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Last Possum Up the Tree

by George R. Gibson

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Also includes a PDF of the cassette booklet with George's biographical and historical liner notes, as well as source and tuning notes for each song.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD

     

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Moonshiner 02:30
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9.
Cacklin' Hen 01:32
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Old Smokey 02:19
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14.
Morphine 02:03
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Pretty Polly 04:54
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Old Reubin 02:51
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about

Banjo master George R. Gibson was born in 1938 at the confluence of Little Double, Big Double and Buffalo Creeks in Knott County, KY. He learned to play and sing the old songs, in the old tunings, from family and neighbors including his grandfather, George W. and his father, Mallie. In the liner notes for this recording George says, "As far as I know, I am the last person left playing the old Burgey’s Creek banjo music. I am the last possum up the tree."

Music scholar Art Rosenbaum has written, "[George's] singing and playing, with complex interweaving of vocal line and banjo figures with the banjo tuned in any of a number of old time tunings adapted to suit modal song melodies, is in the tradition of Kentuckians Banjo Bill Cornett (whom he met as a youth), Walter Williams, Justus Begley, and Shorty Ralph Reynolds." (_Art of the Field Recording, Vol. 2_, Dust-to-Digital, 2009)

Gibson has mentored a younger generation of eastern Kentucky banjo players--including June Appal artists Brett Ratliff and Kevin Howard--ensuring that the old traditions do not disappear.

credits

released January 1, 2000

Recordings for JA0079, Last Possum Up The Tree, were recorded in the Appalshop Theater in Whitesburg, KY on 1026/96 and 10/27/97 with engineers Mike Slone and Rich Kirby, at the Hindman Settlement School in Hindman, KY on 6/9/99 with engineer Rich Kirby, and at Offbeat Studios in St. Augustine, FL on 11/2/99 with engineer Bob Hensley. The final release was produced by Tommy Bledsoe and George Gibson, and mastered by Richard Kuncicky, Rich Kuncicky Music, St. Augustine, FL.

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June Appal Recordings Kentucky

Founded in 1974 in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, June Appal Recordings is the non-profit record label of Appalshop. It was established to record and distribute the music and stories of accomplished central Appalachian artists.

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