Banjo player and singer Charlie Poole is generally heralded as one of the heroes of early roots music. Poole hailed from North Carolina, where he worked in the textile mills, but he’d already honed his innovative fingerpicking technique by the time he formed the North Carolina Ramblers in the early 1920s. A banjo, fiddle, and guitar trio, the group emphasized melody and blues-influenced rhythmic syncopation; this combination presaged the sound of what would later be called bluegrass. Poole and the Ramblers were signed to Columbia Records in 1925, and by 1930 had recorded 70 sides for the label, including such string band classics as “Don’t Let the Deal Go Down” and “Hesitation Blues.” A hard-living man, Poole died of alcoholism in 1931 at age 39. The North Carolina Ramblers continued to perform for a time after his death, and Poole’s music enjoyed a resurgence in popularity during the folk boom of the 1960s.