Roscoe's Gone
X:0 T: No Score C: The Traditional Tune Archive M: K: x
ROSCOE’S GONE. Old-Time, Breakdown. D Mixolydian. Standard or ADae tuning (fiddle). AA’BB’. Composed in 1981 by Seattle musician Hank Bradley in 1981 in honor of singer and banjo player Roscoe Holcomb (1912-1981) of Daisy, Perry County, southeast Kentucky. Holcomb was also a coal miner, construction worker and farmer, who was first recorded in 1958 and who became a prominent figure in folk music in the United States in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The tune appears in Bradley's book Counterfeiting, Stealing, and Cultural Plundering -- a Manual for Applied Ethnomusicologists, and has become widespread in American old-time repertoire. Bradley formed a band called Roscoe’s Gone, with himself on the fiddle, Candy Goldman on the clawhammer banjo, and Bill Meyer playing guitar.