Although J.P. “Pres” Nester recorded on one of the most significant recording sessions in the history of old time country music, much about him remains confusing or lost to history.  Born in the post-civil war South, “Pres” as his friends and family called him, learned banjo at an early age and was reported to be from a musical family near Hillsville.

            As a young man, Pres developed an extraordinarily powerful and precise clawhammer attack, that would resonate on radio and record players across the nation.  In fact, his playing with his good friend Norman Edmonds on the infamous “Bristol Sessions” recorded by New Yorker Ralph Peer, would be heralded by musicologist Charles Wolfe as “the quintessential banjo/fiddle sound of the Appalachian Mountains.”

            We know that Pres had a successful family farm and that he also worked as, ironically, the switchboard operator in Hillsville.  It was ironic because for most of his life Pres disdained modern technology and preferred not to ride in automobiles or to have his picture taken.  Thus, some opportunities involving modern life bypassed him.

            Pres was very fond of playing with a local fiddler, “Uncle” Norm Edmonds, and was reported to have walked nearly 11 miles each evening, after his switchboard shift, to Norman’s house, up the mountain in Laurel Fork.  There he and Uncle Norm would play late in the evening, often accompanied by Norm’s five sons.  Often, they would be asked to play at the furniture store in Hillsville on Saturdays to large crowds.

            In 1927, the furniture store owner, who was well versed in local music, was approached by Ralph Peer to recommend some local talent to be recorded by Peer in his Bristol sessions.  Among those he nominated were the Shelor and Blackard families of nearby Meadows of Dan, and Pres Nester and his dear friend Norman Edmonds.  After a harrowing car ride to Bristol, having to ferry the New River twice, the two arrived at Bristol.  There, together, they recorded four banjo, fiddle, and singing sides including “Train on the Island,” “Black Eyed Susie,” “Georgia,” and “John My Lover.”

             Peer loved the recordings and immediately released the first two tunes on the Victor label and they sold thousands.  Heartened by the success, Peer searched hi and low for the other two recordings and found that they had somehow been lost in transit on the train from Virginia.  He immediately contacted Norman and Pres and invited them to come to New York to record many more sides.

            Although Uncle Norm was excited for the opportunity and rarin’ to go to NY, Pres complained that “there were too many damn automobiles up there,” and refused to leave the Blue Ridge. Thus, we are limited to the two surviving recordings of Pres’s powerful clawhammer playing and of his dramatic deep bass voice.  The matter was further hindered by the fact that Peer misspelled his name as Nest-o-r, and subsequently it was misspelled on other folk collections that reissued the two recordings such as Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and other compilations of the folk era.

            There were purported to be a number of recordings of Pres and Uncle Norm that were destroyed in a house fire that took the life of one of Uncle Norm’s sons.  Thus, we are left wanting much more musically from Pres. However, due to this lack of commercialization, his recordings have come to represent, to many in the mountains, a peek into the untouched sources of non-commercial mountain music, made only on banjo and fiddle, as the original, undiluted “string band” sound.