I cannot express what Earl's banjo music has meant to me, ever since the day in 1956 when a fellow picker played me some dubs of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and two or three other cuts, and a passion for 3-finger picking began insinuating itself into my life.

There has never been anything like it! And I've loved exploring among the antecedents, Snuffy Jenkins and the others who inspired him, and tracing this way of playing back through the years into the traditional roots where it all came from in the first place.

Thanks for so much fine music, Earl, and may heaven ring with your work.

Bob