Marvin Gaster

North Carolina's Marvin Gaster is a rare individual who has been part of two vastly different scenes in the ongoing drama of Appalachian music. He plowed behind a mule, and played music as entertainment at parties or other social events that allowed the hard working folk to unwind. He also studied for a history degree at UNC-Chapel Hill in the '70s, when there was more old-time music being played on that campus than anywhere back in the hills. And in his middle ages he has taken part in such modern day cultural phenomena as folk festivals and recording sessions in pristine studios. He is a living bit of banjo history, "the last in a line of Lee County two finger banjo pickers" to quote no less a banjo expert than Winston-Salem's Bob Carlin. Carlin is best known as a sidekick to the late John Hartford, but lovingly produced a superb CD of Gaster's music that was released on Rounder in 1995. Gaster was not the first musician in his family. For all anyone knows the lineage of musicians might go back even further, but there was definitely Fiddlin' John Morris Francis Gaster, who died in 1942. But this was not a family that cherished and loved old-time music as a unified entity. In reality, John's father Big John Gaster detested music. He hated music so much that the fiddlin' son had to sneak up to the roof of one of the farm buildings to his sounds out of earshot. Marvin's father played guitar, but his main musical influence growing up became his Uncle Henry when his parents took off looking for work elsewhere, leaving the boy in the care of the childless relatives. During his time living with them, Gaster recalls that musical events were integrated into the scheme of work that needed to be done. Dances that were known as "frolics" were scheduled to take place alongside...