Filed in Chattanooga Recordings.
Parent Group: Tennessee Recordings, See Also: Pine Breeze Collection.
A new slew of tunes added to the archive by the old Pine Breeze collective. These recordings all derived from Southeast Tennessee, coming from McMinnville, Cleveland, Soddy Daisy, and Flattop. The artists are credited on the cover of the album, and to give a short rehash of what Pine Breeze was, chattanoogamemory.com said it best: “teenagers at mental health institute made field recordings of traditional mountain music in late 70s and early 80s”.
Scans
Under Ron Williams guidance, the teens created field recordings of Eldia Barbee and others, one titled The Eldie Barbee Tapes, is available on our archive. Attached are compositions from this record made available by tunearch.org. Some of these recordings were taken at Florrie Stewart’s home, Blaine Smith’s mother-in-law. Blaine learned the tune “Old Chattanooga” from Bob Douglas (first musician to play on the radio in Chattanooga) in the 1920’s, and the Pine Breeze recordings preserved this folk song to be enjoyed and sang by new generations, as done by Blaine before them. Florrie’s son, Willie Brandon, often lended his guitar picking for sessions and recordings.
Ron Williams went onto say after the recordings “these recordings presented here are proof that there is magic in the music….” Blaine Smith joined the sessions out of pure chance when Ron got lost looking for another fiddler, and knocked upon Blaine’s door asking for directions. “As I knocked on the door,” Williams recalled, “I thought it nice that the residents were playing some old-time record on the turntable. The music stopped when Florrie Stewart opened the door, banjo in her hand. Somehow by sheer cosmic fortune, I had stumbled into 1889.”
The Pine Breeze team went onto create 8 albums worth of material, and we have plans to archive more of their works in time. This album can be streamed natively below, and is available on YouTube in sequential order. Other relevant photos are here & here.
