Curtis Cody

In the spring of 1959 he played fiddle with Taylor on mandolin, Sam Hutchins on guitar, Walter Hensley on banjo and Vernon McIntyre on bass on the seventeen sides United Artists issued that September as Folk Songs from the Blue Grass, among them “Cripple Creek,” “John Henry,” “The Prisoner’s Song,” “The Children Are Cryin’,” “Pretty Polly,” “Molly and Ten Brooks” and Earl Scruggs’s “Flint Hill Special.” He is also credited on fiddle at the band’s session for the Folkways anthology Mountain Music Bluegrass Style (1959), which included “They’re at Rest Together,” “White House Blues” and “Fox Chase.”

That April he was guesting on fiddle when the band played Carnegie Hall on Lomax’s bill with Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Jimmy Driftwood and Pete and Mike Seeger. Looking out at the packed hall before the show, Cody told Hensley he did not think the audience would like them, but Hensley’s banjo won the crowd over, and three of the band’s numbers, “Fire on the Mountain,” “Rolling in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” and “Mule Skinner Blues,” were issued on United Artists’ Alan Lomax Presents Folk Song Festival at Carnegie Hall.