Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones & The Beatles Played on a 3‑String Electric Mountain Dulcimer

My par­ents always seemed to me to rep­re­sent two very dif­fer­ent strains of six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture. My mom loved Peter, Paul and Mary, Appalachi­an folk and blue­grass, and played the dul­cimer and auto­harp. My dad loved psy­che­del­ic rock, and had an exten­sive col­lec­tion of Zep­pelin, Bea­t­les, Floyd, and Hen­drix records. It wasn’t a Dylan-goes-elec­tric-lev­el dis­agree­ment, but their fond rem­i­nisces of the glo­ry days could some­times get a lit­tle tense. But as we’ve seen in decades since, folkies, hip­pies, and psych-rock­ers can come togeth­er, and not only in 70s folk-rock bands from Cal­i­for­nia. Take Robert Plant and Alli­son Krauss’s fruit­ful and unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tion, for instance, or the dozens of Led Zep­pelin and Rolling Stones cov­ers by dozens of flan­nel-clad indie folk­ers.

In the past decade or so, it almost came to seem like psy­che­del­ic blues-rock and moun­tain folk music had always made com­fort­able bed­fel­lows, and maybe they had. (After all, Zep­pelin includ­ed folk instru­ments on sev­er­al of their clas­sic songs, like John Paul Jones’ man­dolin on “Going to Cal­i­for­nia.”) As fur­ther evi­dence we have 3‑string elec­tric moun­tain dul­cimer play­er Sam Edel­stein, who cov­ers clas­sic rock songs on an instru­ment usu­al­ly thought of as par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­tle, del­i­cate, and sweet, as its name implies. At the top, see Edel­stein rip through a sear­ing ver­sion of Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love.” Just above, he does a killer take on the Rolling Stones’ “19th Ner­vous Break­down,” and below, Edel­stein plays an increas­ing­ly rock­ing cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ “Come Togeth­er” at the Nation­al Moun­tain Dul­cimer Com­pe­ti­tion. As uploader Con­tem­po­rary Dul­cimer states on Youtube, “the dulcimer’s roots may be in folk music, but it’s a nat­ur­al rock & roll instru­ment.” Indeed. Who knew?

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss Sing Coun­try Ver­sions of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” & “When the Lev­ee Breaks”

Musi­cians Re-Imag­ine the Com­plete Song­book of the Bea­t­les on the Ukulele

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness