CBEB’s

I promised myself that I would contain my love of hillbilly music to my other blog, but this clip deserves a wider audience. This is a 56-second clip of Bun Wright’s fiddle band performing “Soldier’s Joy” at Franklin Roosevelt’s request.

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There’s a couple of interesting things about this footage. First off, could you imagine something like this being shot today? I realize there had to have been a certain amount of staging involved in this, but nowadays a similar photo-op would require an enormous backdrop with some bumper-sticker slogan pasted on hundreds of American flags, several dozen Secret Service agents (including snipers on nearby rooftops) and an adoring claque of young people surrounding the president. This looks positively spontaneous in comparison.

The other thing that fascinates me about this clip is the Gibson harp guitar the guy next to FDR is playing. Supposedly, Gibson heavily marketed harp guitars in the early part of the 20th Century, claiming they would eventually make conventional guitars obsolete. I can’t picture Chuck Berry doing the duck walk with one of those in his hands…

The video doesn’t really give a good example of what a harp guitar sounds like. There are plenty of harp guitar videos available on YouTube, but I couldn’t find any featuring music being played in this context. Instead, here’s an mp3 of Alfred G. Karnes singing “I am Bound for the Promised Land” while backing himself up on a harp guitar. Don’t let the gospel title fool you; it’s a pretty funky tune. Ol’ Alfred sounds a little like Richie Havens, and he’s dropping some serious slap bass on that harp guitar of his.