The Ebony Hillbillies

The Tacoma, Washington, based The News Tribune has published a story about what it considers to be a stand out band at the 15th Annual Wintergrass festival during this past weekend’s shindig. The Ebony Hillbillies weren’t even expected to be playing at the festival, but when the Carolina Chocolate Drops cancelled just days before the festival started the New York quartet got the call to fill the void.

The quartet, comprising fiddler Rique Prince, singer and multi-instrumentalist Norris Bennett, upright bass player Bill Salter and a cowboy washboard player who simply goes by the initials A.R., not only played a set on Thursday evening, they set the place alive with foot-stomping dancers in abundance.

The full story of their memorable performance can be found at the newspaper’s website.

Here is an unrelated clip of them performing in the NYC subway.

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About the Author

Richard Thompson

Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics. A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe. He wrote the annotated series I'm On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.