The Red Clay Ramblers will play at 9 p.m., followed by Marshall Chapman and her band, on the stage at Dana Auditorium at Guilford College Saturday.

Marshall Chapman, the daughter of a Spartanburg, S.C., textile executive, struck out on her own and put a big dent in the music business with two albums on Epic, "Me, I'm Feeling Free" and "Jaded Virgin."

Jessi Colter says, "…Marshall Chapman is my favorite girl singer," while Waylon Jennings says "Marshall's a good ole' boy.  She can come on the bus."

The audience should be well warmed up for Chapman by the time the Ramblers finish their opening set, for as Joe Wilson, executive director of the National Folk Festival Association, has written, "The Ramblers really have something for everyone -- they are bawdy, bright, funny and establish instant rapport with their audience."

Tom Bingham, in this December's issue of Audio magazine, calls the Durham-Chapel Hill based Ramblers "America's premier 'whatzit band.'"  In trying to describe the first three songs on their third album on Flying Fish, "Merchants Lunch," he says: "If you'd care to pigeon-hole these three cuts into an already existing musical category, be my guest.  It sounds like 'whatzit' to me."

He concludes that the LP "should go down as one of the landmark albums of folk-rooted eclecticism.  Don't miss it, whatever it is."

Briefly, the Ramblers are rooted in the old-time string band tradition, but they have added piano and trumpet and extended their repertoire beyond the standard banjo and fiddle tunes to include authentic renditions of a wide range of the music of the 1920s and 30s, from vaudeville, ragtime and Dixieland to early jazz, swing, blues, ballads, scat singing and a cappella shape-note hymns.

They go from traditional Irish and Celtic tunes, complete with pennywhistle, to Uncle Dave Macon and Charlie Poole to Fats Waller and Bessie Smith with equal expertise and fidelity to the spirit, moods and feelings of those traditions.  And they are writing a great deal of their own original material now within those traditions, remaining true to the styles of the period while at the same time expanding their frontiers.

Beyond that, they are indefatigable musicologists who could match the faculty of the average folklore school in their knowledge of the Appalachian field.  Their music is a living, ongoing, growing continuation and recreation of history, a breathing flesh-and-blood museum.