Estil C. Ball

about

see E.C. Ball Like so many great musicians in what we generally term 'folk music', I don't feel that Estil Ball got as much recognition as he deserved during his lifetime. It wasn't that nobody was aware of his existence - as early as 1941 he had been recorded by Alan Lomax, and possibly even two or three years prior to that. Lomax had apparently met Ball at an early Galax Fiddler's Convention. Ball lived roughly 30 or so miles from Galax in the tiny community of Rugby, Virginia, a few miles from where he was born and where he and his wife Orna continued to live until hiss untimely death in July 1978. It was at Rugby where Lomax recorded Ball on the porch of the Henderson household. Sylvia Henderson is a cousin to Orna and the house occupied by her and her husband was the only one in Rugby at that time to have electricity. Lomax again recorded Estil and Orna Ball during his well documented field trips in 1959 and 1960. It was a BBC/Lomax documentary programme featuring recordings made on this trip that first introduced me to his wonderful fingerpicking guitar style, I had never heard anybody make an acoustic guitar swing like that. Lomax announced him as "my friend E C Ball, a school bus driver from Virginia", and the sound just blew me away. I couldn't then understand how a musician of that calibre should have to drive a bus for a living. Since that time however I have found that it was not an unusual occupation for musicians in the South. Fiddling Fred Price over

top songs

albums

Sounds of the South

▥

Sounds Of The South - Disc 1 (Blue Ridge Mountain Music)

▥

Southern Journey Vol. 5: Bad Man Ballads - Songs of Outlaws and Desperadoes

▥

Southern Journey, Vol. 1: Voices from the American South

▥

Southern Journey Vol. 1: Voices from the American South

▥

The Alan Lomax Collection: Southern Journey, Vol. 1 - Voices from the American South

▥

Southern Journey, Vol. 2: Ballads And Breakdowns

▥

Sounds of the South(Disc 3)- Negro Church Music & White Spirituals

▥

Sounds of the South [Disc 3] - Negro Church Music & White Spirituals

▥

Southern Journey, Vol. 5: Bad Man Ballads - Songs of Outlaws and Desperadoes

▥

Sounds of the South [Disc 1] - Blue Ridge Mountain Music

▥

Southern Journey Volume 5: Bad Man Ballads

similar artists