Henry Reed commemorated

FOAOTMAD reports:

The 7th Annual Henry Reed Memorial Fiddlers Convention will be held in Glen Lyn, VA, on 12-13 June. Glen Lyn is located along the New River near the VA-WV line - right across the river not far from where Henry used to live.

Friday will include shows by the Reed Family band, Stateline Bluegrass, & Box 283. Most of the competitions will be held on Saturday, & include a variety of band & individual categories. Alan Jabbour will again be giving a two-day fiddle workshop.

Henry Reed (1884-1968) of West Virginia was recorded in the late 1960s by Alan Jabbour, who thoroughly documented his music (see the Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier website) and played the tunes with the Hollow Rock String Band; as a result, many of them are now standards of the old-time fiddle repertoire.

Biographical and other detail is on a website set up by Henry Reed's grandchild Terry Reed. Henry's father, John Marion Reed, is said to have come from Ireland to the US around 1845, and to have been a banjo-player and fiddler. A film, The Henry Reed legacy, is planned for release on DVD in late summer 2009 by Horse Archer Productions, who made Why old time? (see the BIB post of 20 February). A nice trailer for The Henry Reed legacy can be seen here.