies of A HENRY REED REUNION directly from me. The cost of the CD is $15, plus $1.50 for postage and handling. Multiple copies of the CD in the same order require no additional postage or handling. So, $16.50 for one mailed, $31.50 for two mailed.
Be sure to include your mailing address, and make the check out to:
Alan Jabbour
3107 Cathedral Ave. NW
Washington DC 20008-3420
(202)
333-1089
jabbour@myexcel.com