I was introduced to contra dancing in Vermont in the '70s at the Farm & Wilderness Camps (a group of Quaker camps). Jack Sloanaker, who was then director of Camp Timberlake, organized the F&W String Band, an open band of staff and campers, that played for our dances and sometimes went out and played for others.

Jack was also a member of the Canterbury Country Orchestra, also a pretty much open band led by Dudley Laufman, that played for dances around New England. Not surprisingly, the sounds of those two groups was quite similar. Although Dudley claims Canterbury was the first dance band to record an LP, they were recorded on the F&W label, which Jack started in order to put out two LPs of the F&W band. (There was one album put out with a mass meeting of both groups...)

Dudley's an interesting guy. Although the old-timers found him iconoclastic in what he did with passing contra dancing on to the young folks in the '60s and '70s, he's now quite the carmudgeonly traditionalist about the scene.

David Millstone made a wonderful documentary about Dudley, entitled, "The Other Way Back; Dancing with Dudley".

Dudley is also a wonderful poet.

~ Becky in Tucson