EH U................DID YOU KNOW...???
"...the premiere black string band in AMERICA"
-Tony Thomas, Black Banjo Association
"They provide NYC's sound track...it's a fact of life..."
-Paul Lieberman, LA Times
“The Real Y’Alternative!!!”
-Kandia Crazy Horse, Creative Loafing
"....like landing in the saloon of some dusty, one sheriff midwestern town..."
- The New York Amsterdam News
"...the music was good and sweet...and stuck in my mind"
-daBrooklyn.com/LIVEJournal.com
“What a wonderful connection to all our humanity!”
-The New York Times
”…if you often take the shuttle from Central
Park, you’ve probably stopped to listen to an
African-American string band called the
Ebony Hillbillies, and wished you didn’t have
to go to work!”
-The New Yorker Magazine
“They get double takes, if not full pauses
when they play!”
-The Wall Street Journal
“I wanted to join in but its hard to dance and
take notes at the same time!”
-Post and Courier, Charleston, SC
“...They sound as cool as their name!”
-The News Tribune, Tacoma, WA
"They recreate the music you would have
heard if you could time travel to a country
dance in Mississippi around 1903."
-Mick Gold, BBC/UK
"Joyous, athletic, ancient, modern, and eternal, the Ebony Hillbillies don’t just tell an important story about our country and keep an essential part of our musical heritage alive, but they entertain, magically, majestically, gracefully, and energetically. A pile of passionate, high-end musicians who apply their skill to filling this old tradition with beautiful new life,
it’s likely you won’t see a more engaging, entertaining, and purely joyful band all year."
-Tim Sommer, Sag Harbor Online
Garland Jeffreys
Music Review by Jay N. Miller - www.CantonREP.com
https://www.cantonrep.com/story/news/2011/06/03/music-review-garland-jeffreys-return/45899593007/
Garland Jeffreys
On The Ebony Hillbillies session, Jeffreys sings Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain” as the rootsy band delivers a rollicking good time.
“My friend Richard Alderson was producing those guys in the studio, and he told me they play in New York City subways,” Jeffreys explained. “He asked me if I could come in and sing with them, and I liked the idea. I appreciate those guys and how they make music for the pure joy of it. One of them is 80. Now they are getting good gigs, thanks to some downloaded tunes on the radio and so on. We released that song on Dylan’s birthday, and it got good airplay, and I love the way it turned out and the response it got.”
With a hot new album to promote, and Savannah now 15 –– and a budding songwriter herself –– Jeffreys is eager to get out and perform his music again.
“I am really happy to have made this record, and I intend to follow it and play it anywhere I can for the next year or two at least,” Jeffreys said. “We’ll go all around this country and back to Europe and maybe Australia –– I’ve never been there, and they like my music there, so why not? I plan to be out there.”
Rhiannon Giddens on the Unknown Black Legacy of the Banjo, and Why a New Generation Is Reclaiming It
A 10-part limited series from Wondrium has the celebrated performer exploring the little-recognized historical roots of the banjo... and its tangled journey as the quintessential American instrument
There could probably be no better evangelist for anything than the immensely respected Rhiannon Giddens, and the banjo is lucky to have her. The singer and multi-instrumentalist has been spreading the gospel of that instrument generally and its roots in Black culture specifically for years
Do you think there is at least a tiny movement of Black musicians rediscovering the banjo and wanting to claim their part in it?
Or just liking the sound of it?
Oh, absolutely. And I’m proud to say that the Carolina Chocolate Drops [the Black string band she was a part of prior to her solo career] have played a big role in those musicians’ lives. I’ve heard them talk about them and we’re in their biographies. And I do see it now, like with Justin Robinson, who’s one of the original Chocolate Drops. It’s like this skipped a generation. We are kind of the elders in this movement, even though we’re really the middle generation. We’re not the young ones, but we’re really not the old ones yet. But the generation above us, they don’t really exist. You know, Taj Mahal is like my grandfather’s age, like Joe was my grandfather’s age. In that generation, there were kind of one or two folks doing it, but there was not a movement until we came along. And those folks who had held it up, like Taj, like the Ebony Hillbillies, like Earl White, who was a Black fiddler from the hippie era, were isolated folks. That wasn’t enough to be a movement. So we are kind of now some sort of representation of that. And there’s tons of young people now. I mean, there’s the Black Banjo Reclamation Project that’s out in California. There’s Jake Blount, who’s doing amazing things with the music. There’s Amythyst Kiah. I mean, Valerie June’s more my age, but she also plays the banjo. … You see these people coming into their own. There isn’t another Black string band, and that makes me sad. I’m not sure when that’ll happen again. … But there’s Tray Wellington, a Black bluegrass player who just released “Black Banjo.” It is exciting to see Alison Russell, who plays banjo, who’s a shooting star and playing with all sorts of people. So the image of Black people playing the banjo is becoming more and more out there now. For me, the important thing is that people realize that’s not folks sort of adopting a tradition that’s not their own. It’s people rediscovering a tradition that was always theirs as well.
A Few EH Places Performed, Clients, etc…
"The Ebony Hillbillies made love to us with old school, down home dancin' music. People were up and out of their seats. From
corner to corner you could see waltzes, jitterbugs, and maybe even a little running man if you looked real hard. These guys came
straight from playing in the New York subways to our delicate green city. One of the songs they so eloquently described as "a
song written by a French soldier walking backward." They were incredibly brilliant, and incredibly adorable.”
–E. Jasmin, Wintergrass
Carnegie Hall (NYC, NY) Lincoln Center (NYC, NY) New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (New Orleans, LA)Kennedy Center/Smithsonian Folk Festival (Wash, D.C.) BBC Series-History Of the Blues In America (BBC/UK)Good Morning New York (ABC-TV Morning Show-NYC, NY) New York Today NY (NBC-TV Morning Show- NYC, NY)CBS Morning Show (NYC) Martha Stewart Show (NYC) HBO - TV (NYC) Emeril Lagasse TV Show (NYC) Woodsongs Music Hour (KY) Vancouver Folk Festival (CANADA) Old Medicine Radio Show (USA) The B.B. King Museum(Indianola, MS) Memphis Folk Society (TN), The Folk Alliance (USA) Black Banjo Gathering (USA) Louis Bluie Fest - Tribute To Howard Armstrong (TN) International Bluegrass Music Association (Nashville, TN) Wintergrass Festival(Tacoma, WA) Charlotte Folk Society (NC) Spoleto Festival (SC) Joe’s Pub (NYC, NY) Ford Foundation (NYC) Google(NYC) Schoenberg Library (Harlem, NY) Appalachian State University (Boone, NC) Jefferson Foundation(Monticello) Calgary Folk Festival (CANADA) Florida State Fiddler’s Association (Gainesville, FL) Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (San Francisco) High Mountain Hay Fever Bluegrass Festival (CO) Tosco Music Party (NC)Symphony Space (NYC. NY) Bulgaria State Dept.Tour (EU) Webster Hall (NYC, NY) Whitney Museum (NYC, NY)American Folk Museum (NYC,NY) Museum of the City of New York Brooklyn Children’s Museum (Brooklyn, NY)Winnipeg Folk Festival (CANADA) Puffin Foundation (Teaneck, NJ) The Band’s late great Levon Helm’s NewYear’sEve Ramble (NY), numerous Int’l Festivals and Stages around the world.etc…i.e. State Dept.Tours in Bulgaria…ever striving to take this prestigious musical history message everywhere…