Floyd, VA · old-time · string band

Earl White Stringband

1 upcoming festival

Founding Green Grass Clogger Earl White leads one of old-time's most in-demand dance bands — a Black fiddler carrying forward a tradition Black communities built.

Earl White is a Black old-time fiddler based in Floyd, Virginia, and a founding member of the Green Grass Cloggers, the dance group that helped popularise Appalachian clogging beyond the region from the 1970s onward. His band plays for dances as much as for concert audiences, and the repertoire reflects that: steady, driving tunes chosen for how they move a floor.

The group's sound is rooted in traditional Southern string band music — fiddle leading, with banjo, guitar and bass behind it — and White's playing draws on the Black string band tradition that shaped the music long before it was marketed as country.

old-timestring band