Born into a North Carolina farming family that can date its musical heritage to before the Civil War, Joe was playing fiddle by the age of five and as a youngster he and his banjo-playing brother Nate were the regular musicians at house parties and square dances for friends and neighbours, both black and white.
After World War 2 musical tastes changed and Joe's music might have been lost forever had not folklorist Kip Lornell located him and his cousin Odell (also a banjo player) in 1972 and encouraged them to perform again. In the ensuing years they appeared at countless traditional music festivals, appeared on Alan Lomax's Patchwork TV series and on several recordings most notably their outstanding cassette on Global Village 'Old Time Music'.
