Jim 'Ike' Bryner Tapes

New York State
USA
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Jim 'Ike' Bryner Tapes

James 'Jim' Issac 'Ike' Bryner
Jim was an 'Old-Time' fiddler, playing with an old Southwestern Pennsylvania style that was common in the region around Dunbar, Pennsylvania where he grew up and lived.

Jim was one of my grandfather's best friends. He used to make cassette tapes of the old mountain music for my grandfather. When I began to learn the fiddle, I transferred a number of those tapes to Compact Disk and used them to learn how to play.

Please read the Overview of the Jim 'Ike' Bryner Tapes , it has more information on Jim and a general overview of the tapes.

Brief Descriptions of the Individual Tapes

Following is a brief description of the tapes that I have transferred to Compact Disk (CD). Each tape consisted of one or more 'sessions'. More detailed descriptions of the individual tapes (along with a tract list and link to the MP3 files) can be found on the main page for each individual tape.
Please email me any corrected song titles. There are a number of songs that I don't have titles, or they may be incorrect. You can email me corrections using my address shown at the top and bottom of this page.

Tape 1: This tape was recorded sometime in 1981 or early 1982 when Jim was in his mid-seventies.
There is one session, with thirty-eight songs on this tape.
Jim is playing the fiddle by himself on the entire session.
The recording quality of this session is pretty good.
Tape 2: This tape was probably made in the latter half of 1977 when Jim was in his early-seventies.
There are four sessions.
Session 1, is Jim with his daughter Norma Ruth Newcomber (piano) and granddaughters Joyce (fiddle) and Karen (fiddle). Session 2, is Jim with Ray Hardy (guitar). Session 3, is Jim with Jimmie (fiddle, guitar?) and Loren (banjo) Currence. Session 4 is a recording Jim made of Tinky Queer (fiddle) and Russ Loveridge (banjo).
The recording quality of these sessions varies from poor to pretty good.
Tape 3, Strickler's Barn: This tape was probably made in the 1970's.
There are many sessions on this tape.
This is a tape from a dance at Strickler's barn. My father tells me that this was a working farm and they held dances frequently in their barn.
This is a real fun tape, despite the poor recording quality. There are a variety of performers on this one.
The recording quality of these sessions varies from poor to ok.

A session is a group of songs, recorded at the same time, typically with the same players.
Detailed descriptions of the tapes include; general comments, session information with a track list (with link to MP3 files), tape type, tape liner notes, compact disk notes and digital conversion information.