Autobiography (Fictional)

 I was just a piano player in Topeka.  I played piano in junior high and high school.  My parents made me start taking lessons with the local piano teacher in town when I was 8.  All my sisters learned the piano, too.  After I graduated, I was supposed to get married to a boy from the city but he left town before graduation and I never saw him again.  I was a huge fan of Benny Goodman because I heard him on the radio every Saturday night on the Let’s Dance Show.  I decided the good life was in Chicago and left from home.  Obviously, I couldn’t transport my piano with me, so I just took a suitcase full of clothes and the little cash I had saved up from playing rags for the summer events.  My parents didn’t know when I left.  I hitched a ride from the edge of town to Kansas City and the man told me I was on my own to find another ride from there. 

Well, I couldn’t find a ride from Kansas City clear to Chicago and I got to thinking that I might get stranded if I tried to make it all that way.  So I looked for a job around town.  No white people thought a white girl should be wandering off all by herself and they only wanted to hire men.  So I wound up looking on the other side of the tracks.  It was then that I realized Kansas City’s potential.  There were clubs everywhere with musicians advertised to be there that night.  So I went into one of the cleaner looking joints and bought myself a Coca-Cola with some of my money so that they would let me stick around for a few hours until the band showed up.  I enjoyed myself immensely that night.  I can’t remember the name of the band that night, but they changed my life.  It was so inspiring, hearing all this new jazz that they didn’t play on the radio.  I hadn’t taken lessons for jazz music, but I wanted to be around it.  So the next day I tried applying for any job I could find in one of those clubs.  The next day I was hired as a waiter and dishwasher during the day and a bartender for the night.  I didn’t make very much an hour, but I had a free ticket that way to listen to the music every night.  I saw all sorts of bands come in there.   I became good friends with a few, but I just saw them every once in a while.  It got pretty lonely sometimes; I was holed up in a motel for a while before anybody had a place for me to stay permanently.  I finally sent word back home to my mama one day.  Too scared to tell her I was working in a black community ‘cause my folks would probably track me down and bring me home to a “civilized” community, I lied about where I was.  I told them that I was working for a lawyer man up North and that was it. 

One of the newsboys on the corner told me Duke Ellington was back from his first European tour and was going to be in a show right there on Vine.  I didn’t know him, but he sounded like a big deal.  I had to work that next weekend, but I slipped out for a few minutes to go see who he was.  After all the music I had been around, he just had me in awe.  The club owner told me I had to buy something if I wanted to stay around, so I went back home, but a gentleman at the back tipped me that the boys usually went to jam a few blocks away after the show.  So I went back to work, but when the show closed down and it was time for me to go home, I walked myself right on over to where that Duke Ellington was supposed to be.  I had been to a few jam sessions before and had finally started picking up, but I wasn’t anywhere close to runnin’ with the big names.  So I sat there and watched all the different men playing their instruments and listening to some gal sing a chorus.  That’s when I got the idea I could start singing and making more money in the music industry before I was good enough to play.  Duke Ellington was my hero; I was determined to play like him on the piano someday.  I became what you would call a groupie now.  Anytime they were around I made sure to make the show.  I started missing work because of my favorite bands and my boss cut my hours and gave me a warning to show up to work or I wouldn’t have a job anymore.  But I had started singing every now and then around the local jam sessions and got to play the piano at a club every now and then during the day.  Pretty soon I was fired, so I decided I better find a different job. 

The Swingin’ Several didn’t pay much, but their singer left them so I auditioned for that part at a jam session and they told me to meet them Thursday and practice with them so I could learn their songs.  So I had almost a week unemployed but when I got to practicing with the boys, it felt like I was finally in the right place.  The “show” they told me we had the next night was actually a recording session.  So we recorded live in an auditorium and actually had our first show together the next weekend.  Our show was the most fun I had ever had, being able to perform with real musicians that were so creative.  We could do all the popular songs since I was singing, but they did ones without singing, too.  The trumpet player could read music a little but the rest of them improvised all the time.  It was fun because they would throw new twists in the songs all the time, and I had to pay attention.  They knew I played piano, too, so they’d let me sit in on a song every now and then, but when it came time for a piano solo I was supposed to switch.  They let me fill in on a solo one time when the piano player was too drunk and he didn’t like that at all.  He didn’t want me stealin’ away his spotlight.  So I was limited, but I took every chance I got to learn to play like the pros. 

