June 15, 1996 rebroadcast with Johnny Gimble and Flaco Jimenez

Johnny Gimble has been a favorite fiddle player in country music for decades. Gimble grew up near Tyler, Texas, and began playing fiddle at age nine. Three years later, he and his brothers formed a band called the Rose City Swingers; a year later they had their own radio show. After high school, he played with the Shelton Brothers Sunshine Boys in Shreveport, Louisiana, and toured the state with then-governor Jimmie Davis. In 1949, Gimble joined the legendary Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. He lived in various Texas cities in the following 12 years, playing with the likes of Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price and Marty Robbins before becoming the staff fiddler for NBC's 5-Star Jubilee. In 1968, Gimble moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and was soon in demand as a session player. His 1974 single with Chet Atkins, Fiddlin' Around, received a Grammy nomination. The following year, Gimble was voted Instrumentalist of the Year by the Country Music Association, an honor that he has received three times since then. Gimble was also honored by the Academy of Country Music, which named him Fiddler of the Year each year for almost a decade. Gimble appears in four motion pictures, including Robert Altman's Nashville and in the part of Bob Wills in Clint Eastwood's Honky Tonk Man. In 1994, Gimble was nominated for a Grammy for his performance with Asleep at the Wheel. That same year, he was honored with a prestigious National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Heritage Award is given to traditional folk artisans and musicians for their contributions to American culture. This July, Gimble will appear at Lincoln Center for the "Midsummer Night Swing." Performing with Gimble tonight is his four-member band, Texas Swing: Curly Hollingsworth (piano), an accomplished keyboard player who's worked with Gimble since the early '50s. Kenny Frazier (guitar), a professional musician and music professor for several decades and the author of a comprehensive, much-esteemed guitar studyguide, Class Strings. Dick Gimble (bass), Johnny Gimble's only son. The two have played together since Johnny was in the Texas Playboys. Joe Bullock (drums),who's played with Texas Swing for the past few years.

Tejano (also called conjunto) is the traditional Chicano adaptation of the accordion-based polka music played by the Germans who settled south and central Texas in the late nineteenth century. Tejano accordion great Flaco Jiménez heads up tonight's band, Flaco Jiménez y Su Conjunto. Jiménez has been called Tejano's ambassador to all other styles of music. Indeed, Jiménez has recorded with a vast cross-section of musicians: the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Brian Ferry, Los Lobos, Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Rowan, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, and others. Jiménez was a founding member of the early-'90sTexas supergroup, the Texas Tornados, with whom he earned his second Grammy award. But some say that Jiménez's first supergroup was formed in the '40s, when he was first learning accordion from his father, legendary accordionist Santiago Jiménez, Sr. The elder Jiménez is one of the musicians who first popularized Tejano music in the late '30s, and his son quickly followed in his footsteps. At the age of seven, young Flaco gave his first public performance when he joined his dad for a few numbers. A few years later, Flaco Jiménez was debuting as a band leader at a friend's 12th birthday party. In 1957, while still in his teens, Jiménez made his first recordings, under his given name-Leonardo Jiménez. (Flaco is a nickname meaning "skinny.") During the '60s and '70s, he recorded dozens of conjunto hits, toured extensively, and collaborated with several big names. In 1976, Jiménez and his music figured prominently in a Tex-Mex documentary, Chulas Fronteras, by acclaimed filmmaker Les Blank. Jiménez has been honored with countless trophies and prizes, including three Grammy awards. His latest CD is Buena Suerte, Señorita (Arista/Texas). Joining Jiménez tonight are: Max Baca (bajo sexto/bass), Oscar Tellez (bajo sexto/bass), and David Jiménez (drums).

Garrison Keillor was born in 1942 in Anoka, Minnesota. He went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969, and on July 6, 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul. He is the host of The Writer's Almanac and the editor of the Good Poems series of anthologies from Viking.

Keyboardist, composer, arranger, and longtime Prairie Home Companion music director Richard Dworsky has collaborated with such diverse musicians as Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor, Brad Paisley, Kristin Chenoweth, and Sheryl Crow. He has provided music for documentaries on HBO and PBS, and has released many recordings of original material, including his latest, All In Due Time.
Chet Atkins called Pat Donohue (guitar) one of the greatest fingerpickers in the world today. And he writes songs too -- recorded by Suzy Bogguss, Kenny Rogers, and others. Blue Yonder and Vicksburg Blues (a collaboration with Butch Thompson) are the most recent of Pat's albums.
Greg Hippen, bass
Arnie Kinsella hails from Staten Island, and holds a B.A. in percussion performance from Brooklyn College. In addition to his tenure on A Prairie Home Companion, he has performed with Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, and has recorded and performed with The Manhattan Rhythm Kings, and Leon Redbone.
Andy Stein (violin, saxophone) has far-flung musical leanings: He was a founding member of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen; he collaborated with Garrison Keillor to create the opera Mr. and Mrs. Olson; and he has recorded with dozens of artists, from Itzhak Perlman to Nellie McKay.

Mild-mannered Tim Russell one minute -- Obama, Trump, or myriad others the next. It's almost impossible to stump this man of many voices. Says fellow Prairie Home Companion actor Sue Scott, "He does a better Ira Glass than Ira Glass." A well-known Twin Cities radio personality and voice actor, Tim appeared in the Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion and the Coen brothers' A Serious Man.

Is that water dripping? Footsteps coming this way? Car tires spinning on an icy driveway? Nope -- it's sound effects wizard Tom Keith. With vocal gymnastics and a variety of props, Tom worked his magic on A Prairie Home Companion from the mid-1970s until his passing in 2011.