June Appal Recordings Releases Uncle Charlie Osborne: The June Appal Recordings

On September 9, 2008, June Appal Recordings released Uncle Charlie Osborne: The June Appal Recordings, a chronicle of the songs and stories of master fiddler Uncle Charlie Osborne. A collaboration between Appalshop's Traditional Music and Archive projects, this release makes available all of the material from Uncle Charlie's out-of-print June Appal releases as well as a number of previously unreleased cuts.

Charles Nelson Osborne was born at the end of the 19th century in Russell County, Virginia. Like many families in the area, the Osbornes made their living off the land. Musical instruments were hard to come by, but when Charlie was in his teens the left-hander disobeyed his father's orders, took the family's precious fiddle from its peg on the wall, turned it mirror-wise and began what was to become almost ninety years of fiddling.

Uncle Charlie played with his brother and later his sons in the community and on the radio in southwest Virginia. In his later years he appeared frequently at music festivals and was a regular guest at the Carter Family Fold on the other side of Clinch Mountain. June Appal Recordings brought out Relics and Treasure in 1985 and One Hundred Years Farther On in 1990. Charlie passed away in 1992 at the age of 101.