Peter Feldmann has long been a musical mainstay in Southern California. Besides actively performing bluegrass and old time music with a variety of groups, Peter is a bluegrass historian, teacher, and producer. He was the among the first to bring many prominent folk, blues, and bluegrass artists, including Bill Monroe, Mance Lipscomb, The Stanley Brothers, The New Lost City Ramblers, Fred McDowell, and the Balfa Brothers to Southern California. Over a 21 year period, he produced weekly shows on country and bluegrass music on commercial and public stations. His own music has been heard in clubs, concerts, saloons, universities, pre-schools, at weddings, wakes, parties, barn-raisings, calf-ropings, rodeos, auctions, fund raisers, wine tastings and chili cook offs.
In 1970, Peter helped move the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest from Los Angeles County, where it had been banned, to the UCSB campus. After the festival moved back to Los Angeles, Peter started the Santa Barbara Old Time Fiddlers' Convention, an annual event in October, now in its 37th consecutive year of operation. The Old Time Fiddlers' Convention is the only pure old-time festival and contest in Southern California.
In 1971, Peter founded The Bluebird Cafe in Santa Barbara. While it served food and drinks (hamburgers were 80 cents, beer was a quarter), the Bluebird's real mission was to form a center and school for acoustic music in Southern California. The cafe was built around the needs of musicians, with a great built-in sound system, stage and a ready welcome for a musician on the road. Peter's thought was "make the musicians happy; they'll play great music, and the audience will come..." There was music of some sort almost every night. Performers included Mike Seeger, Hazel Dickens, The Scragg Family, Lamar Grier, Alice Gerrard, Earl Collins, Byron Berline, Furry Lewis, Johnny Shines, and many, many others.
As a teacher and scholar, Peter has organized classes in the history and performance of American traditional music and taught banjo, fiddle & guitar in university extension and adult education classes. He still presents lectures on country music history at UCSB, Santa Barbara area libraries, and in April 2008 at UCLA. Peter produced some of the first instructional records for fiddle (three of them), banjo, and guitar in the 1970s, at a time when very little instructional material was available. His 1975 instructional package for Maybelle Carter's style of guitar playing remains a classic (and is now available on CD). Peter is the director of the "Santa Barbara Beachbillies" - a group of students and graduate students under the auspices of the UCSB Ethnomusicology Dept., who are learning about old time and pre-bluegrass music by performing it.
Despite his achievements as a teacher, scholar, and promoter, Peter is first and foremost an entertainer, sharing his respect, energy and love for the music with his fellow musicians, friends, and audiences. Peter performs tunes and songs from the heart of America's musical treasure chest. His shows can include fiddle, guitar, banjo, and mandolin. He has performed with Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, The Balfa Brothers, Mike Seeger, Byron Berline, Rose Maddox, and his own bands. His latest recording, a tribute to Uncle Dave Macon, "Grey Cat On The Tennessee Farm," was named to the nation's Top Ten Bluegrass albums of 2005 by the Chicago Tribune. You can read Peter's blog at http://bluegrasswest.com/petesword/, or visit his great Web Site at www.bluegrasswest.com. You can email Peter at peter@bluegrasswest.com.
Though less well-known than her folklorist brother, Alan Lomax, and father, John Lomax, who recorded thousands of folk-singing Americans in the 1930's for the Library of Congress, 80-something Bess Lomax Hawes has made major contributions in the field of folk music as a teacher and performer. In the early 40's, she became involved in the folk scene in New York City and along with young Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, joined "The Almanac Singers." After the War, she and her husband moved to Boston where Hawes gave music lessons to children. It was there that she co-wrote the famous "M.T.A." song, later popularized by The Kingston Trio. In the 50's, the Hawes relocated to the West Coast where she continued her work as a music instructor. She performed at a number of coffee houses and clubs during the 50's and 60's and at folk festivals, including Newport, Berkeley, and UCLA, and taught workshops. Hawes also taught at San Fernando Valley State College as an associate professor in Anthropology and at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts. In the mid-1970's she joined the Division of Performing Arts at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
Roz and Howard Larman have been involved in folk music for over 40 years. They took up the banjo and guitar and soon therafter decided they'd rather be presenters of music than performers. This led them to radio station KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles as volunteers. Soon they were invited to do their own folk music program. Their program “Folkscene,” was born in 1970 and is the recipient of the 2005 Far-West's “Best of the West” Award. “Folkscene,” now in its 37th year, is also a syndicated radio program. It features live and recorded music and has presented well over 3,000 musicians from various musical genres. All these years Roz and Howard have been instrumental in introducing new folk, bluegrass and Celtic music artists to Southern California. They fill the Legend Award requirements of a “group or organization that has distinguished itself over the years in the preservation and advancement of old time, folk and bluegrass music in the Southern California area.” To learn more about “Folkscene,” visit their web site at www.folkscene.com.
