Down to the Cider Mill
Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham, and Oscar Jenkins learned their music in the early years of the twentieth century in the mountains of northwestern North Carolina.  When these recordings were made in the 1960s and early 70s, these brilliant musicians still maintained very high standards of performance.  Tommy’s highly animated and syncopated bowing give a grand lift and dance pulse to his playing and the compelling plaintive inflection he employs in both his fiddling and his wonderful singing can really get a hold of you.  Fred is one of the finest clawhammer style banjo players ever and plays in the archaic fretless style, which generates a haunting tonality and dramatic slides in pitch.  He also employs only open tunings, as does Tommy, for almost his entire repertoire.  As can be heard here, these two musicians play in a note-for-note, hand-in-glove tandem, the product of two people raised playing together.  Oscar, on the other hand, plays banjo in standard tuning and employs his own completely unique style – picking with his thumb and forefinger while simultaneously using the latter for upward and downward chordal strokes.  He plays a wonderfully rich accompaniment to Tommy’s lead, and at times a fascinating counterpoint.-from the liner notes by Rich Nevins