Sally Goodwin

One of Thomas Edison's least successful brainstorms was to make phonograph records that could be played only on an Edison phonograph, Almost a quarter-inch thick, recorded at 80 rpm, and having grooves cut vertically into the disc rather than side-to-side, they require special equipment to play even today. By 1928, Edison's associates had finally convinced him that he had lost the format war, and experiments with lateral-groove recording were begun, The Stoneman band arrived from Galax to record at that time, and this performance was simultaneously recorded on cylinder, vertical-cut disc (this copy), and a lateral-cut master never issued but recently unearthed at the Edison Museum. The performance is a classic of the old Galax style, now pretty well extinct, The tune is played slowly in the key of G (rather than very fast in A as is typical now), with fiddle and banjo playing almost in unison. Brewer (1904-89) Was one of the youngest musicians to play in this slow, decorated, syncopated style, handed down from the legendary Green Leonard: (1810-92) through Emmett Lundy (1864-1953), Ernest Stoneman (1893-1968) and his cousin George (1882-1966), distinguished lead performers elsewhere, function mostly in a backup capacity here; even the vocal is secondary to the fiddling.