The clarinetist, Joe, and I would practice at his parents’ house where there was a piano every chance we got here in Kansas City ‘cause he took pity on me and wanted me to still be able to play.  Sometimes his mama would join us singing if it was during the day; she had such a sweet voice and I remember thinking just how nice they were.  After sneaking off at the end of the shows with him all the time, the band got to pokin’ fun about maybe we were going together.  Joe decided maybe that wasn’t a bad idea one day and I was sure glad.  We got engaged quickly and I sent for my mama and papa.  It had been forever since I had talked to them, but I sent them a record and a letter to explain my situation, and a little bit of money to make it here.  They arrived in Kansas City not very long after they got the letter.  They told me they had been scared to death and prayed ‘bout me every night.  Well, we got married, and the rest is history.  It was a small wedding with just our parents and close friends. 

After becoming a wife, that didn’t change my job at all until we had our two children.  I went on a couple regional tours with the band before I was done singing.  Then I stayed home with the kids and Joe kept touring.  Our band broke up a few years later, and Joe found a few jobs here and there, but it was sparse for a short while.  I don’t know how we made it back then, but we did.  Now he’s with a new band, but a couple of our members joined it, too.  They let me sing still every now and then while they’re in town.

But that’s my life up to this point.  I was part of a big deal for a while but now we’re a happy family in a house that’s just big enough for the four of us.  The kids and I visit Joe’s papa all the time.  Their poor grandma died last year of a heart attack.  But they say that’s how Bird went.  It must be a popular thing to do.  My folks make it this way sometimes, but we usually drive to Topeka for Christmas and I get to see my sisters that way.  Joe’s been good to me.  He’s one of the few musicians that doesn’t have a drug problem these days.  That allows us to save money back.  Next week he should be back in town and done touring for a while because they’ve got a solid gig downtown for the whole summer.  We bought a piano and I've been giving my daughter, Maybelle, lessons; we spend time reading music, and we spend a lot of time swingin' on that old piano.  Bobby's been interested in the sax for a while at school and someday soon when he's old enough Joe might take him to a show. 

Reflections...

Before taking this Jazz in Kansas City and the Southwest, I hardly had an idea of what jazz was.  Yes, I knew there were woodwinds involved and some trumpets and I thought that a jazz tune was more of an instrumentally rambling song.  Ha!  I learned so many exceptions to my rule that I had to re-make my own schema of music entirely.  I never knew so much about bluegrass or just about actually listening to music before this class, either.

When class started, we talked about ragtime and the pre-jazz music to better help us understand the transition into jazz.  My older sister had often played Maple Leaf Rag when I was younger and I had seen a ragtime piano player perform for almost an hour at the same age.  Ragtime’s bouncy nature was always a joyful sound and I never had addressed the syncopation and the rigid, upbeat rhythm that made it sound so happy.  Thinking back, my grandma learned to play the piano partially by ear when she was a child because her mother was frustrated at her for quitting piano lessons.  Her aunt ended up teaching her how to play the basic chords with her left hand and somewhat follow the music with the right.  I now realize that it sounded very much like the syncopated left hand of a ragtime piano player, which my grandma can easily transition it into sounding like polka music.  So what did my grandma do?  She played every hymn in that old house like a polka.  During her Alzheimer years she would start off playing the one polka song she had learned and somehow turned it into Amazing Grace by the end.    The funny part about it was our lack of realization until later in the song.  It just leads us to show that there are many relationships between the different styles of music.  Our class demonstrated that the characteristics can often be mixed and then we run into a gray area where someone could be playing half-ragtime and half-jazz in one tune.  When I think about the time of transition and my grandma’s surroundings, it makes perfect sense.  She remembers the dust storms from the Dust Bowl era very well from her childhood, so that puts her at a point in time where her parents and grandparents had adjusted to ragtime but maybe weren’t quite accepting the jazz era yet.  They probably thought at that point that jazz was a bad influence on the young generation and segregation was still around in those days, so they probably didn’t hear much from black jazz bands.  The polka influence would have come from the fact that all of her parents’ farmhands were Czech and even as she mothered her own children, she often lived in Czech communities such as Milligan, Nebraska.  At that time, polkas were the thing to go to, if not the only public event to attend.  So through learning to listen closely to songs in this class and observe the influences of someone’s form of art, I have been able to better understand my own grandmother.  My, how I wish she was well enough to play the piano one more time for me now that I’ve taken this class.

