Review Text
These recordings were created as part of a project for the Berea Collage Appalachian Sound Archives. They are part of a larger collection of documentary materials about Jim's music which Joe O'Connell compiled with support from an Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship in the fall of 2013. The project, including original interviews, photography, and other media, explores Jim's experience as a banjoist from his early days in Round O, South Carolina through the present. Among the first banjoists to bring 'three finger' style to popular audiences, Jim has helped form the music we recognize today as bluegrass and folk. At age 18, Jim began playing on the Grand Ole Opry with Bill Monroe, Little Jimmy Dickens and Hylo Brown. He started the Louisiana Honeydrippers in 1961, and the Cumberlands, a folk and bluegrass group in 1963.
