Shaking Out the Sheets

Labeling this four-CD set "J.E. Mainer" is a bit misleading. The eponymous Appalachian fiddler appears only on the first CD and on 10 tracks of the second, where he contributes vocals, but no fiddling. The second and third CD feature his banjo-playing younger brother and fellow Mountaineer, Wade Mainer, and the fourth CD is given over to other Mountaineers who went on to record as Daddy John Love, the Dixie Reelers, and the Morris Brothers. Nevertheless, this collection of string-band music documents the transition from the homespun music played on front porches up and down the Appalachians to the music we now think of the "classic" country sound made by coal miners' daughters and sons and the cascading whirl of Mr. Monroe's post-war flash.

J.E. Mainer was not a coal miner's son. He was the son of a woodcutter who moved out of the North Carolina mountains to work in the cotton mills of Glendale, South Carolina. Mainer himself went to work in the mills at the age of eight; by age 15 he had moved on his own to Knoxville, Tennessee, to work in the mills there. All of this biographical information and more is to be found in Pat Harrison's liner notes.