Jim Kweskin - 4 Albums

"The Manson Family preached
peace and love and went around killing people.
We don't preach peace and love..."
-Jim Kweskin

By request, we have here some more Jim Kweskin albums from the 60s. Freaturing more prominently than on the Jug Band albums is banjo/harmonica player and acid fascist Mel Lyman - 'The American Avatar' who caused Kweskin to break up the Jug Band and join Mel's God cult in LA, losing a moustache, a heap of common sense, and all of his hipster-dignity in the process. Sigh... another hippy-trippy-cult-god-maniac-fallout of the 60s... But what else could you expect from someone who became a folk singer after a brick-mugging ended his pot-dealing carreer? This post chronicles Kweskin's slow descent into Lymanism, after which he kept out of the spotlight for several decades (excepting a children's album) until he re-emerged in 2003 with the Jim Kweskin Band featuring (and introducing) Samoa Wilson, a great young singer. Their music is like his old jug band but more refined and not quite as wild or fun. The albums in this post get steadily worse as the years progress - Relax Your Mind is a great album, America is well, a curiosity and is at least different, if not particularly gripping. And yes, the Mayne Smith featured on America is the same L. Mayne Smith who played on Fahey's Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death. None of the albums are as good as the jug band albums he did (several of which you can find on this blog), so if you haven't heard those, go listen.

There was an extensive article published by Rolling Stone and Mindfucker called The Lyman Family's Holy Siege of America, which also featured a portion called Whatever Happened to Jim Kweskin?. You can read it here. For those of you unaware of Mel's particular strain of notoriety, he can be easily summed up in one word: Acid Fascist. He would give people LSD and then when they were tripping he would tell them he was GOD. He called himself the American Avatar and he gathered a cult around himself and amassed a small fortune and twisted a lot of people's ideas around to his own ends and then misteriously disappeared sometime in the late 70s. Of course, like any guru, his combination of charisma and out-there ideas actually helped a lot of people to change something in their life, get a different perspective or whathaveyou. He was also a fantastic, one-of-a-kind harmonica player and a mediocre banjoist, and at one Newport Folk Festival he jumped on stage after the last act and played a 10-minute version of Rock of Ages on harmonica, and then broke into the Vanguard vaults, stole their master tapes for Newport 65 and spliced his performance onto the end, and then sent it to get pressed. Can you say... egomaniac? But great harmonica, really. He makes kweskin's version of the Cuckoo perhaps the most haunting one I've ever heard.

I am going to burn down the world
I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone
I am going to shove hope up your ass
I am going to turn ideals to shit

I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble
and then I am going to burn the rubble
and then I am going to scatter the ashes
and then maybe someone will be able to see something as it really is
Watch Out

- Mel Lyman

Mel Lyman
Biography by Bryan Thomas

Mel Lyman was a folk musician, filmmaker, and cult leader in the '60s and '70s. Born in Northern California, he drifted across the country in the early '60s before ending up in the hills of North Carolina, where he discovered old timey music. By the time he had drifted into the folk music communities of Greenwich Village and Cambridge, MA, Lyman had developed his own style on the harp (holding a series of long, lingering, vibrato-heavy notes) and he was proficient on banjo as well. In 1963, Lyman joined the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and was a featured player on a handful of the group's early recordings for Vanguard. Shortly after the group appeared on the nationally-televised Steve Allen Show Lyman left the group (he was replaced by banjoist Bill Keith, who had just left Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys). Lyman focused, for a time, on his filmmaking and writing interests, authoring a rambling, incoherent book called The Autobiography of a World Savior.

At age 27, Lyman made an impromptu appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he performed an unaccompanied ten-minute version of "Rock of Ages" for the audience (most of whom had already angrily left for their cars after Bob Dylan's famous electric set). After Newport, Lyman's Wednesday-night sessions at a Boston coffeehouse called The Orleans soon found him taking on the role of leading a commune-like cult who apparently hung on his every word. Lyman -- some say he was an "East Coast Charles Manson" (an unfortunate comparison but one that every commune faced in Manson's wake) -- and his "family" of 30 or 40 artists lived in Boston's mostly black ghetto community. Rock scribe Paul Williams, of Crawdaddy magazine, lived with them for a time. In his writings for the Avatar (a controversial underground bi-weekly newspaper distributed on the streets by Boston's hippie youth), Lyman claimed that music was a gift from God that had to be preserved and nurtured. Lyman eventually cut out the middleman and claimed that he himself was God.

In 1969, Kweskin and Lyman reunited in San Francisco to record Lyman's only solo album, American Avatar. American Avatar reportedly only sold 1,764 copies (1,000 of which were reportedly bought by Kweskin). Lyman apparently never recorded as a solo artist again, but one of his musical highlights is his slow version of "Old Black Joe," featuring cello accompaniment, which appears on 1971's Jim Kweskin's America (Featuring Mel Lyman). In 1978, it was reported that Lyman had passed away at age 40, though his followers claimed that he was, in fact, still "orbiting the earth."

oh and see virtually everything there is to know about Mel Lyman here.

Relax Your Mind - Liner notes by Mel Lyman

One night in New York last summer I came driving up to my Bowery loft and who should be parked out in front in his Volkswagen Bus but Jim Kweskin, with Marilyn Kweskin and Agatha. Jim had come up from Florida and we hadn't seen each other for months and for us that's a long time cause we play in the same band together and in fact we even live in the same house (I live in his attic) and so we were bubbling over with things to tell each other. The band had broken up for awhile to give us all a chance to kick around and see who we were and now we had found out a little more about that and it was so beautiful to be together again and we talked all night and jumped up and down and laughed and slapped each other on the backs m'goodness it was so rich to be sharing ourselves with each other like, "Hey man, dig what I found out about myself" and "Too much! Hey, listen to this, you won't believe it" and we had piled up so damn much good feeling to share that just gushing all over each other wasn't enough and Marilyn didn't need it cause she just squats on her chair and smiles and Agatha didn't need it cause she's a dog and everybody knows that dogs are happy so we decided we had to pour it on somebody to keep from busting and so hey man let's trot on down to Vanguard and get it on a record so it doesn't go to waste and so we got in touch with Fritz who plays the washtub bass, beautiful red topped striped shirt Fritz O'Rooney and called up all our friends and down we go the whole bunch of us to the horror of the recording industry but that doesn't matter cause we all feel so groovy that pretty soon everybody feels groovy can you believe it that even the engineers felt groovy hell engineers are people too and there were no studios available so we picked out a friendly little room at least it was friendly after we doused the lights and opened the windows and brought in all our friends and broke out the beer and wine and started playing music, yep, it became a real friendly little room. So we made this record. I think it might have been done unofficially but somehow (it's all in the stars) we got away with it. We threw a party at Vanguard Recording Society Industry in the middle of the night under the guise of conducting a recording session and not only did we create an LP amidst all the joy, we even got paid for it! When they handed me a check I almost laughed out loud but I didn't lose my cool. I simply gasped, checked myself and snapped into the yoga parakarya pretzel position for suppressing mirth, controlling excessive laughter and avoiding undue hysteria, dropped to the floor like a slushy snowball and groaned. Ain't life a gas!

