Album Notes

When Acie was a boy, he and his cousins would sneak off into the woods with the guitar away from the watchful eyes and ears of Grandma Hattie, These are the songs they played and sang

His fellow musicians for this recording are Paul Kaye, Dave Dalessandro, Rick Veras, Dave Bragman, and Acie's son Leo Cargill providing the high poignant harmonies.

The cd strats off with the hard driving mopuntain ballad Poor Ellen Smith followed by a Kentucky blues version of the classic House of The Rising Sun, My Katy is a super fast dance tune, Dear Mother is Acie's reading of a letter from his mother when he left home at age 17. This section concludes with a dynamic gospel song Church By The Side of the Creek.

Next up is the finest woman singer in all of bluegrass music, grammy nominee Claire Lynch singing the JJ Cale song, If You're Ever In Oklahoma.

The cd then has excerpts from two live concerts with two of the world's fastest and most interesting banjo players.

First is JR Prater and his son Jay on guitar and singing lead with Acie on fiddle, Jerry Clemons Sr on mandolin and the incredible Gerald Couch on bass playing very traditional songs at the Three Stooges in Cedar Lake, Indiana.

Next is former Tennessee Railsplitters banjoist Bill Jackson acompanied by Acie on fiddle and the Rogers Brothers, This section at the Lick Skillet in Aetna Green, Alabama opens with a prayer by Jack Clausing for the troops and concludes with a rousing Jesus Hold My Hand.

This is a cdr reprint for $9.95

Biography
Acie Cargill was born into a musical family. His grandmother was Hattie Mae Tyler Cargill, a noted Kentucky singer of traditional ballads. She was the last of the Tylers, a family noted for being strict preservationists of the musical traditions passed along for many generations from Northern England /Southern Scotland. The tunes that they sung all used primitive scales. They were unique in their area in that they played instruments along with the ballads and the instruments all used special tunings that allowed the ancient tunes to be played without adding obstrusive notes to the performance.

Acie knows all those scales and tunings and has been recorded for the Library of Congress, singing some of the old songs he knows and playing the 5 string banjo in the Tyler drop-thumb style. He is considered the living master of this style.

The family lived in very secluded areas without electricity and they were not exposed to the newer types of music that swept through the US that featured the piano or the guitar using the 6 string guitar chords that are so prevalent today. In the Tyler music, there are no 3-note chords, just moving modal melodies.
Some of this can be heard on Songs and Ballads of Hattie Mae Tyler Cargill, In The Willow Garden, Family Gathering (which featured some of the older Tyler musicians and the remants of the Cargill Brothers’ String Band and Acie playing the banjo as a young boy).

His grandfather was Acie Cargill, a fiddler who came to Chicago to play as a fill in musician with the WLS Barn Dance radio show. Many of the old tunes Acie plays were from the elder Acie via his Grandmother Hattie.

Acie’s father was an associate of Woody Guthrie and played harmonica in their jam sessions. Acie said his fondest memories were sneaking out of bed and hiding to hear the music they played late into the night when Woody visited. Acie’s mother was a church organist for 65 years and her instructions to him can be heard in the song Dear Mother ( for example, don’t you ever play gospel music in a tavern).

It was the exposure to Woody (and also his mother’s playing) that led Acie into learning the chorded guitar styles that he usually plays today in his performances. In public Acie plays folk music, bluegrass, old-time standards, traditional country music, progressive country rock, early rock and roll, old-timey, gospel, and he even played bass for contemporary jazz giants Max Brown and Johnny Frigo.

Acie's cousin, the late Henson Cargill, was a national star with his hit song Skip A Rope. And through one of the Tyler women, Acie is related to country giant Willie Nelson.

He also is a prolific songwriter and has recorded over 400 of his songs available on the internet. His music has been heard in almost every country in the world and three times he has been put up for grammy nominations for folk music and his albums have been among the most played music on college and public radio folk music programs.