Lonnie's Breakdown!

He was a Missouri man, pretty quiet, did a fair bit of fiddle playing for radio, but wasn't known for record releases (his releases were on his own label, pressed up by a cheapjack vanity outfit in Arkansas.) Lonnie Robertson, however, was considered by his peers to be one of the finest fiddle players ever to pick up a bow, and according to some folks he went to the grave with a host of tunes unknown to the majority of fiddlers. Turns out, however, that Robertson spent a great deal of time recording privately, using his kitchen as a studio and an aging Wollensack tape recorder to do the honors (a number of the tracks on this disc were recorded by Gordon McCann, using somewhat better equipment.) Lonnie's Breakdown includes Robertson's own tunes, along with a host of arrangements of others; some of them will be very familiar to listeners, some will be familiar from the several books of fiddle music that included Robertson's material. The main connection in all of the 34 tracks here is Robertson's wonderful fiddle playing — energetic, lively and timeless.