So what I'm trying to say is that we made this record under very loose conditions and it was a real joy to have that kind of freedom in a recording studio, to be able to play music just like you play music instead of like this whole fantastic, schematic, methatic, preconceived and just a little too stern serious and safe scene called "Standard Recording Procedure" wants you to play music. It's not that they dictate what or how but the WHERE is so dreadful, a nightmare of sterility, white soundproof rooms big as barns and red lights flashing on and off and wires, everywhere there's WIRES, all over the floor, hanging from the ceiling, twined around your arms and legs and microphones and ear phones and head phones and telephones and rules and efficiency and a bunch of straight looking cats behind big plate glass windows surrounded by so many kinds of intricate machines that each one must require a specialist to operate it and hurriedly shouting orders and frantically twisting dials and jabbing buttons and a thunderous voice comes booming out of a big loudspeaker that takes up a whole wall and it commands, "Take One" and m'God you hardly know where you're at at all anymore, you can't be sure you're not one of those machines yourself and believe me that's a pretty uninspiring scene to try and make a little music out of, at least for me, and that's why making this album was such a joy, at least for me. Notice I say at least for me because even though I believe that what is true for me is true for everybody Jim has cautioned me that I must practice humility when dealing with the public, at least for me.

Goodbye now, we love you.

---Mel Lyman

Jim Kweskin - Relax Your Mind

Year: 1966
Label: Vanguard

Review by Ronnie D. Lankford Jr.

Released in 1966, Relax Your Mind finds Jim Kweskin taking a break from his jug band for a mellow solo effort. He's joined by harp player Mel Lyman and washtub bassist Fritz Richmond for what amounts to a stripped-down jug band on a dozen tracks. Two of the tracks, "I Got Mine" and a long version of "Buffalo Skinners," were recorded live at Club 47 in Cambridge. Even stripped down, the arrangements of traditional songs like "The Cuckoo" are quite lively when placed side by side with the one-singer/one-guitar approach preferred by some revivalists. Kweskin's guitar and Richmond's bass keep time and fill in the background while Lyman adds asides and flourishes to Mississippi John Hurt's "My Creole Belle" and Grandpa Jones' "Eight More Miles to Louisville." Richmond helps out on the vocal of "Guabi Guabi," an African folk song recorded a couple years earlier by Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Marilyn Kweskin sings a fine lead on "I Ain't Never Been Satisfied." Overall, Relax Your Mind is a subdued recording, and lacks the irresponsible hijinks fans had come to expect from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. Compared to other more traditional folk with barebones arrangements, however, Relax Your Mind is a lively affair. The album also shows that good folk recordings continued to be made after Dylan supposedly pulled the plug on the folk revival in 1965. The packaging of the 2003 reissue by Universe reprints the original liner notes and looks great.

Tracks
1 Three Songs - A Look at the Ragtime Era (Sister Kate's Night Out) - Atkins, Jaxon, Piron - 3:22
2 Hannah - Bouchillion - 4:08
3 Bye and Bye - Traditional - 3:39
4 The Cuckoo - Traditional - 4:04
5 I Ain't Never Been Satisfied - Kweskin, Kweskin, Traditional- 2:38
6 Eight More Miles to Louisville - Grandpa Jones - 3:01
7 I Got Mine - Traditional - 3:38
8 Buffalo Skinners - Traditional - 5:28
9 Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor - Traditional - 3:10
10 Guabi Guabi - Traditional - 3:12
11 My Creole Belle - Hurt - 4:41
12 Relax Your Mind - Leadbelly - 3:58

warble as you fly.
m4a (aac) 256kbps | w/ cover | 87mb

full liner notes & song notes (but not musical notes...) here


Jim Kweskin - Jump for Joy

Year: 1967
Label: Vanguard

Review by Richard Foss
Though Jim Kweskin stays with his beloved repertoire of material from the early 20th century, on this album his accompaniment is very different from the string and jug bands he is best known for. The Neo-Passé Jazz Band is self-consciously true to turn-of-the-century styles, with the saxes and clarinet prominent in the mix. On some tracks, like the sentimental version of "Melancholy Baby," the band plays with commendable subtlety and Kweskin delivers a straight jazz vocal that is surprisingly heartfelt. Elsewhere, the sound is upbeat and flavored with a distinct Dixieland swing. Kweskin and band sound great here, and nobody got this kind of mileage out of this material again until Robert Crumb formed the Cheap Suit Serenaders.

Tracks
1 Moving Day - Kweskin, Sterling ... - 3:22
2 Memphis Blues - Handy, Norton - 2:58
3 Kickin' the Gong Around - Arlen, Koehler - 3:19
4 You're Not the Only Oyster in the Stew - Burke, Spina - 2:57
5 He's in the Jailhouse Now - Anderson - 4:33
6 Melancholy Baby - Burnett, Norton - 3:20
7 There'll Be Some Changes Made - Higgins, Overstreet - 3:26
8 Medley: O Miss Hannah/That's My Weakness Now - Deppen, Green, Hollingsworth ... - 3:52
9 Jazzbo Brown - Gershwin, Gershwin, Heyward - 3:46
10 Staggerlee - 3:40
11 I Can't Give You Anything But Love - Fields, McHugh - 3:27
12 Louisiana - Johnson, Razaf, Schafer - 3:05

the other kind of banjo.
from vinyl | mp3 >192kbps | w/ cover | 70mb


Jim Kweskin - What Ever Happened to Those Good Old Days at Club 47

Year: 1968
Label: Vanguard

Review by Richard Foss

Jim Kweskin may not have been a groundbreaking instrumentalist or a spectacularly gifted singer, but he certainly was an entertainer who knew how to get every bit out of his repertoire of American traditional music. On this live album, the complete title of which is What Ever Happened to Those Good Old Days at Club 47 in Cambridge Mass. With Jim Kweskin & His Friends, Kweskin is backed only by his faithful sideman Fritz Richmond and by Maria Muldaur on one track. His autoharp may be slightly out of tune and his piano playing a bit shaky, but Kweskin grabs the audience's heart on the very first track and keeps it until the end of the album. The sound quality has its off moments too, but that doesn't matter either, because as long as Kweskin is bashing away on that old-time music, all's right with the world. If there was any doubt that Jim Kweskin was a great showman even with minimal accompaniment, this album would dispel it.

