Lily of the Valley (from Luther Davis)

I’m thinking of including this tune in the Slower Than Dirt core repertoire. It’s a lovely tune which sounds good slow, and it has a predictable structure without being boring. I think I first heard it on the podcast Get Up In The Cool, in the episode with Adam Hurt. That’s where the audio below comes from, at any rate. The podcast is hosted by Cameron DeWhitt, and he’s the other banjo player in this recording:

(OMG, DeWhitt’s chords around 3:30 are tasty.)

If you search, you can find a source recording from Luther Davis. I personally find some of them kind of painful to listen to, as they must have been recorded when he was in his 90s, past his prime playing years. But if you don’t mind that sort of thing, there’s a fairly listenable recording starting at 23 minutes into this tape. (I disagree with the chords the guitar player’s using, though.)

This tune is in Hilary Dirlam’s All-In-One Old Time Jam Book, Volume 2 where there’s banjo tab and standard notation, and I’ll get my own transcription into the tunebook as well.