Folk singer, author, naturalist, recording artist (“Old Man Atom,” The Talking Atomic Blues) Sam Hinton grew up in Texas hearing music in the traditions of African America, the White South, the Cajun French, the American West, and the Anglo-Celtic mountain tradition of settlers from the Ozarks. His landmark hit recording of "Old Man Atom" (1950) has been reissued by the Smithsonian. For 20 years Sam was Director of the Aquarium-Museum at the U.C. Scripps Institute of Oceanography and he has written books on sealife. In 1980 he retired to be a full time musician. Sam has given thousands of concerts --mostly for schools -- radio and TV appearances, and folk festivals -- one named for him. His albums include “Library of Congress Recordings” and “Singing Across the Land.”
Founded in 1978, CTMS has consistently promoted traditional music and related folk arts in the Southern California area, including founding the North American Folk Alliance, establishing the Summer Solstice Festival and introducing 89,000 school children to their old-time, bluegrass and folk heritage, not to mention the monthly jams at the CTMS Center and the popular, annual "Taste of Folk Music" in Encino. CTMS was honored by Topanga this year for its outstanding work in the preservation and dissemination of traditional folk music and related folk arts of America's diverse cultural heritage and for broadening public involvement, celebrating ethnic traditions and promoting cross-cultural understanding.
Mel Durham is a man known all over the West for the past 50 years as a great fidler and bass player and a tireless teacher. He was born in 1914, on the family farm in southern Illinois. Young Mel played with a jazz trio in Illinois for a couple of years until he and his wife Peg sold their home and moved to California. In the evenings he played bass for the Ray Middleton Trio, then for Frankie Gould, whose big band headlined at the Majestic Ballroom on the Long Beach Pike.
Mel also found work with Jack Carter and the Country Ramblers. But in the early 60's, four-piece rock bands took over and the great dance halls were torn down, so Mel turned to Bluegrass, playing almost 25 years with Ron LeGrand in various bands, including "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party" and "Wild Oats." However, it was the formation of the Southern California Old Time Fiddlers' Association in the late 1960's that helped get Mel back to the fiddle after so many years on the bass. Mel found himself among some great fiddlers, including Earl Collins, Cork Carpenter, Bob Rogers and Howard and Neal Moore. Now he passes on the heritage to all who will ask.
In 2002, the first MUSIC LEGEND AWARD winners were Dorian and Dalia Keyser, who provided leadership and vision to the Topanga Banjo●Fiddle Contest for 36 years. With Dalia's help, Dorian guided the Fiddle Contest from a small, almost private gathering at a home in Topanga Canyon into the premier old time & bluegrass music festival in Southern California.
Dorian was born in 1925. As a young man he took both piano and violin lessons and became interested in Doc Watson's songs. His chosen profession was engineer, but he continued supporting musical organizations and joined Songmakers in 1965. Dorian first became part of the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest in 1967 when he helped with the event's sound.
Since that time, he has worked tirelessly to promote the festival and has become known as one of Southern California's treasured folk historians. Some say without Dorian, we wouldn't have the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest today. Now retired, Dorian and Dalia enjoy folk, bluegrass, and classical music, and they work actively with environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Tree People.
The MUSIC LEGEND AWARD was established by the Topanga Banjo●Fiddle Contest & Folk Festival, Inc. (TBFC) in 2002 to honor and recognize a person, group or organization which has distinguished itself over the years in the preservation and advancement of old time, folk and bluegrass music in the Southern California area. The prize consists of a plaque and public proclamation with a cash award of $1000 and is presented at the Topanga Banjo●Fiddle Contest on the main stage every year.
The public is invited to submit nominations and whoever nominates the winning candidate will receive two free tickets to the Topanga Banjo●Fiddle Contest. Nominations may also be made by the TBFC Board of Directors and they will decide on the eligibility of all nominees. The board will then vote on the winner, and their decision is final.
All nominations may be sent by mail (see address below) or email at info@topangabanjofiddle.org. Nominations must be received by the TBFC by March 1, 2008. Please include your name and contact information, and a complete description of why you believe the person or organization you are nominating is worthy of consideration. Submit your nominees to:
TBFC Legend Award
Post Office Box 571955
Tarzana, California 91356
Or email to: info@topanganbanjofiddle.org. Any questions you may have regarding the MUSIC LEGEND AWARD may also be directed to this email address.