As far as bluegrass is concerned, it is very connected to jazz.  The banjo and guitar in bluegrass music were common instruments in the blues and jazz, too.  But instead of transitioning from one to the other, bluegrass kept them both.  Another similar instrument for both musical styles is the string bass.  So the main difference in instruments used could be summed up as the fiddle and the mandolin versus clarinets, saxophones, and trombones.  But we did listen to Reinhart and Grapelli yesterday, who had an all string jazz band.  Drums or percussion can be used in both styles, depending on the artist’s preference.  Both bluegrass and jazz often have a swinging style, where the musicians defy the definition of rhythm and extend into extra counts on the notes they feel are more important.  Solos take pieces from the melody and improvise the boringness right out of it.  There can be songs with lyrics and purely instrumental songs.  Both fields have many artists who have pushed the limits of society’s knowledge and advanced the genres themselves.  Who would have known that hillbilly music and bluegrass would be such popular songs in television and movies, too?  I never realized that the “Ballad of Jed Clampett” on one of my favorite old-time TV shows was recorded by two of the earliest bluegrass musicians there are.  I knew that Alison Krauss and Union Station were included in the soundtrack for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, but I hadn’t realized to what extent and the fact that Dan from Union Station was George Clooney’s singing voice for the Soggy Bottom Boys.  I also never knew before that Krauss and Union Station had so many Grammys and international recognition in the bluegrass genre.   I thought people were less appreciative and knowledgeable than they really are about bluegrass.

But continuing with bluegrass alone, I researched a couple favorite artists of mine and summarized several songs I only thought I was familiar with.  Remembering the tune is much less complicated than breaking it down and understanding the work that went into each song to make it different from the rest.  Phrase extensions and interludes are often inserted to catch our attention in important places; improvisation takes our understanding of the song and throws it down the drain, demanding that we listen with a whole new set of ears.  I have loved Alison Krauss and Union Station’s music all my life, despite the fact that it made me cry as an infant.  Because of my parents’ enjoyment in listening to their music, I gained great exposure to it.  Before kindergarten, I had many of her songs memorized; I had grown to love Alison Krauss’s voice above all others.  “Oh, Atlanta” is still one of my favorite songs of hers from her younger recording years because of its happy, swinging feel.  I even remember pondering the meaning of her songs when I was in first grade.  I’ll never forget listening to “Deeper than Crying” with the lyrics “Leaving is the longest word I’ve ever heard…”, and wondering how in the world she could mean that because I knew much longer words than that!  The longest word I could think of was typewriter!  Obviously this was early first grade, before I learned the Mary Poppins “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” song.  At that point I was starting to realize she meant something more and I had to ask my older sister.  But through this class now, I’ve rediscovered their musicianship as more of a stroke of genius, as I have for Cadillac Sky.  Both groups have ignored the rules of popular music and you can’t help but wonder about what they are saying when forming these songs.  For example: Jerry, you take the chorus and make it sound like a different song; Dan, play the guitar until you don’t think you can anymore, and then play it faster; or Matt, although the banjo is a bluegrass instrument I want you to play it like rock and roll while Panda runs all over the bass;  Ross, throw some classical violin into the rock and roll sound while Mike takes the bluegrass approach on the guitar and I, Brian, will sing into my mandolin to make it sound like a voice coming from an old-time radio.  How do these people form such signature sounds?  Where does it come from?  Besides years of experience, Jazz424 reminded me that childhood idols and major influences in the beginning of any musician’s career can be a major ingredient to their success, they just have different ways of using that inspiration.  I won’t go into biographies because that’s already in my blog.  But a person should never forget to look outside the stage to observe a musician’s style and personality.