Tracks
1 Mississippi Mud - Barris, Cavanaugh - 2:53
2 Buddy Bolden's Blues - Morton - 3:15
3 Bioll Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home - Cannon, Traditional - 3:18
4 Ain't She Sweet - Ager, Yellen - 4:29
5 La Bomba - Traditional - 2:52
6 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl - Williamson - 4:09
7 I Had a Dream Last Night - Rodgers - 3:29
8 Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue - Henderson, Lewis, Young - 3:16
9 Ella Speed - Traditional - 2:36
10 Blues - Traditional - 2:45
11 The Sheik of Araby - Smith, Snyder, Wheeler - 2:49

your love belongs to me.
from vinyl | mp3 >256kbps vbr | 49mb



Richard D. Herbruck presents
Jim Kweskin's America
co-starring Mel Lyman and the Lyman Family

Year: 1971
Label: Reprise
Reissue: 2005
Label: Collectibles

liner notes:

When Jim first called me in New York to come out to San Francisco and help him produce an album of "American" music I was more than a little hesitant as I was currently engaged in trying to start the second "American" Revolution and didn't quite know if the two projects were reconcilable. Having just recently closed my now defunct "History of Rhythm and Blues" series with KPFK in Los Angeles I was more than a little wary of entering upon a new musical enterprise but he assured me that there would be no outside interference and I was free to follow my own whims and impulses as time and space allowed and so I dismissed any further creeping uncertainties and cast my fate to the wind. I embarked upon my new adventure by air and can even now recall how with great confidence and bravado I impressed upon Captain Pettigrew the importance of this record. We stood in the lounge of the 747 Jet excitedly discussing the merits of this or that kind of music and when I told him people were flying in from all over the country to participate in this album he was duly amazed. By this time I was quite overtaken by the spirit of this record we were about to create and I even ventured so far as to guarantee him it would be a success. I don't know who was flying the plane.

Jim's Road Manager, O.D. Long, met me at the airport and accompanied me to my Suite and early the next morning I entered Mr. Weston's studio for the first time. All the musicians had already arrived. Mel Lyman had flown in from Boston. Reed Wasson, the renowned Jazz Bassist, had left his job as legal advisor to the Tehachapee Indians in upper New Mexico and flown in by private plane. Etta Green had abandoned her post with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra to come out and attempt to imitate country fiddle on her cello. Mayne Smith had come down from Alaska to play the dobro. Many more were assembled and as we milled around making small talk and getting acquainted we somehow felt we were on the verge of some great historic gathering. I, myself, was almost in tears when Jim asked me to play the tuba on "Stealing" as there are so few who really can comprehend the virtues of that great instrument. But that was only the beginning.

From the very opening moments there was an aura of excitement in the air, this was no ordinary recording session, the Muses were with us! The music flowed easily and the studio reverberated with a sound that we knew we were only partly responsible for. When I delivered the stirring testimonial in "Okie from Muskogee" the words seemed to enter and pass through me from some far off distant place, I scarcely knew what I said. Mel crouched over his harmonica and seemed to shake all over, Reed towered and swayed as though on the strings of some gigantic puppeteer. The women drifted in and out like remnants of a celestial choir and Jim was clearly in another world. Etta later testified she had never reached more inspiring heights and even Phil, the recording engineer, could not restrain himself from occasionally bursting into song. All in all it was a magnificent experience, one to never be duplicated. As the last day of the session drew to a close all the musicians magically left their instruments and gathered around a microphone to join voices in a glowing tribute to the beloved Stephen Foster.

And then we were done. the spirit of this once great country of ours had come and left its mark as minute little tracings in a plastic disc and the second American Revolution was underway.
sincerely, Richard Herbruck

The Band
Jim Kweskin (Cancer) - Guitar, Vocals
Mel Lyman (Aries) - Harmonica, Vocals
Etta Green (Pisces) - Cello, Vocals
Mayne Smith (Pisces) - Dobro, Guitar, Percussion, Vocals
Reed Wasson (Gemini) - Guitar (Bass)
Richard Herbruck (Gemini) - Narrator, Producer
Marilyn Kweskin (Gemini) - Vocals

Tracks
1. Back in the Saddle (Ray Whitley - Gene Autry) (2:46)
2. Sugar Babe (Mance Lipscomb) (3:00)
3. Okie from Muskogee (Merle Haggard - Roy Burris) (3:50)
4. 99 Year Blues (Julius Daniels (Arr. by The Lyman Family)) (3:43)
5. Ramblin' Round Your City (Woody Guthrie - Huddie Ledbetter) (5:42)
6. Amelia Earhart's Last Flight (David D. McEnery) (4:57)
7. Stealin' (The Memphis Jug Band) (4:27)
8. Old Rugged Cross (Rev. George Bennard) (7:50)
9. Dark as a Dungeon (Merle Travis) (6:33)
10. Old Black Joe (Stephen Foster (Arr. by The Lyman Family)) (6:59)

he likes living right and being free...
mp3 >256kbps vbr | w/o cover | 85mb

My soul was born in Cancer and it was born into the great river of the American Soul, still flowing in deep strains of hope and conquest. That soul was the Freedom that the earliest Americans dreamed and fought for which was the freedom to find God in themselves and follow Him, and it was finally born on earth as the spirit of a nation which would live in men, in Cancer . . . the sign of the birth of God in Man.

