ArtistInfo

Carroll Best

Country

Banjo player from Haywood County, North Carolina. Murdered by his brother Sam Best on May 8, 1995. Best began playing the banjo in 1936, at the age of five. His first public performance occurred five years later, in 1941, when he played banjo for a square dance held at Maggie Elementary School. By the mid-1950s Best was performing his banjo at home and in community gatherings, and his reputation spread outside Haywood County. Soon he was regularly performing at the annual summertime Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville. About this time Best received an invitation to join the Asheville-based musicians the Morris Brothers. Wiley and Zeke Morris had been performing as a brother duo in Western North Carolina since the 1930s, and they had worked with a succession of banjo players (including such banjo masters as Mainer, Scruggs, and Don Reno). Best accepted the offer, and appeared with the Morris Brothers in concert and on radio and television. (The Morris Brothers had a regular show broadcast on WLOS-TV.) Best competed in, and often won, banjo competitions at regional music festivals, including Union Grove, Fiddlers Grove, the Asheville Folk Festival, and the Folk Festival of the Smokies. By the 1970s he was playing semi-regularly in a band called the Hornpipers (later renamed the Carroll Best Band), featuring several talented Western North Carolina musicians, including banjo player Zack Allen, fiddler Mack Snoderly, and guitarist Danny Johnson. With this band in 1982, Best recorded his first album, "Pure Mountain Melodys," which showcased what was by then his fully realized melodic three-finger banjo style; yet, because it was released on tiny Asheville-based Skyline Records, the album found few listeners. In 1990, wider recognition for Best’s extraordinary abilities on the banjo finally came his way. That year at the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival (at Mars Hill College), he received the Lunsford Award. Also that year Best was invited to be on the faculty of the Tennessee Banjo Institute, a special event held at Cedars of Lebanon State Park in Middle Tennessee. Best’s appearance at the TBI (accompanied by his friend, guitarist Danny Johnson) was a revelation to the many banjo enthusiasts in attendance, since many members of the old-time and bluegrass community had never before heard him (or even heard of him). Best’s distinctive banjo technique forced discussion about his role in the evolution of the melodic three-finger banjo style. Given the impact he made upon his first appearance at the TBI, Best was asked to return to the same event in 1992. In 1994, he received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award, an honor bestowed upon him by the North Carolina Arts Council. Also that year, Best was selected to perform (alongside better-known banjo players like Ralph Stanley and J. D. Crowe) on the Masters of the Banjo Tour, sponsored by the National Council for the Traditional Arts. Other recognition for Best during this period included invitations to appear on radio (the Grand Ole Opry and the Wolf Trap Folk Masters radio concert series) and on television (Hee Haw). In 1993 Best and his band recorded a second album, released on another Western North Carolina-based label, Ivy Creek Recordings; this album incorporated fiddling from longtime friend Tommy Hunter. Yet because of limited distribution, "The Carroll Best Band with Tommy Hunter" failed to serve as the vehicle for Best’s breakthrough into the broader music world. The recording that truly showcased Best’s exceptional talent was a posthumously released 2001 album produced by Joe Wilson, "Say Old Man, Can You Play the Banjo?," an album featuring a range of Best’s recordings from the 1970s to the early 1990s—some previously released, many unreleased. The 2001 album, on the Copper Creek label, solidified Best’s reputation, furthering awareness that Best was a significant and innovative music talent. The album presented the banjo-player as a missing link between old-time and bluegrass, two music genres that are integrally interconnected yet whose connections are not always acknowledged. "Say Old Man" also generated debate about Best’s role in the evolution of the melodic three-finger banjo style. Some bluegrass fans who heard "Say Old Man" marveled at Best’s approach to playing instrumentals—mostly old-time fiddle tunes—on the banjo. While a new 2014 release, "Carroll Best and The White Oak String Band," illustrates that the banjo player was capable of playing such tunes in a range of banjo styles, the recordings on "Say Old Man," from the 1970s through the 1990s, suggest that from at least the early 1970s (if not sometime in the 1960s) Best preferred to interpret fiddle tunes utilizing the melodic three-finger banjo style.

Plays With