Listening in this class has brought me knowledge about the form of songs.  I had dissected poem structure before in junior high and high school, but never songs.  I’m one of those people that when they listen to music they forget to listen to the lyrical story, but instead pick up the feeling with the music.  I learned from my dad to pay attention to the different instruments in musical pieces and to better appreciate each person’s talent and not just the person playing or singing the melody.  As our family played, I gradually learned to separate the sounds of each stringed instrument I heard off the radio a little better.  So that part of listening I had already somewhat accomplished.  But this class changed the way I pay attention to songs.  I do still space out and just enjoy the music when I’m tired, but now I listen even more to the different riffs and licks that each artist comes up with and the quality of the arrangement.  I believe it is my job as a fiddle player to fill in the gaps when I play in the background of a song because that is what I noticed before in bluegrass.  But hearing all these popular jazz tunes and listening closer to bluegrass that I heard before, I’ve found that absolutely every instrument can find a way to converse with the melody to make a fuller sound.  I liked finding out that some of these bands that couldn’t read music did just as well with improvising as the trained musicians did reading music.  Improvising is my only method and that also means that I’ll play a song different every time and become more creative if I haven’t played a song recently enough to remember how I did it before.  The only sad part is when I think about how much effort I haven’t been putting into playing lately and how stupid it is that I’ve only attended two small jam sessions in my entire life. 

This course was more revolutionizing to me than any history, accounting, or economics class I have ever taken.  Observation and seeking more than the obvious is the key.  It takes my whole life and shakes it up like a snow globe, demanding I take all my knowledge laid down about music, throw it up in the air, and let it hit me again from another angle so I can see there are more sides to the story.  I must reflect on my entire past, now, to get a clear conception of what else may have gone unnoticed all along.

Rhonda Vincent and Listening Assignment #10

[1]

I’m Not Over You, by Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, has a sound a lot like Alison Krauss and Union Station.  But in addition to her wonderful voice, she also plays the mandolin, guitar, dobro, and fiddle.  She, like Alison, also performs gospel songs and songs that sound more country.   Her song I’ve Gotta Start Somewhere sounds to me like Sara Evans singing, with more emphasis on the singing and a little less emphasis on the instruments.  

Rhonda was born in 1962 in Kirksville, Missouri, where she still resides.  Her musical career started when she was very young.  Her father bought her a snare drum when she was 6, but at age 8, she started playing mandolin in her family’s Sally Mountain Show.  Immediately expanding her thriving skills, she began taking guitar lessons by the age of 10.  She kept playing in bluegrass groups throughout school, but she had her eye on a bigger prize.  TNN had a TV series called “You Can be a Star” where she competed in 1985 and won.  Her award was a recording contract and she started appearing in the Grand Ole Opry.  Alison Krauss replaced her for a short while in the Vincent family’s band.  She branched out into country music, but was soon disappointed and returned to bluegrass music.  Her goal was to innovate bluegrass itself.  She now has 17 albums under her belt and 16 singles.  In the past decade she has been awarded 6 International Bluegrass Music Association awards.  One of her more recent albums  features a duet with Alison Krauss, along with several other songs that she co-wrote with Alison.  It seems to me that the bluegrass industry is just one big happy family.  Many bluegrass musicians change bands and wind up working with a lot of the same people, similar to the jazz music industry in Kansas City in the earlier 1900s.  I also found that Rhonda was with Rounder Records for a while, the same recording company Alison has worked with, and many other bluegrass stars. [1]

But I digress.  This music video was made in 2002 from her album “The Storm Still Rages”.  I’ve Forgotten You is written in 4/4 time.  Vocals (melody and harmony) are included along with the dobro, guitar, string bass, mandolin, and violin.  The form of this song is ABAB binary.  There is an intro, two choruses with a reference back to the intro inserted in between them, and an outro.

