Biography
Uncle Eck Dunford, a fiddler, cut multiple sides for Victor in the closing years of the 1920s, yet his lasting renown stems chiefly from his longstanding collaboration with Ernest Pop Stoneman of the Stoneman Family. Together with his group the Bogtrotters, Dunford made Galax, Virginia, his base, a locale long celebrated as a hub of old-timey music and widely recognized for hosting fiddler conventions. Local accounts portray him as a vivid character, and while he contributed to numerous Stoneman sessions, his solo output remained limited. Nevertheless, his composition “Old Shoes and Leggins” later attracted wider attention once Harry Smith placed it on the 1952 anthology Anthology of American Folk Music.