Nonnie Presson

This Appalachian musician has the distinction of being the one of the only American players of the zither in the old-time style. She is known for several different collaborations with her brother Bulow Smith, including the Perry County Music Makers, a group which recorded a series of records for Vocalion in 1930. The County label scored considerable success reissuing one of these tracks, "Sad and Blue," in the '70s. Her music with Smith stands out not only because of her use of the zither, but because of the deeply moving vocal harmonies the two work out for both traditional and original material. Presson plays a larger than usual, custom made zither, but even if it was a standard issue zither it would still not be an instrument every young student in town wants to learn. Things weren't always this way for the zither, many of which were stuffed into the suitcases, tote bags, and steamer trunks the first waves of German immigrants brought to the United States in the turn of the 19th century. Any American city with a large German population would have had a zither society. Any dissapearing act played by this element of the culture doesn't faze Presson, who developed a zither style totally unlike the original Austrian model. She originally picked up the instrument when a friend of her fathers happened to give one away. Her family lived in a tiny cabin, and she remembers her father arriving home one day, walking through the forest and up the road, all the time strumming the zither. This "commenced a fascination" as might have been said then and there, and in what is something of a cliché in folklore legends, the child began sneaking the instrument out when father was away. It wasn't her first musical venture, as she already enjoyed playing harmonica duets with her mother....