Video from YouTube.

The 5 measure intro (first measure begins with a  half rest) starts with the dobro, mandolin, guitar, and bass on two staccato notes, and the third note starts flowing into the rest of the piece as they all start finding their own places for the melody.  The rhythm is immediately established by the bass, guitar, and mandolin as they all strum/pluck on the 2^nd and 4^th beats of every measure. 

A – 16 measures – at end of 8 measures, mandolin picks for a short moment and returns to strumming.

B – 16 measures – vocals include melody and 3-part harmony (female voice in harmony is probably Sonya Isaacs but could also be Alison Krauss)

<4 measure reference back to the intro>

A- 16 measures – Rhonda singing melody again, no other vocals.  Same rhythm on guitar and bass, dobro drops out, mandolin starts conversing with Rhonda – fiddle starts laying slow, drawn-out notes around the 11^th bar

B – 16 measures – vocals same as first B section, violin starts bubbling up in the gaps

Outro - 4 measures just repeating the last phrase of the B section, mandolin and violin close down the song

I was surprised that I never heard the dobro come back in after the reference back to the introduction.  I was also impressed to find out that Rhonda Vincent can play so many instruments, because I thought she was limited to the mandolin and vocals.  I don’t know why I assumed that just because I’ve only seen her perform on the mandolin and sing.  It was quite naïve of me to assume that about a successful bluegrass musician.

Listening #9 - St. Anne’s Reel with Musician Aly Bain

Aly Bain learned how to play the fiddle from Tom Anderson, a Shetland musical heritage fiddler of known by his friends as Muckle Tammie, or “Uncle Tommy”.  If you’re like me and you haven’t heard of Shetland before, it is a group of islands north of Scotland.  Lerwick, Shetland is where Aly Bain was born.  Mr. Bain has recorded several of his own albums and quite a number of them with other artists, plus 4 DVDs.  Bain has received many musical awards and honors internationally during his life-long career in music/recording/television.  His collaborative efforts have led him to work with other famous musicians than the ones in the St. Anne’s Reel video such as Dan Tyminski from Union Station, Emmylou Harris, Roseanne Cash, Joan Osborne, and many others.  Aly Bain has even received 5 honorary Doctor of Music degrees. [1]

Tonight I was in the mood to hear St. Anne's Reel.  I've only heard it before from The Franz Family, which is a gospel-bluegrass group.  But there is not a video for them playing this song on YouTube.  Instead, I had found Jerry Douglas, (whom I have mentioned from Alison Krauss and Union Station), playing his dobro alongside a few other very talented men.  Aly Bain is playing the fiddle, Russ Barenburg is on the guitar, and Todd Parks is on the bass, smiling the whole time.  Though I've never heard of the rest of these musicians in my entire life, I'm shocked that this is my first time hearing from them.  Perhaps I've heard them without being aware of it, but my goodness does Aly Bain tear up the fiddle!  It sounds like he's often fitting 3 notes into one beat, and it doesn't sound cluttered at all; it is very clean, precise, and dazzling all at the same time.  I was glad to discover him in this song.

This song has a folk/bluegrass sound.  I find that this is because it is a traditional Irish folk song, of which I cannot find approximately how far it dates back in history.  There are lyrics to this song, but of the two versions I've heard of it now, I've only heard it played as an instrumental song.

This song is AABB 32-bar form, or else AB binary with 16 counts per section.  But to the best of my knowledge I am going to go with the first option, because the second 8 measures of the chorus are exactly the same as the first, and the 4th section the exact same as the 3rd.  It is in 2/4 time.  This smooth-flowing song has an intro, 6 choruses, and an outro.

