Biography:Kelly Gilbert

Biographical notes
 KELLY GILBERT (1895-1991). Northeastern Kentucky. Collectors Guthrie Meade and John Harrod, who made field recordings of Gilbert in the 1970's, paint him as a rather taciturn man, reluctant to elaborate on his music but not unwilling, and a fiddler with amazing endurance at an elderly age, enjoying being able to play tune after tune. In an interview in 2012 with Scott Prouty Harrod said that Gilbert had become, by virtue of his longevity, musically isolated, but that in the early 1970's he had been playing with a group in Frankfort, Ky., called the 65er's that had included fiddler Pop Baker and banjo player Boss Sewell, along with Claude Hellard on guitar and Bill Tom Cummins on mandolin. See a video of Harrod talking and playing with Gilbert at the Berea Archives.