Folk Alliance honors Tommy Jarrell, Rounder Records, Mavis Staples

Awards will be handed out at the Folk Awards Show Feb. 20, 2008. The awards are given to those who have inspired others, achieved definitive leadership in their field and contributed to the advancement of folk music and/or dance. Each year the LAAwards honor two performers, one living and one legacy, and a person or institution involved in the business or academic side of the folk world, who have devoted their life's work and talent to the advancement of the performing folk arts.

The old time sounds of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina were preserved through the recordings of fiddler, banjo player and vocalist Tommy Jarrell, who died in 1985. His nine albums of traditional banjo and fiddle tunes serve as a reminder of an influential old timey sound. One of 10children, Jarrell inherited his love of music from his father, Ben Jarrell. Jarrell bought his first fiddle, at the age of eight, with money he made gambling. Learning most of his repertoire by 1925, Jarrell performed at unpaid, informal, house parties and contests. Jarrell was little known outside the local area, however, until the mid-1960s when his son, B.F., a disc jockey in North Carolina encouraged Alan Jabbour, then a member of the Hollow String String Band and later the director of the Library of Congress' American Folklife Division, to visit the Jarrell home and record his father. Word of Jarrell's authentic playing soon spread as he was visited by numerous urban traditional music enthusiasts.

By the late-1960s, Jarrell was performing at folk festivals and concerts in the west and midwest. In 1982, Jarrell was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for The Arts. In addition to his albums, Jarrell was featured in several documentaries including, "Sprout Wings & Fly," "My Old Fiddle," and "Legends Of Old Timey Music." In 1970, with their passionate enthusiasm for American roots music lighting the way, three Cambridge, Mass. college students started Rounder. Ken Irwin, Bill Nowlin, Marian Leighton-Levy began a label that now has more than 3,000 titles running the gamut from folk to world, soul to socas, jazz to juju, Cajun to Celtic.

The awards are a highlight of the Folk Alliance's annual conference. "We are delighted to announce this year's stellar recipients," says Folk Alliance Executive Director Louis Jay Meyers. "On behalf of the board and the membership, it will be a great pleasure to make these presentations at our Memphis conference in February."

Founded in 1989 the Folk Alliance seeks to create new and better opportunities for all those involved in the performance folk arts. With thousands of attendees annually, their conference offers a complete view of the business world of traditional and contemporary folk music and dance through showcases, educational seminars, films, and a networking-rich trade show.

Born in 1940 in Chicago, Mavis Staples has been lead singer for the Staple Singers. From the first two albums, "Soul Folk in Action" and "We'll Get Over" The Staples were singing entirely contemporary message songs such as "Long Walk to D.C." and "When Will We Be Paid." Starting with "Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-Na-Boom Boom)" and "I'll Take You There," The Staples counted 12 chart hits at Stax.