Video from YouTube. 

There is an 8 measure dobro intro that hardly even hints what the melody is going to be and then suddenly the guitar, string bass, and fiddle join Jerry Douglas on the dobro and we're off.  There is no slowing down with these boys.  The guitar and fiddle are both playing the melody together as the bass plucks the first beat of every measure and the dobro finds perfect harmony.  The second A is the same.

The second chorus changes direction, featuring the fiddle on the melody.  So the fiddle has a chorus-length solo.  This chorus a majorly different sound to it, partially because the guitar and dobro start strumming on the offbeats, forming syncopation in the rhythm.  Also, the bass starts plucking on every beat now.  What are they doing??  It's syncopated, but not.  The guitar and dobro have temporarily joined the bass in the duty of rhythm-keeping.  The fiddle does stray a little with improvisation but not by far.

The third chorus is a guitar solo.  The fiddle starts clucking in the background, and the rhythm keeps the same pattern on the bass and dobro.  The dobro does wedge in a few licks here and there, just barely noticeable in the gaps of the guitar melody.

The dobro is the next solo-length chorus and man is there improvisation.  Jerry Douglas just decided to have a hay-day with it, although he makes it look effortless.  So part of the time it is hard to tell if he is starting a brand new section or not, but then he caps it off with a few familiar notes so you can catch up before you stop breathing again.  The bass still has the same 2-beat rhythm and the guitar strums in the off-beats again.  I'm pretty sure the fiddle has fallen silent for the whole chorus.

Chorus number 5 is back to the head tune - all instruments jump in their original places as the fiddle takes the melody away again.  In the A section(s), the fiddle stresses the double-stringing and the dobro does a lot of bending notes with the slide.  The guitar has pretty much assumed a quieter and less "filled-in" melody compared to the  fiddle.  In the B section(s), the bass starts on every beat but quickly turns to every other beat once more.  The guitar echoes the sound the dobro previously made, including the harmony and sliding on the strings to bend long notes.  The dobro just quietly piddles around with more harmony to complete the fullness to the texture of the music.

Chorus 6 is pretty similar to the last one.  But the violin charges in on the chorus this time to signal that this is the last go-around.  The tempo may have sped up a little bit.  All instruments still have the same role with increased volume.  Finally, there is a 4-measure outro where the dobro and fiddle start the melody of an A section and then strike three notes with the bass to end the song.  During the outro, it was hard for me to hear the guitar, but the tune sounded less full after the first 2 measures of the outro, so I assume that is where the guitar dropped out of the melody or else strummed the ending notes with the rest.  Oh, and I can't forget the vocals in this song, as we hear a "Whoopie" from Jerry before the video stops. 

A Couple Instrument Manufacturers

There are many brands of instruments out there, but I want to highlight just a few of the top brands available.  For violins, Stradivarius has been a popular producing company since the 1680s, although back then many other violin producers copied the Stradivarius name on their own violins.  A Stradivarius violin made by the actual Stradivari family from the 1680s could be worth hundreds of thousands today.  The high quality of the Stradivarius brand supposedly results from the extreme consistency of the wood used and no change in growth pattern of the trees used for the wood.

U.S. Scientists Recreate Stradivarius Violin [1]

Fender is a well-known producer of guitars.  Fender Musical Instruments Corporation is headquartered in Arizona.  It was established in 1946 in California, though, by Leo Fender under the name of Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company.   It is home of the first mass-produced electric bass.  Others had produced electric guitars as early as the 1920s on a small scale.  They produce many other stringed instruments, amplifiers, and PA systems.  Leo Fender had started off as an electronic technician, making repairs on radios, phonographs, and amplifiers.  After starting to produce instruments he decided it was much more profitable and became solely a manufacturer.  It is still a privately held company.

Yamaha was established in 1887 in Japan.  It was originally just a piano and reed organ manufacturer.  It is still a very popular brand in pianos.  Now Yamaha is actually the world’s largest manufacturer of musical instruments.  In quality, my father’s Gibson guitar is far exceeded by his Yamaha guitar in sound and ease of playing.