Throughout the life of this country that soul has been shared and carried by great men who lived to bring it to the PEOPLE. It has appeared in all ways but it has been most greatly loved and rejoiced in through its music. Those who sang it best sprang right from that soul and spent their lives singing it out. At every turning point in the life of America a Cancer has stood up to sing new soul as it flowed into the old and transformed it. Stephen Foster, George M. Cohan, Louis Armstrong, Woody Guthrie, Jessie Benton were all born as America was reborn and each was a prophet who did not speak of history but sung purely from the heart that creates it . . . and people who could truely hear them have felt history before it happened.
I am here once again to sing that song for you. And as this album was born in a burst of spirit and recorded simply in three days as it was sung . . . a new life for the world is bursting forth from the Heart of America.
The soul that is born in Cancer must always find its completion in Aries, when God and man become one. You can read the story of it in Mirror at the End of the Road by Mel Lyman. It is the story of his life from the moment it doubts itself and receives its first intimations of immortality to the time it becomes God as it grows from Cancer to Aries. You can hear that story on this album if you will step aside and let your soul listen.

I am singing America to you and it is Mel Lyman. He is the new soul of the world.

- Jim Kweskin

oh, and hey - if any of you have the following albums, I'd love to hear them:
Mel Lyman & the Lyman Family - Birth
Jim Kweskin Lives Again (or any Kweskin album on the Mountain Railroad label)
Jim Kweskin - Relax Yourself

thanks!

Norman Blake & Red Rector

There was an intimation that someone around here liked Norman Blake... which is almost as good as a request if the file is already uploaded and just awaiting posting...

I won't write any long, indulgent intros. Instead, I pirate two interviews for the guitar or mandolin enthusiast, below:

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Norman Blake: Flatpicking Legend

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Norman Blake quit school at age 16 to play mandolin in a band, and music has been the focus of his life ever since. Born March 10, 1938 in Chattanooga, TN, Norman grew up in Sulphur Springs and Rising Fawn, GA (both towns have found themselves part of the titles of later albums). His first band, The Dixie Drifters, played the Tennessee Barndance on WNOX Radio in Knoxville, TN. Later, they went to WDOD Radio, and from there to WROM-TV in Rome, GA where they stayed until 1956. Norman then worked with banjoist Bob Johnson as The Lonesome Travellers. They joined with Walter Forbes in making two records for RCA. In 1959, Norman left those groups to go with Hylo Brown and the Timberliners, although he continued as a duet with Bob Johnson in making several guest appearances on WSM's Grand Ole Opry.

At that time, Norman was drafted and stationed in the Panama Canal as a radio operator. There he formed the Fort Kobbe Mountaineers, a bluegrass band in which Norman played the fiddle and mandolin. They were voted Best Instrumental Group of the Caribbean Command, with Norman voted Best Instrumentalist.

Upon returning to the United States, Norman taught guitar to as many as 150 students weekly, and played the fiddle in a country and western dance band three and four nights a week. He also made frequent trips to Nashville to play sessions and, for a time, played as a member of June Carter's road group.

In 1969, Norman moved to Nashville to do the Johnny Cash Summer TV show, in which he played the guitar and dobro as a member of Cash's group. Along with country and western sessions, Norman recorded with Bob Dylan on The Nashville Skyline album. He was a member of Kris Kristofferson's first road group, playing guitar and dobro, and did a seasonal tour with Joan Baez, playing mandolin, guitar, and dobro; Norman recorded with both groups. He left Kristofferson to join and record with John Hartford's Aeroplane Band. After that band dissolved, Norman toured with John Hartford as his accompanist for 1 1/2 years, during which time he recorded his first solo album, Home in Sulphur Springs. He also received a gold record for his participation on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's legendary, Will the Circle be Unbroken album. After a nine-month tour with the Red, White and Blue(grass), he left to go back on his own where he has been ever since.

In the ensuing years, Norman and his wife Nancy Blake have toured extensively, playing to larger and more dedicated audiences. Again, Frets Magazine Readers Poll Awards voted Norman first place, this time in the category of Best Multi-Instrumentalist of 1986. Since 1989, the Blake's have received four Grammy nominations in the "Best Traditional Folk Recording of the Year" catagory for their projects, Blind Dog, their Shanachie debut Just Gimme Somethin' I'm Used To, and Shanachie releases While Passing Along This Way and The Hobo's Last Ride.

A San Francisco Examiner music critic wrote, "What Blake does is important, of course - but the glory of his string sounds, the Tennessee-Georgia twangy drawl of his vocals and the awesome blend of the Blake's instruments produces an American music of incomparable purity and integrity."

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Last year in Maryville, Tennesse, at the first Steve Kaufman Flatpicking Camp, Norman Blake began his Saturday afternoon workshop by saying, "I'm here to teach you how to play slow." For many of the nearly two hundred camp attendees, including myself, it was exactly what we needed to hear. After spending a full week being blown away by teachers and fellow campers who could pick at lightning speeds, fingers dancing all over the fingerboard, it gave our deflated self-confidence a boost to hear a man of Norman's stature say that he likes to play slow and, for the most part, likes to stay on the first five frets. When Norman said that, a lot of us breathed a sigh of relief and decided that we would not burn our guitars when we got home.

All Norman Blake fans know that when he chooses to Norman can certainly play very fast, he can play all over the neck, and he can play fiddle tunes and bluegrass with the best of them. Additionally, most who are familiar with Blake's work know that he has spent the majority of his career playing Martin guitars. In an interview conducted at the 1997 Merlefest event, Norman Blake talks about why he now prefers to play the slower traditional old-time numbers and why his current guitar of choice is his 1929 Gibson Nick Lucas special.

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At Steve Kaufman's camp you said that all you ever wanted to do was play like the "hillbilly's on the radio." Was that how you first became interested in playing music?

That is basically it. That and old records. We had 78 rpm records and wind up machines at home and I had heard Roy Acuff records first. The first music I was ever really conscious of was Roy Acuff and the Smokey Mountain Boys. I also heard the Monroe Brothers on record and of course the Skillet Lickers, the Carter Family, the Blue Sky Boys, the Delmore Brothers, and the Chuck Wagon Gang were all influential.

My Grandmother was a good musician. She played the piano, the organ and a little mandolin. She taught me my first guitar thing, "The Spanish Fandango," in open G tuning. She could play that. I also had a cousin named Earl Wallraven who was a fiddler and old time banjo player. I would go to his house about a mile down the railroad track and he would play the fiddle and teach me to second him. They called it "second" back then, playing "second to the fiddle." I did that and he would tell me when I wasn't making the right chords or changing in the right places. He would crack me over the knuckles with the fiddle bow or something.

How old were you when you started?

I was about eleven.

When you listened to the old records and the radio shows, were you drawn to the sound of the guitar or were you more interested in the music in general?

