Take a 2.6 mile trip from home of Old-Time fiddler GB Grayson (1897-1930) as the rural road descends 400 feet to the valley floor at the Old Mill Music Park located in 230 year old village Of Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee. The string band tunes Train 45 (GB Grayson) and Lost Indian feature the fiddle of Bill Birchfield and The Roan Mountain Hilltoppers. Bill Birchfield passed from this life on 15 May 2015.
Bill and the Hilltoppers have been a fixture at this fiddlers convention as long most remember and it won't be the same with Bill gone. Bill's small white camper and vintage 1980's dodge pickup were usually the one parked closest to the stage.
Some related links:
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Born in Ashe County, North Carolina, Fiddler/Songwriter GB Grayson lived from age two until his early, accidental death in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee. After successful recording earning came he bought a remote farm near the top of Iron Mountain some 400 feet higher that Laurel Bloomery and near that farm is where this video begins. [ Ссылка ]
Johnson County Old-Time Fiddlers Convention (90th in 2015)
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Most folks now call this the "Laurel Bloomery Fiddlers Convention" since it has been held for the last twenty-four years at the Old Mill Music Park in Laurel Bloomery (Johnson County), Tennessee. The first fiddlers convention was held in the Johnson County High School auditorium in Mountain City in 1925 and there has been one held somewhere in the county every year since.
The convention is hosted by Jackie Warden at her Old Mill Music Park and is produced and staffed by her many friends in the old-time music community from Watauga and Ashe County in North Carolina, Washington County in Virginia, Johnson and Carter County in Tennessee, and further afield in the surrounding southern Appalachians.