Along the same lines, when the phonograph was invented it helped spread the sound of musicians and their instruments, which in turn probably increased the sale of instruments.   Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 in New Jersey.  

Listening Assignment #8 – Duke Ellington – Satin Doll

Today I thought I’d listen to a song by Duke Ellington, since he was one of the musicians I respected more after our last class.  The instruments used in Duke Ellington’s Satin Doll are piano, string bass and a cymbal for rhythm, 3 saxophones and a Bari sax, several trombones, and trumpets.  In the video it looks like there are 5 of both the trombones and the trumpets.  The full drum set is brought in for less than one measure.

The structure of Satin Doll is 32-bar popular AABA song format.  It starts with a piano and base intro of 4 measures.  One whole chorus is then performed by the entire band.  There is a shriek at the end of the first A and then a more harmonic end on the next A.  The bridge gets sassy and loud and uses stop time to immediately drop the volume to just a quiet piano at the start of the following A section.

The next entire chorus is done by the piano sticking to the melody and stopping here and there for a walking base.  Then the piano and base do a C section that we haven’t heard before.  It is very dissonant and grabs your attention to keep you listening by making you cringe a little.

The whole band chimes in again for a couple more familiar A sections before there is a reference back to the 4-measure introduction and the song ends on one final piano note. 

It is interesting to me that Duke Ellington had an 18 piece band at this point.  The song is definitely arranged and the song stays interesting with the alternation of bringing in the instruments on the first beat or making them lag.

Research Continues...

So I am lacking inspiration on what to research next, but for today I'm going to cover another instrument in the bluegrass industry.  The Appalachian dulcimer is not that common today, but I remember going to the local Clifton Vining Music Festival as a little tyke and watching a girl about 8 or 10 years old playing this version of the dulcimer very well.  Another common name for it is a mountain dulcimer or a lap dulcimer.

The Appalachian dulcimer isn't on short supply necessarily, as I've seen many in stock in Branson, Missouri.  But that is a city built around music and located in the Ozarks; of course they will have dulcimers for sale.  This dulcimer is obviously named for where it sprouted from.  Though there was similar instruments in Europe at the time, this version in particular was first seen in the southern Appalachian region of the United States.  It actually is considered to be similar in tone to Middle Eastern and Asian instruments, but it can be played with a slide just like the dobro.  It can come in many shapes and can have as few as two strings to as many as 12, but the common amount seems to be four.

Loraine Wyman, an early dulcimer player.
This picture was in a 1917 issue of Vogue. [1]

Bristol Taylor was a dulcimer player, farmer, and poet. [1]

Though most aren't, some dulcimers have been made with 12 frets per octave to allow users to be able to play in any range without having to retune.  The idea of how the Appalachian dulcimer came around was the lack of tools and time to make violins in the mountains.  This is because the violin has many curves and is rounded.  This dulcimer is flat and has much less curvature to it.  In 1880, Edward Thomas from Kentucky started producing them.  Before that, there were just a few genuine dulcimers around.  No recordings were made with the instrument until about the 1930s.  Up until that point, it was used mainly for gatherings in homes because its sound does not project very far.  At this time a few makers of the Appalachian dulcimer were also scattered throughout "Appalachia", the southern cultural region of the Appalachian mountains from northern Mississippi up to the southern tip of New York.  

In the 1950s, musician Jean Ritchie from Kentucky introduced this instrument to the city of New York.  Her father was also a dulcimer player.  From this point, it became much more common and more people started producing it.  But it wasn't even until 1969 that it first became mass produced.  Although borrowed from similar instruments overseas just like the banjo, I am surprised that an American instrument like this lie in such a sleep from its development around 1880 to 1969.  No wonder I don't hear of it very often.

Jean Ritchie's 1950s album. [2]

From YouTube: Jean Ritchie playing the dulcimer in the 1990s.