Manon Campbell

Manon Campbell: fiddle.  Roscoe Holcomb had directed us to Manon as “the best fiddler around here.”  Unfortunately, we arrived in the midst of a birthday party for a granddaughter and we felt we were intruding, although Manon was very gracious.  He clearly knew many beautiful tunes and played in what John sometimes calls ‘the dive and duck’ fiddle style of old southeastern Kentucky as it can be heard in the great Lomax fiddle recordings from the region (Yazoo 2013-4).  As such, it represents a quite different style than what we found up north and it is intriguing that Manon credits it all to the radiating influence of a single African American musician named Will Christian.

Part of the booklet notes, written by Mark Wilson, to the Musical Traditions Records 4-CD set Meeting's a Pleasure (MTCD341-4)