Just the general over-all thing I think. I wasn't drawn to it just for the guitar. You heard the fiddle and the dobro. I was really drawn hard to the dobro, but I didn't know what one was at that point. Old Oswald was playing it on Acuff records. The whole idiom just tickled my fancy.

When did you start to learn how to play leads on the guitar?

Well the first thing was that "Fandango," but of course it was a finger style thing. It wasn't like the written version because that is in 6/8 rhythm, but this was the open G straight time thing that you hear people play. When I got over the initial bare finger playing, I didn't flatpick. I played with one finger pick and a thumb pick and then gradually added a second finger pick. I then took up mandolin shortly after that and played that with a flatpick. At that point, in my mind, you didn't mix the two. The mandolin was played with a flatpick and the guitar with a thumb and finger pick.

Most of the old time accompanists in the old time bands just played with the thumb and finger deal behind the fiddle. So, I got into that and of course with that you learn how to make a lot of bass runs. Then you start to hear people like the Carter Family where she (Mother Maybelle) played the bass line run for the melody, so I learned that way. I learned the bass runs first and then the Carter Family got me playing the bass string lead with thumb and finger.

Later down the line I'd been through the Army in '61 through '63 down in the Panama Canal zone and I would pick up the guitar and I might play it with a flatpick, but still in my mind that was not the way that you did it. In the early sixties, I would give a few guitar lessons, and people kept talking about this fella named Doc Watson. I had never heard him and someone brought me a Doc Watson record. I listened to that and said, "Lord a'mercy, I could do something like that." I just didn't think that it was something you did. It was sort of like a novelty that you would play the guitar that way.

We had one fella that I knew early on by the name of Eddy Smith, up on Sand Mountain, who was a local player, who flatpicked like that. We sort of marveled at him, but we didn't try to imitate him that much. He could do the Riley Puckett style, but he had some flatpick rolls, sort of like cross rolls, that he did. I also remember Don Reno playing the "Country Boy Rock and Roll" and flatpicking the gospels on the guitar and stuff. I generally got into it that way. But when I heard Doc, I was sort of blown away by that. In those days I looked at it like mandolin style on the guitar. So I just gradually started doing it and kept on doing it.

I read somewhere that you still like to fingerpick when you play at home.

I fingerplay a whole lot. I got back into that, but I don't do it with picks anymore. I've got to where I like to do it without any picks because I can get so much more, lick- wise, without those picks. I just recorded a project on the Shanachie label that has fingerstyle on the 6 string banjo and on a National guitar. Its called "Chattanooga Sugarbabe," and should be out this summer. I am currently starting to perform fingerstyle more on that banjo. I like to do it on light strings. I like real slinky trebles. I have gradually gotten more into that.

How much of the fingerpicking carries over into flatpicking?

In my case a lot of it does because a big influence on me back about 1970 was Tut Taylor playing the dobro with a flatpick. I got into those kind of rolls when I was playing with him a lot. I think I play so many rolls now that my style has slowed down. I used to be able to burn it up speed wise with a thumb and finger pick. I could drive any banjo player crazy with a thumb and finger pick in the early days. I could play good bluegrass backup with a thumb and finger. I have lost that art now because I just haven't kept at it. My style has sort of broadened out, and the term I use is that I have gotten more "arrpegiated," because I have gotten to where I play more and more rolls with my flatpick and that has smoothed out and slowed down my style quite a bit. I think the fingerstyle and those flatpick rolls kind of go hand in hand.

I read somewhere that when you first started going out and playing on your own that you would play "hot licks" because that is what the audience expected. Earlier today you said that you used to play the Martin guitar because that is what people expected. Now it seems that you are getting into doing what you like to do.

Yeah, I'm doing what I like to do. It is easy to get me burned out on something that is real current. When enough people get into it, I kind of run the other way. I think I've done that a little bit with big twelve fret guitars, or D guitars period. People burned me out a long time ago. I heard so much D-28 hype in bluegrass that I got tired of it and I started playing twelve fret guitars. Now the twelve fret guitar has become well established, and I am glad to see that and I think that I have had a large factor in that because I performed on them so much.

Now I'm going full circle back around because I started playing the Gibson once again. They were the first guitars I had when I was a kid. Also, the Martin thing has gotten to be such a ritzy, high dollar, sophisticated club. I don't knock it. I think it is great. But it is more to my liking to branch off and kind of get away from that. I don't like to get typed into one thing totally.

What is the guitar you are playing today?

It is a 1929 12 fret Nick Lucas special.

What is it that you like about that guitar?

I like that it has a shorter, punchy tone that is good for old time music. It has a deep tone, but it has a real short, gutsy, loud, spit-it-out kind of sound. It doesn't ring or sustain forever. I kind of equate, in my own idiosyncratic mind, lots of sustain in guitars with a more modern sound. In other words, if you get a guitar that rings and you can go out and get a hot dog and come back before it stops ringing, it starts to get a little modern sounding. It can also start to get a little generic sounding because they can all start to sound the same. It is like the A model Gibson mandolins, there is only about one in a hundred that is really a cut above the other ninety-nine. That is about the same thing with large guitars if you are not careful. There is about one in a hundred that you can pick out and say has character.

I feel like old time music has such character that I want to play it on an instrument that has that same character. To my ear, if I do old time music, I want to hear something that sounds more that way. Maybe that is all it is. It seems that sustain makes the music sound more modern and more generic.

I also like Gibsons because they have a short scale. I've gotten to where I don't like the Martin 25.4 scale. With the shorter scale it is a little easier playing anchored in a chord as much as I do. I anchor down and play in a chord. When you are holding down something and moving in a chord it is easier because you don't have as far to go. The strings are also looser and I like the sloppier feel.

I never have cared for instruments with long extended necks. They have never appealed to me. I don't play that way. I usually play in about a five fret range. Visually, and the way it sits in your lap, I like twelve fret, shorter, chunkier built instruments. The Gibson fits that build. I was getting closer to it playing my big twelve fret guitars too. I like them better than most fourteen fret guitars. However, I do have a '39 D-18 that I like about as well as anything I've ever had.

You mentioned earlier that you like to use a thicker pick when you are at home than when you are on the road because the thinner pick sounds better through a microphone, it is the same with guitars?

I used to do that. I would play the smaller guitars when I was at home and then when I got a gig I'd grab the big Martin and away I'd go. I decided that I didn't want to make that transition. I'd play one at home and then I'd have to go get used to one that I'd play on stage. I kind of quit that. I figured that the one that I would like at home I would kind of like anywhere.

