Happy Golden Sounds of Yore

On Top of Old Smoky: New Old-Time Smoky Mountain Music features artists such as Dolly Parton, Norman Blake, Kate Brislin, and David Holt performing tunes that Smoky Mountains residents would have been singing when the national park was developed back in the 1920s and 30s. The recently released CD from the Great Smoky Mountains Association features songs such as “Man of Constant Sorrow,” “Will the Circle be Unbroken,” and “Black Mountain Rag.”

“This new album offers 23 never-before-released performances of the classic American folk music repertoire,” says Ted Olson, one of the album’s producers and a professor of Appalachian Studies and Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Studies at East Tennessee State University. “These remarkable performances reinterpret field recordings collected in the Smokies by folklorist Joseph S. Hall.” The Park Service commissioned Hall, a trained linguist, to document the speech of Smoky Mountain folks who would be displaced by the park’s creation.

The album is available for $14.95 at smokiesinformation.org.