acasseday - Posted - 06/24/2023:  08:01:06

Simply sharing for others to enjoy:

youtube.com/watch?v=iJra3UMnxO4

Bob Buckingham - Posted - 06/24/2023:  15:03:22

Yeah I really liked Tommy's music back in the day and was saddened by his early departure from this plain. Thanks.

Edited by - Bob Buckingham on 06/24/2023 15:03:41

Foote - Posted - 06/24/2023:  15:33:39

Love Tommy and the Ramblers. What a great live band! Thanks for this.

b4idie - Posted - 06/25/2023:  05:54:19

He was a poet and musician. I just watched the video doc. Was unaware of him until now. Thanks Adam for this.

JanetB - Posted - 07/06/2023:  15:47:44

Check out the biography by BHO's own Brooklynbanjoboy Lew Stern -- great reading, called Tommy Thompson, New-Timey String Band Musician!

Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 07/07/2023:  04:02:21

Thanks, Janet.



You BHO folks are right – Tommy Thompson was a creative force. Beyond banjo and string band music, he wrote plays, spent s lifetime ginning up song and poetry lyrics, and had a deep taste for the mysteries of traditional music.



Dwight Diller met Tommy early on, in the first years of the 1970s – at a banjo contest. He sensed the way Tommy’s West Virginian upbringing shaped his tastes and banjo playing.



That set me on the path that led to the book writing project on Tommy.



And that led to a bunch of articles and papers that I worked on from 2017 to 2019 or so.



Some of these are self-published pieces available as eBooks on Amazon. Including a banjo tablature book, based on Patrick Couton’s original efforts to build a body of banjo tabs by laboriously sitting by Tommy’s side and getting down the way he went at over 100 tunes.



And . . . there is a rich lode of videos on Youtube – you can begin to unearth them by searching for “Tommy Thompson, Red Clay Ramblers” on the Youtube website.



Here’s my favorite:



youtube.com/watch?v=Iv77-qpc3Rk



I’ll put a pile of references to the articles and papers on Tommy that I wrote on my BHO blog:



banjohangout.org/blog/36909





He was fascinating. His music was fascinating.



Have a great day. Make great music,





Lew

b4idie - Posted - 07/07/2023:  04:29:29

Thanks for the amazon links. Just for fun I ordered both. To Janet and Lew for showing the path for us to purchase them.
lane