As far as the thick picks go, a thick pick can sound real good when you are kind of sitting around, you can get into that big fat tone, but it can sound a little muddy on a mic because you can pick up bass. A thin pick, when it is on a mic, gives you a little more cut and articulation. When it is just sitting under your ear and you haven't got that bigness of a sound system, then a thicker one can sound better.

Does the Nick Lucas have bar frets on it?

I had bar frets on the Martins because they were staccato and I liked them because they had height. Now we have so many frets that are all kinds of heights that I went away from that. Also, it was so hard to get people to work on them that could do a good job. Not only was it hard to find a guy who wanted to do the job, but rarely could they do it. A bar fret job, when it is done right, is really great. But more often than not, they weren't that great and then they can be

really hard to play on. For what I was gaining out of them, I was also losing as much.

What kind of strings do you use?

I use GHS Dynamite Boomers. I use them in individual gauges. I have not used standard sets in years. I use whatever suits the particular guitar. What's on that Nick Lucas guitar is .012, .016, .024, .034, .044, .060. I rarely use anything heavier than a .025 third. I would never use a .026, which is standard medium. I hardly ever use a .017 second string. Sometimes I use a .011 on the first string, but never a .013. I never use anything lighter than a .058 on the bass of any guitar. I hardl

y ever use anything heavier than a .034 on the fourth or .044 on the fifth. That is the basic parameters I stay in. I like the big string on top but I have never liked real tense, tight trebles on an instrument. I like the high end to be pretty loose.

Can you talk about the pick that you like to use?

I take a standard Fender heavy and I take the point off and then I take one of the rounded back corners and I make it a little straighter where it comes to some kind of a not too sharp point. I bevel them on both sides too. I might leave one of the back corners li

ke it came. That will give me the big woody, meaty sound if I want it. Then you have got the point, which you have shortened. So the whole thing becomes a basic triangular pick, just smaller. I used to sharpen my picks more than I do now. I used to be into getting a lot more of a trebly sound out of it and I don't like that quite as much as I used to. I tend to go for a bit more of a rounder thing with it now. I find that suits me better now for the tone I try to produce.

But, as we talked about earlier, at home you might play a heavier pick?

Sitting around the house I might play an extra heavy instead of a heavy.

Doesn't the bevel you put on the pick make it seem a bit lighter than a heavy or extra heavy, as the case may be?

Right, and it also depends upon the degree of bevel. If you have an extra heavy pick and you bevel it enough, then you could still get a good bit of snap and articulation out of it. But if it doesn't have enough bevel, it can be muddy. Therefore, on the opposite extreme, if you take a standard heavy, you don't bevel it as much because it isn't as thick to start with and you still get a brighter sound, but with less bevel.

Earlier you said that it is easy to get you burned out on something that is real current. Has the fact that there are many young guitarists out there burning it up and playing everything at 90 miles an hour been a factor in your preference to play things slower these days?

I am certainly more comfortable with it slow. I think it all boils down to the fact that I have played more and more cross rolls over the years and that just slows you down. When I was playing my fastest, I wasn't doing all that. I was just playing single note style. I call it linear style, just stretched out playing linear notes. But when you start playing rolls with a flatpick it will slow your style down because you are putting in more. With the rolls you are putting in more at a slower speed, the other way you are putting in less at a faster speed. The guys that can play the fastest, I think, are putting in less notes and the fingerings have to be different.

I feel that Tony Rice has a set of fingerings that are indicative strictly of his style. I don't even savvy those fingerings enough to know what is going on. I see what he is doing, but it is way out past me. Sam Bush and Tony and those guys of that particular time frame, they developed a thing all their own. It is a whole style that is like a new jazz style really. You can't hardly relate that back in some ways to some of the older things. They just developed their own thing. They have spent a lot of time on that and they do fingerings that really suit those things that they are doing. That way they can get a lot of things that are seemingly impossible to some of us mere mortals (laughs).

I've seen that you have been out playing some with Tony lately.

Yeah, we've been gigging a little bit.

Is the set you do with him different from the kind of set you did today with Nancy and James?

Yes and no. It sounds different because of him. It is going to sound different because he is Tony and he sounds like Tony. He is probably playing slower to play with me. I just sing some songs. Sometimes I sing the same songs that I sang today. We play some instrumentals like "Salt Creek" and "Cattle in the Cane" and some of the standard things. But for most of it I just go out and sing some songs. He is not singing right now, so we don't try to duplicate what we have recorded.

Its great, I just go out and sing and say that I have a great lead guitar player. We have a lot of fun. He and I both like a good song. We always said that if we never got together on any other ground, that was enough right there. He has said that what we also have in common is that we both like tone. We both are conscious of making a certain kind of tone and dynamics. Speed wise, I don't hold him any candles there.

How do you go about working up a solo to a fiddle tune?

I could come at it from a lot of angles. It would depend upon the tune partly. A lot of fiddle tunes I learned out of fiddle tune books on the mandolin because I can read better for the mandolin than I can for the guitar, plus it is all written for fiddle, so the mandolin is the one. I might learn it on the mandolin out of the book and then gradually, just by ear, it translates over to the guitar. It usually gets changed because I think that some things that sound good on mandolins, fiddles, and banjos are not guitaristic. Some people say a "note is a note" or a "tune is a tune," but I think there are certain things that sound good on a guitar that makes guitar music what it is and fiddle music different.

But I might start a new tune by learning it out of a book and learn it that way on the mandolin and it might come over to the guitar. If I learn it by ear starting on the guitar I am usually looking for a place where I can get the most out of it just playing it by myself. I usually approach everything on the level of performing it at least by myself, so I am looking for where I can get the most rolls, the most power, volume and tone. I try to get the most happening with just me. This means that I would be playing it out of a C or G position trying to get the most open strings and adjacent drone strings. So I would go at it from that angle if I was just starting it on guitar.

Would the break change a bit if you were playing in a band situation?

It might. It might be that you just don't need as much or you don't need to establish the same kind of rhythm. The more people that are around, the more you tend to leave out because you can clutter it up too bad sometimes. There is no point to going into everything you can do if there are other musicians.

During the workshop at Kaufman's camp you said that you still try to play two or three hours everyday, but you also said that you used to practice more. I've heard stories about you sitting and practicing all day long. What do you do when you practice?

