One of the last links to the prewar African-American string band tradition, banjo player Odell Thompson was born on August 9, 1911, the son of %John Arch Thompson, who was also a pretty fair banjo player. Thompson was raised in the northeastern part of Orange County in North Carolina, and when he began playing banjo, he absorbed his father's traditional repertoire, and was soon playing in string bands for square dances and frolics with his cousin, fiddler Joe Thompson. Odell took up guitar (he also played a little fiddle) and began playing the blues in the 1920s, but continued to play banjo in the old style in string bands with Joe until the 1940s, when pressure from bluegrass and other newer musical forms made their approach all but obsolete.
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