Art shares some of his field recordings from a recent trip to Arizona. The show opens with Art’s friend Big Jim Griffith right outside of Tuscon. Griffith is an expert in traditional banjo music and Southwestern folklore. As the trip continues, Art unexpectedly runs into Walt Woodcock, a former real life working cowboy. The show closes with Woodcock doing an unaccompanied performance of a traditional cowboy song.

Backroads & Banjos delves into the music of Georgia harmonica player Neal Pattman. Pattman had only one arm after losing one arm at the age of 9 in a wagon wheel. His playing is marked by whooping, great intensity, and intermittent sung lines. Art met him while he was washing dishes at a UGA cafeteria.

This Backroads & Banjos focuses on Indianapolis fiddle player John W Summers. According to Art, Summers is the best fiddler that he’s ever recorded. In the first segment, we hear how Summers’ father taught him to play as well as an excellent recording of Art accompanying Summers on the banjo.

On this week’s Backroads & Banjos, Art continues to explore the material on High Atmosphere, a compilation of field recordings from 1965 made by John Cohen, who was a guest on the show last week. While the selections on last week’s show were in a more somber tone, Art selected an upbeat grouping of songs for this segment.

Art interviews his old friend John Cohen of New Lost City Ramblers fame about his trip to the South in the 1960′s to research obscure banjo tunings which inadvertently yielded an influential compilation of field recordings. These recordings were originally released in 1975 by Rounder Records under the name “High Atmosphere.”

This episode of Backroads & Banjos focuses on a fantastic guitar picker named Elizabeth Cotton. Being left-handed, Elizabeth was known for developing her own unique style of picking a right-handed guitar. She was a caretaker in the folk-singing Seeger family household but none of the family knew of her talent until one day when she picked up a guitar and started to play. Mike Seeger made some of his earliest field recordings of Elizabeth Cotton and the two would go on to tour and perform together in the early 1960′s. Many of her own songs including “Freight Train” and “Ain’t Got No Honey Baby Now” became staples of the 1960′s folk revival repertoire.