This collection consists of forty eight acetate disc recordings made in the early 1940s that document Magoffin County, Kentucky fiddler and banjo player, John Morgan Salyer.

Salyer was born in 1882 and was master of an older eastern Kentucky style that is only barely discernible in the playing of present day fiddlers and banjoists. The recordings were made in 1941-42 by his sons Grover and Glen Salyer using a home disc-cutting machine. Many of John Salyer's tunes have not been documented elsewhere. On several of the recordings Salyer uses cross-tunings and some have banjo, mandolin, and guitar accompaniment provided by Grover and Glen Salyer.