I might play one tune for a week. I might play different tunes all the time or I might not play any tunes, I might just sing songs, or I might just doodle around. Some days I just say that I am "doing maintenance," I am just moving my fingers. I'm not learning a thing. I might go a month and not learn a thing except just keep my fingers in trim, keep them moving to where I could go up on stage and play. Or I might spend a month working hard to learn a set of tunes. I have no set regime. It is probably to my disadvantage really. I mean, a lot of people have much be

tter practice habits. I don't have good practice habits. I purely play because I like to play and sometimes that means just fooling with it.

- from Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, reprinted here

---

RED RECTOR

Red Rector was a much loved and highly respected musician, one of the most distinctive stylists of bluegrass and country mandolin. His playing was powerful, sophisticated, neat, often amusing and above all heartfelt. Very sadly, Red is longer with us, having died in 1990 when he was only 60.

In 1982 the old Bluegrass And Old Time Mandolin newsletter was pleased to be able to publish an interview with Red Rector. The interview took place in late 1981 when Red and banjo player Don Stover were staying in England with John Atkins, long time musician and supporter of bluegrass and acoustic music in this country. John, and his two associates in Breakdown Productions, Mike Craig and Dave Hatfield, were responsible for bringing Red and Don over for a successful UK tour. During this time John managed to fit in the interview with Red, and has now kindly given permission for it to be published on the Web.

Interview with Red Rector

John Atkins: When you started playing mandolin, Red, who did you listen to first of all?

Red Rector: Oh, Bill.

JA: You listened to Monroe?

RR: Oh, yeah!

JA: That was Bill before you listened to, say, the Blue Sky Boys or the Morris Brothers, or people like that?

RR: Must have been. The first mandolin I heard was Bill, Bill and Charlie (Monroe), that New River Train. I did hear the Morris Brothers, when I was going to grade school. Zeke played mandolin some.

JA: When you started playing, as a result of Bill, what was the first mandolin you ever bought?

RR: A Kay.

JA: How did you learn how to tune it, and things like that?

RR: Well, I played for quite a while before I learned to tune! I guess I finally learned to tune by tuning the E string to the guitar open E, but I played for two or three years before I learned to tune. I was a terrible tuner!

JA: Did you find that Bill's style of mandolin playing was so good as to put you off playing that way, or did you really work on copying Bill's style?

RR: Yeah, when I first started, that's the way I wanted to sound, exactly, the first three or four years that I played.

JA: That was Bill playing with Charlie Monroe?

RR: Yes.

JA: Can you remember anything that you learned from Bill and Charlie?

RR: No, I just learned to like the mandolin. But when I started to listen to Bill on the Grand Old Opry later, that's when I really started trying to play just like him. That's when Clyde Moody was with him, he had his Blue Grass Boys, he was playing those blues things: True Life Blues, Tennessee Blues, Honky Tonk Swing - I learned to play that exactly - I thought it was exactly like it, anyway!

JA: Do you still play that? Or Tennessee Blues?

RR: No. I can't remember it. I remember it (Tennessee Blues) was in A.

JA: Was it Johnny Wright who told you that you really should quit playing like Monroe?

RR: Well, when I went with Johnny and Jack in Raleigh (NC), early in 1947, or late 46 I guess it was, I was 16 years old, and they began to work with me to get me to try to change the way I was playing. I was playing note for note like Bill then. John explained, 'Look, there's only one Bill, and if you're ever going to gain any name for yourself as a mandolin player, you've got to get a style of your own.' But I wouldn't listen to him, I thought, if you don't plav like Bill, you don't play mandolin. So they began to tell me about a boy that used to play with them in West Virginia named Paul Buskirk. 'He has his own style, and he can play mandolin!' The way I heard him was when they went on the Grand Old Opry, and I was so scared to go on the Grand Old Opry that I didn't go with them. The thought of going on that stage petrified me! So they got Paul Buskirk, and I tuned in one night, and heard him on the Grand Old Opry, and thought, 'Man alive! I never heard nothing like that in my life!' - the way that guy played the mandolin. So I went down to the Opry to pick my mandolin up - I'd sent it on ahead with them, 'cause I'd fully intended to go on with them when they started on the Opry. The more I'd thought about it, the more frightened I'd felt about going, so I didn't go! I had a chance to meet Paul Buskirk. We went backstage - Bill Monroe got us in - the crowd was gathered around the dressing room, Buskirk was sitting there in a jam session, and everyone was gathered around watching him play. Chubby Wise, I remember, and it seems like Eddy Arnold was standing there watching him - enough people to let you know that somebody was picking that everyone wanted to hear! So I had a chance to meet Paul that night, and listen to him and talk to him some, so it was then that I started trying to develop a style. I started playing a little bit like Paul, maybe, on the low strings. There was another boy named Ernest Ferguson I thought played real pretty mandolin, the guy playing with the Bailes Brothers. Then I got a job with Charlie Monroe, and went to Knoxville on The Mid-Day Merrygoround, and Homer and Jethro happened to be there at that time. When I heard Jethro, and I'd already heard Buskirk, I said, 'Well, I've heard the two greatest in the world!' So somewhere between then and a year later, I came up with a little sound that, if I have anything that is different, that's when it started. By the time I was 18, I was playing my own style.

JA: Of course, Bill Monroe gave you some pretty solid advice, didn't he?

RR: He came over - I was 15 when we were on a little local radio station at Asheville, WWNC, and he played the civic auditorium there, along with Carl Story and his group, the Rambling Mountaineers. We were called The Blue Ridge Hillbillies at the time: Red Smiley was playing guitar and Jimmy Lunsford on the fiddle and a fellow called Snowball that managed the thing. He was an old Nashville showman, a comedian. I forget who else was in the group, maybe the Sauceman Brothers were with us. So we went over to the auditorium, and that was the first time I'd been around Bill, and I was scared to death to even walk in the place! I didn't own the mandolin I was playing - an F5 mandolin that belonged to Red Smiley. I was sitting, trying to tune it or something, when Bill walked over and asked what it sold for new. I said, 'I don't know, it's not mine. It belongs to the redheaded boy that plays the guitar, over there. I think he paid $250 for it.' Bill said, 'Is that right? Can I look at it?' He took it and played it for a few minutes - and tuned it (laughs) - and then he asked me to play a little tune. I tried to play something. He said, 'Well, you got good fast fingers, but you're playing with a stiff wrist.' I looked down, and I really was playing with a stiff wrist, stiff as a board. So that's when I started trying to develop my wrist.

