[Harp-L] George Reneau -the blind musician of the Smoky Mountains

[philharpn@xxxxxxx]

Came across the mention of George Reneau, the blind musician of the Smoky Mountains. Until I looked him up and played a fw youtube videos, I had never heard or heard of the guy. Interesting performance. Check him out if you have the time.

George played guitar and harmonica and released about 25 78 rpm records on Vocalion starting in 1924. He also did some cylinder and disk recordings for Edison. 

I would think this type of first position tongue blocked early country/folk music would be the type Joe Filisko would be familar with and might be performing. Most people are probably unfamiliar because this guy falls into Since it is Early hillbilly (the official category the record companies used; not a perjorative). 

I tripped over this guy's name while reading a preview of "Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival" published in July. The 320-page book is illustrated with images collected for the accompanying major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York in 2015.


Youtube has a collection of some of the recordings. The link for one is below.

 <https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=George+Reneau&fr=spigot-chr-gcmac#id=21&vid=5af50100ae39688234e5015b91f16933&action=view>


The wikipedia entry presents a terrible and illiterate--literal translation of words which are all out of order in English. It's possible to make sense of the meaning. Worse than a school boy translation.<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Reneau> He was born in 1901, recorded in 1924-5? and was dead by 1933. 

It does provide enough information to provide a do-it-yourself translation despite the wrong words and mixed up word order. 

It's always fun to check out antique harmonica recordings.

Phil