I first met Kerry Blech at the Festival of American Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington. It may have been the first year that I attended in 1992. I was impressed with his broad knowledge of American old-time fiddling, and we gradually became friends. He once asked me to review one of his CDs, which I did. On that CD, he recorded the tune “Little Billy Wilson.” I dug out four of the oldest recordings I had of the tune, and in my review I explained that he had taken phrases from all four and joined them together. Kerry said that he loved that review. At another time, I was reviewing a CD of Texas fiddler Lewis Thomassen (older brother of Benny). He played a tune entitled “Cape Giradeau,” which the liner notes said was an original tune. I knew that I had played that tune many times before but could not think of the title. I sent Kerry a copy of the tune, and he immediately responded, “It’s ‘The Boys of Blue Hill.’”

I tell you all of that to give you an idea of what Kerry was like and of his voluminous and detailed knowledge of fiddlers, fiddling, and fiddle tunes. That is the primary subject of this new biography of Kerry.

The first chapter is about his family and his early life in Ohio. In the second chapter, he discovers old-time music while studying at Kent State in Ohio. In the third chapter, Kerry becomes immersed in the music. The fourth chapter describes Kerry’s field recordings, research, and writing, including liner notes for old-time releases.

The fifth chapter is about Kerry’s involvement in a project to record members of the Hammons family in West Virginia. My late friend Dwight Diller told me that when he was in his late teens, he was not doing well; he was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A neighboring family took him in and helped him. He heard them playing music and realized that they were very skilled musicians, and he recorded their music on cassettes which then circulated in the old-time community. Alan Jabbour and Carl Fleischhauer then visited the Hammons family (Burl, Lee, Maggie, and Sherman) and recorded them for the Library of Congress. Kerry’s role was to join the Hammons Legacy project which made available Dwight’s earlier recordings on CDs. In particular, Kerry worked on sound restoration and noise reduction, but he was also involved in tune selection and in distribution and sales of the CDs.

Chapter six is about Kerry’s reviews for the Old-Time Herald. It discusses not only what Kerry reviewed but also his approach to reviewing. Chapter seven is entitled “Old-Time Music Chat Group Activism,” and it mentions an internet newsgroup that I started called rec.music.country.old-time. It says that it was established in 1995, but I know that it already existed in 1994, when Alice Gerrard asked me to write an article about it for the Old-Time Herald. I found my name in that chapter because of an exchange I had with Kerry in the newsgroup. Chapter eight is entitled “Denouement.” Among other things, it describes Kerry’s own style of fiddling and the last period of his life.

The last time I saw Kerry was at a small Tennessee festival called Breaking Up Winter, where he played with his band. His health had already begun to decline. I think that was also the only time that I ever played with him in a jam that he led.

Despite the fact that Kerry lived in Seattle for a long time, there isn’t a lot of discussion of Kerry’s life there; Seattle is a one of the largest hubs of old-time music in the country. In addition, the book does not mention that Kerry was a COBOL programmer at Boeing, and I suspect that his move to Florida was at least partly a result of his losing that job. Nevertheless, this book has a huge amount of information about Kerry and old-time music and is intensely interesting to me. I know almost all of the other people discussed in it. If these topics are of interest to you, then I recommend it.

You can order this book here.