He was born in 1901, and died in 1985. Thomas Jefferson “Tommy” Jarrell was, as a friend of mine says, “a bridge to the past.” There are top-ranked bluegrass musicians working today who learned tunes from Tommy Jarrell.

Although he played banjo with equal skill, this all-too-short documentary spotlights Jarrell’s fiddling, following him from a country dance to the Library of Congress, where he plays “Old Joe Clark” – on a Stradivarius!

In between, you’ll hear the story of his own fiddle, which dated from the Civil War.

All in all, this little gem of a film was so magical that I didn’t want it to end.