Preston Young

Preston Young is one of a group of Depression-era musicians who, although able to make recordings, benefited very little financially from them and wound up much less well-known than some of the songs they recorded, such as in Young's case "Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms." Young learned music from his banjo-picking father, and as a youngster used his whittling knife to fashion crude imitations of the instrument. As a teenager he learned autoharp from an uncle, Walter Spencer, then took up guitar in time to have an influential meeting with old-time legend Charlie Poole. It was Poole who suggested Young take up the banjo again. Following these instructions, Young started up his own band with banjoist Buster Carter and fiddler Posey Rorer. In July of 1931 they traveled up to New York City where they cut ten different sides for Columbia, some of which were never released. As was typically the case in this type of music, they tried to re-record many of the same numbers a few days later for the competing Victor label, but were turned down. (For a change: tales of such recording duplications done under pseudonyms or slightly-altered song titles are legion.) Young's group was basically playing in the style they had learned from Poole, who passed away a few weeks before the New York sessions. Eventually to become a warhorse number in the interlocking genres of country & western, bluegrass, and Western swing, "Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms" was a song Young recollected having heard "somewhere or other," but he added enough of his own verses to consider it his own composition at the time of recording. The arrangement the group played was ahead of its time and would predict the vocal and instrumental style of bluegrass music. During the vocals, the instruments tend to be hushed,...