The Appalachian Mountains have nurtured many fine traditional musicians, and the late Reverend Buell Kazee was one of the finest. He was born at the head of Burton Fork in Magoffin County in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and was an extraordinary ballad singer, with a versatile voice and a profound sense of the place of the ballad in musical literature. As a Baptist minister he had a deep sense of tradition in both theology and music. Because most of his life was taken up with preaching and his duties to his congregation, he had a limited time for music. Yet when he performed, he did so with integrity and arresting style. He had an extensive repertoire of traditional music including rare ballads and songs. With his knowledge of both music and folklore, he preserved with discerning ear and voice the modes and styles of the past. Bess Lomax Hawes introduced him at the Newport Folk Festival as the man from whom so many modern folk singers, such as Joan Baez, had learned some of their songs. His banjo style was a unique variation on the traditional frailing style, and he played in as many as eleven different tunings.Although Brunswick Records released 52 numbers by Buell Kazee on 78 rpm recordings in the late 1920s, and Harry Smith included him in his influential Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952 (re-released by Smithsonian Folkways on CDs in 1997), his music was relatively unknown to the American public until Buell Kazee Sings and Plays was released by Folkways in 1958. However, Buell was not happy with this LP because the recording was done under informal conditions in his home over two days, and he felt he had not performed well.