12-4-2019 The Delmarva Dulcimer Players

I had the opportunity to record The Delmarva Dulcimer Players as they performer at Salisbury's Mac Center. The Appalachian dulcimer has many variant names. Most often it is simply called a dulcimer (also rendered as "dulcimore", "dulcymore", "delcimer", "delcimore", etc.). When it needs to be distinguished from the unrelated hammered dulcimer, various adjectives are added (drawn from location, playing style, position, shape, etc.), for example: mountain dulcimer; Kentucky dulcimer; plucked dulcimer; fretted dulcimer; lap dulcimer; teardrop dulcimer; box dulcimer; etc. The instrument has also acquired a number of nicknames (some shared by other instruments): "harmonium," "hog fiddle," "music box," "harmony box," and "mountain zither" Few true specimens of the mountain dulcimer exist from earlier than about 1880, when J. Edward Thomas of Knott County, Kentucky, began building and selling them. The instrument became used as something of a parlor instrument, as its modest sound volume is best-suited to small home gatherings. But for the first half of the 20th century the mountain dulcimer was rare, with a handful of makers supplying players in scattered pockets of Appalachia. Virtually no audio recordings of the instrument exist from earlier than the late 1930s. Loraine Wyman, who gathered folk songs in the field and performed them in concert halls, shown in the May 1, 1917, issue of Vogue holding an Appalachian dulcimer. The soprano Loraine Wyman, who sang Appalachian folk songs in concert venues around the time of the First World War, created a brief splash for the Appalachian dulcimer by demonstrating it in concerts, and was portrayed in Vogue magazine (right) holding her instrument, a Thomas. But Wyman preferred singing with the more robust support of the piano. The instrument achieved its true renaissance in the 1950s urban folk music revival in the United States through the work of Jean Ritchie, a Kentucky musician who performed with the instrument before New York City audiences.[7] In the early 1960s, Ritchie and her partner George Pickow began distributing dulcimers made by her Kentucky relative Jethro Amburgey, then the woodworking instructor at the Hindman Settlement School. They eventually began producing their own instruments in New York City. Meanwhile, the American folk musician Richard Fariña (1937–1966) was also bringing the Appalachian dulcimer to a much wider audience, and by 1965 the instrument was a familiar presence in folk music circles. In addition to Amburgey, by then winding down his production, influential builders of mid-1960s included Homer Ledford, Lynn McSpadden, A.W. Jeffreys and Joellen Lapidus. In 1969 Michael and Howard Rugg formed a company called Capritaurus. As well as being the first to mass-produce the instrument, they made design changes to make the instrument easier to produce and to play. The body was made larger, and they installed metal friction or geared tuners, rather than traditional wooden pegs, to making tuning easier and more reliable.

Added 28 Sept 2026