- Title
- Our State
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-
- Date
- August 2004
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-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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Our State
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A former store in Warren County
reopens as the Ridgeway Opry
House, filling the aisles with the
Stri ng
sweet sound of the Germantown
Strings dulcimer band.
BY JANET C. PITTARD
Section
Once a popular meeting:
place for locals
stopping for a loaf of
bread and a chat with
neighbors, the old
Weldon Daeke store located in
Warren County is now the newly
reopened Ridgeway Opry Home,
home of the Germantown Strings, a
dulcimer band with a sound straight
from heaven.
The town’s name dates back to
1839 when the old Raleigh & Gaston
Railroad built a depot in the area and
established a post office there, but the
community earned the nickname
"Germantown" around the turn of
the past century when German
immigrants settled there.
Like its name, the music of the
Germantown Strings has us roots in a
bygone era. specializing in “old-time"
country gospel. The group shares a
reverence for vocal harmony and the
singular soft, sweet sound of a
dulcimer and guitar played in the
traditional manner. Mandolin, fiddle,
autohatp. and harmonica also arc
featured.
Instrumental learning
Billy Jarrell. Frieda Bender Kgerton.
and Karl West are the original
members of the (icrmaniown Strings
and describe themselves as a group of
“average working class people" who.
over time, have formed close
friendships, as well as a strong
musical bond.
Kgerton is a beautician in nearby
Henderson and a life-long resident of
Germantown. She plays a teardrop
dulcimer and sings like a red-haired
angel.
Jarrell, bom in Goldsboro and
raised in New Bern, was formerly a
senior draftsman and technical
illustrator in the School of
Kngmeering at Duke University. He
now lives in Ridgeway. A distant
Cousin of the late, world-famous
fiddle player Tommy Jarrell. Billy
Jarrell plays an hourglass dulcimer, as
well as the clawhammer banjo. Jarrell
clarifies that the term “clawhammer"
refers to the style of playing the banjo
and not to the instrument itself.
He further explains that while the
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