Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music, with roots in the folk music of many countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland and countries in Africa. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dance, buck dance, and clogging. The genre also encompasses ballads and other types of folk songs. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments (most often the guitar and banjo).

Reflecting the cultures that settled North America, the roots of old-time music are in the traditional musics of the British Isles (primarily English and Scottish) and Ireland. In some regions French and German sources are also prominent. While many dance tunes and ballads can be traced to European sources, many others are of purely North American origin.^{[citation needed]}

With its origins in traditional music of Europe and Africa, old-time music represents perhaps the oldest form of North American traditional music other than Native American music, and thus the term "old-time" is an appropriate one. As a label, however, it dates back only to 1923.^{[citation needed]}

Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Watson's flatpicking skills and knowledge of traditional American music are highly regarded. He performed with his son Merle for over 15 years until Merle's death in 1985, in an accident on the family farm.

Watson was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina. According to Watson on his three-CD biographical recording Legacy, he got the nickname "Doc" during a live radio broadcast when the announcer remarked that his given name Arthel was odd and he needed an easy nickname. A fan in the crowd shouted "Call him Doc!" presumably in reference to the literary character Sherlock Holmes's sidekick Doctor Watson. The name stuck ever since.

An eye infection caused Doc Watson to lose his vision before his first birthday. Despite this, he was taught by his parents to work hard and care for himself. He attended North Carolina's school for the visually impaired, The Governor Morehead School, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a three-finger banjo-picking style (now called "Scruggs style") that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. Although other musicians had played in three-finger style before him, Scruggs shot to prominence when he was hired by Bill Monroe to fill the banjo slot in his group, the Blue Grass Boys.

Scruggs was born near Shelby, Cleveland County, North Carolina, to Georgia Lula Ruppe and George Elam Scruggs, a farmer and bookkeeper, who played banjo and died when Scruggs was four years old. His older brothers, Junie and Horace, plus his two older sisters, Eula Mae and Ruby, all played banjo and guitar. Scruggs' mother played the organ. He grew up in Cleveland County, North Carolina.

Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in late 1945, and quickly popularized his syncopated, three-finger picking style. In 1948 Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt left Monroe's band and formed the Foggy Mountain Boys, also later known simply as Flatt and Scruggs. In 1969, they broke up, and he started a new band, the Earl Scruggs Revue, featuring several of his sons.

Bruce C. Molsky (born 1955, New York City) is an American fiddler, banjo player, guitarist, and singer. He primarily performs old-time music of the Appalachian region.

Molsky was born in 1955 at New York Infirmary in Manhattan, and grew up in The Bronx. His father, Milton, a mechanical engineer, was a first-generation American descendant of Jewish immigrants from Poland.

As a young man, Molsky first became interested in blues music, but eventually became absorbed in old-time music while studying engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, beginning in 1972. His playing was influenced by the fiddling of Tommy Jarrell, whom Molsky visited in North Carolina in 1976. He recorded with Bob Carlin in 1990.

Molsky has released several records on Rounder Records under his own name. He recorded with Beverly Smith and Rafe Stefanini as Bruce Molsky and Big Hoedown, in 1997. He has also appeared in instructional videos teaching old time fiddle, both solo and with Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer.

Besides his solo recordings he has also played with the bands Fiddlers 4 and Mozaik and played in many concerts and festivals. He collaborated in 2008 with Norwegian hardingfele player and composer Annbjørg Lien on her CD Waltz With Me and subsequent concerts. He also appears as a guest artist on Andy Statman's 2011 double-CD, "Old Brooklyn" (Shefa Records).

Robert Clark "Bob" Seger (born May 6, 1945) is an American rock and roll singer-songwriter, guitarist and pianist.

As a locally successful Detroit-area artist, he performed and recorded as Bob Seger and the Last Heard and Bob Seger System throughout the 1960s. By the early 1970s, he had dropped the "System" from his recordings, and he continued to strive for broader success with other various bands. In 1973, he put together The Silver Bullet Band, an evolving group of Detroit-area musicians, with whom he became most successful. In 1976, he achieved a national breakout with the album Night Moves. On his studio albums, he also worked extensively with the Alabama-based Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which appeared on several of Seger's best-selling singles and albums.

A roots rocker with a classic raspy, shouting voice, Seger wrote and recorded songs that dealt with blue-collar themes and was an exemplar of heartland rock. Seger has recorded many hits, including "Night Moves", "Turn the Page", "We've Got Tonight", "Against the Wind", and "Like a Rock", and also co-wrote the Eagles' number-one hit "Heartache Tonight". His iconic recording of "Old Time Rock and Roll" was named one of the Songs of the Century in 2001.