Patuxent CD-290 Frank Maloy's Fiddle Tunes

Many consider Frank Maloy to be a national treasure. A beloved and highly
influential musical force in his home state of Georgia, Frank Maloy has
mentored several generations of bluegrass, country, jazz, and swing musicians
who have gone on to enjoy more fame and fortune than Frank himself. Frank,
humble to a fault, has never engaged in much self-promotion, and his lifelong
devotion to his family precluded the life of a road musician, the typical path to
fame for a musician of such considerable talent and ability. One thing everyone
notices about Frank is his spirit of kindness, and you'll never hear Frank utter an
unkind word or negative criticism about any other musician, and that says a lot
about him.

Frank Maloy was born in Milan, Georgia on January 2, 1927 into a family in
which nearly everyone played string instruments. As a youngster, he started off
playing fiddle with a bow haired with sewing thread. From the Sears Roebuck
catalog, Frank ordered the book, published by M.M. Cole, and completed the
"U.S. School of Music" correspondence course in music theory. Frank and Joe's
older brother Grooms Maloy, already a well-known and accomplished musician,
went into the service inWorldWar II and, tragically, was killed in action in the
Philippines. So Frank, along with his younger brother Joe on guitar, started out
on their own, playing for theaters, parties, and square dances around rural South
Georgia.

In 1950, Frank and Joe moved to Macon, Georgia, and Frank began a ten-year
stint on TV and radio with Gene Stripling's band "Uncle Ned and the Hayloft
Jamboree." After Stripling's death in 1960, Frank and Joe organized “The
Swingmasters,” a dance band that kept up a busy pace in South and Central
Georgia for several decades. In the 1980s, the brothers migrated to the Outer
Banks area of North Carolina, playing "beach music" and '50s rock and roll.
Subsequently returning to Georgia, they played swing, jazz, and popular music
with the Dave Mercer Band

As a teacher, Frank shows a remarkable degree of patience, great confidence that
even a rank beginner can learn to play, a willingness to meet a student at
whatever skill level they may start from, and an intuitive feel for building from
simple skills to more complex.

Frank Maloy is the quintessential “musician's musician.” Comfortable with
genres as diverse as classical violin, jazz, swing, old-time and bluegrass fiddling,
and everything in between, Frank Maloy has spent a lifetime absorbing,
transcribing, teaching, and performing American music. For several decades,
Frank Maloy's transcriptions of American fiddle tunes were regularly published
in The Devil's Box, a scholarly journal devoted to preserving traditional
American fiddle music.

To this day, Frank remains a vital and influential force in the Georgia music
scene. At 89 years young, he continues to play dances in Central and South
Georgia
Jack Leiderman