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Flying Jenny of Birmingham, Alabama, plays old-time string band music. This was the music of the American settlers from the British Isles and is a forerunner of bluegrass and country music. It consists of lively fiddle tunes meant for dancing as well as old songs sung on front porches and in front of fireplaces when families and friends got together after the day’s work was done. Flying Jenny (named after an old-fashioned mule-powered carnival ride) plays breakdowns on fiddle, guitar, banjo and bass, and sings old songs, often comical, in three-part harmony. In addition to the music, a performance by Flying Jenny includes stories about the tunes and the fiddlers who first played them. They have done a number of thematic performances on such topics as Alabama history, folk art, early radio music, Christmas folk music, romance in old-time music, etc., and have collaborated with storyteller Dolores Hydock in "Footprint on the Sky: Memories of a Chandler Mountain Spring," a piece in which tales, tunes and songs interact with each other to create a sense of life in an Alabama farming community. They have also provided background music for weddings, picnics, art openings and other social events.
Joyce, Duncan, Rachel & Jim Jim Cauthen is the fiddler of the group. By day, he is a computer programmer for IBM at the Mercedes plant at Vance. Joyce Cauthen plays guitar. She is a folklorist who has written With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: Old-Time Fiddling in Alabama (University of Alabama Press, 1989). Together they have researched Alabama’s fiddling traditions and produced an anthology of Alabama’s great old-time fiddlers (Possum Up a Gum Stump: Home, Field, and Commercial Recordings of Alabama Fiddlers) Duncan Blair plays "clawhammer" banjo, a style that preceded the three-finger bluegrass banjo style more commonly heard today. Besides being a champion banjo player, he is a partner with the law firm of Burr & Forman. The newest member of the band is Rachel Turner, who plays bass. She grew up in Mississippi, the daughter of a Baptist minister, and adds just the right touch to Flying Jenny's old-time gospel numbers. By day she is a dental hygienist. HistoryJoyce and Jim Cauthen were (and still are) in another active old-time band, The Red Mt. White Trash, when the Service Guild of Birmingham called them about providing dinner music for a benefit dinner to be held in February 1995. The dinner would have a plantation theme and thus the band must have a banjo in it. Since the Trash did not have a banjo player, the Cauthens contacted Duncan Blair to play with them. Duncan had not been playing banjo very long, but was already quite good and had won first place in the old-time banjo category at the Tennessee Valley Old-Time Fiddler’s Convention earlier in the year. Together they developed a long list of tunes to play during the "Guild Gala" and afterwards they decided to continue as a band. In 2003 Flying Jenny added a fourth member of the band, Rachel Turner. Turner, who lives next door to the Cauthens, has listened to them playing on their front porch for 15+ years. Learning to play the bass and sing harmony with the band was a breeze for her. The band took its name from a story that two elderly fiddlers from Sand Mountain told the Cauthens about their first paying job in the late 1920’s. They sat in the center of a mule-powered carnival ride called a Flying Jenny, and played tunes for the riders. It was a homemade, portable ride, something like a carousel with benches instead of wooden horses. Each time the ride stopped and folks got off, the owner dropped a nickel in the musicians’ pockets. The Louvin Brothers got their start on this same Flying Jenny. I Flying Jenny's First CD! You can get one by sending a check for $15 payable to Joyce Cauthen, 2169 Shadybrook Lane, Birmingham, AL 35226 or order on-line from Elderly
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Upcoming Gigs
April 12: Footmad Dance
at YWCA, 7:30 p.m.
April 20: 100th Anniversary Celebration of the Acmar
Community Church. 2 p.m. Free and open to the
public.
Sunday, September 21, 4:30 p.m. Leeds Downtown Folk Festival, featuring John Henry Days. This is a 2-day festival, Saturday and Sunday on the main street of lovely Leeds, 15 minutes from Birmingham.
Thursday, November 20: BPL@ Night, 6:30-7:30 in the Atrium of the Downtown Public Library.
Contact Information
Contact Flying Jenny by e-mail or by calling Joyce Cauthen at 205-822-0505