JA: You've mentioned all these guys that you liked, Buskirk, Ernest Ferguson, and Jethro, and how you evolved your own style. Did you actually copy what they did? How did you work on your own style?

RR: Well, I tried to listen, and maybe incorporate ideas from different players, and try to get a few of my own things in. I guess it came together with a combination of things like that.

JA: You play mostly away from the first position. Is that deliberate, to get a different sound?

RR: Oh, yeah.

JA: When did you start doing that?

RR: I guess when I was with Carl Story.

JA: When you play tunes like Blackberry Blossom live, you play at about 6,000 miles an hour!

RR: Maybe a little faster!

JA: What sort advice would you give to anybody wanting to play at that speed?

RR: Well, you have to do it with your wrist - too much work for the arm.

JA: Do you think in terms of trying to keep your fingers close together?

RR: Mine are naturally close because they're short, but you'd almost have to do that. I don't advise anybody to play at breakneck speed. Well, maybe one tune on the show is good for the show, but if you're going to make a good recording........

JA: On your records that you've done so far, you've tended to play a lot more slowly than you would otherwise do. Why is that?

RR: I think it's a better feel for the studio musicians, and then a lot of times you don't have time to work things out the way you would like to. When you go into the studio you have so many hours to record, so you pick a pace that suits everybody best, and go from there.

JA: Do I take it from that, that you're not ecstatically delighted with your records that you've made so far?

RR: I've made some that I was happy with, and I've made some that I wish I hadn't made! I guess everybody's like that.

JA: But there's not one that you can look back on and say, 'That's it! That's the one!'?

RR: I don't think so, no. I've made some that I would have to say that I was sort of proud of, not for what I do, but for what the other guys do that are on it. But I don't think that there's any one that I ever made, that I didn't think that there was something that I could have done maybe better.

JA: You use an A model mandolin. You've tried an F model ....

RR: I've played a lot, and I don't have anything against them. The A just seems to suit my style of playing.

JA: Have you tried any of the other mandolins (other than Gibson) - the newer makes?

RR: Yeah, I've played some that I've liked.... Norman Blake has an F5 that I like to play, and he's also got a real good A model that I like!

JA: What sort of advice would you give to someone who was just starting out on mandolin?

RR: Well, the biggest thing is, make sure you want to play! Practise as long as it's fun. If you can play an hour and have a ball, great! You're learning something. If you play 30 minutes, and the last 30 minutes you're looking at the clock and saying, 'Man, I can't wait until I can quit practising,' then you're not learning a durn thing! As long as it's fun, practise.

JA: I think there are a lot of people with the mistaken impression that geniuses are born that way. In some cases they are, but I've never known yet a genius who doesn't need to practise. Often the difference between Jethro and somebody who's nowhere near as good is not only a genius, (Jethro obviously has some gift!) but it's also hours and hours of practice. Would you agree with that?

RR: Yeah, that and a love of the thing. If you love the music enough, that creates desire, and I think desire creates the ability that you might not have had basically. I think that a good musician has the basic ability, just like a real good athlete, has that gift of special coordination, maybe, that some people don't have. But you're right about practice, though; the gift is no good unless you do something with it. How many mediocre musicians do you know who could be great if they applied themselves to the natural ability that they might have?

JA: You are known as a bluegrass mandolin player. Do you play other forms of music? Jethro, for example, would be hurt if somebody called him a bluegrass mandolin player! (laughter from both) Jethro is a jazz mandolin player...

RR: Yeah, he's known for jazz, but he likes to sit around and pick hoedown tunes, you know. I enjoy playing other kinds of music. I love to play these old Irish tunes, like When I Grow Too Old To Dream - not that that's an Irish tune! But tunes in that category. Lara's Theme - I do that on the shows a lot....

JA: My advice, when I used to teach, was that whatever you play, whether it be banjo, mandolin or guitar, think of it as a musical instrument. So if you want to play the guitar, play the guitar. Don't say, 'I'm gonna play bluegrass guitar, and that's the end to it!' Would you go along with that advice?

RR: Yeah, absolutely. Now there is, in playing bluegrass music, a special technique. There are some real fine guitar players that couldn't back you up on John Henry or something, because they haven't heard it before, and maybe their ear don't hear that rhythm. So there is a technique, and the same with playing bluegrass mandolin. I don't think of myself as a bluegrass mandolin player in the strictest sense, but I guess I play more bluegrass shows than I do anything else, and I'm booked more on bluegrass festivals, so that's the category that I would be in.

JA: But I would think of you as a mandolin player that plays bluegrass music - you play other forms of music, obviously. Nobody in bluegrass plays Miss Jameson's Favourite, as you do, (a Celtic tune) - yet!

RR: So, practise, and get with someone that you enjoy playing with. You can always learn from other people, jam sessions, and don't get so doggone independent that you'll only listen to one style. Listen to different styles, 'cause that's the way it's going now.

JA: What about playing more than one instrument? Most people, it seems, come on to mandolin as a second instrument. There are very, very few people who play mandolin only - you could probably count them on the fingers of one hand, couldn't you? The real mandolin players.....

RR: A heck of a lot of mandolin players are fiddle players who double on mandolin. Byron Berline plays good mandolin. He's a fiddler, and I think Jethro and me are probably the only two mandolin players that can't play a fiddle! I can't use a bow...

JA: Monroe could be a third?

RR: Ah, he plays some. He can plav some old tunes, not on a par with Kenny Baker or anyone like that, but he can saw out a tune.

JA: But you play guitar, yourself. Do you think that playing a guitar is any use to you as a mandolin player, or do you think it limits you in any way?

RR: Well, it don't help me! I don't play guitar that much any more. I use one a little, occasionally.

JA: So your advice to a mandolin player would be to play the mandolin?

RR: Yeah, unfortunately there are only a few Mark O'Connors that can play them all. For most people, play the instrument you love - that's the one you'll learn to play. I like all of them, but the mandolin is my first love!

---

Red Rector's mandolin style is characterised by very clean but powerful picking, and a really clear tone from his Gibson A4. Red is a consummate artist, with a particular ear for melody, and a good taste which relies more on playing what sounds right than on impressing his listeners with flashy chromatics and off-beat ideas. Not that there isn't a place for the latter, it's just that Red doesn't need to use them most of the time, though sometimes he sticks in a wild little run (usually in triplets, at the speed of light!) to ginger it up! I've always thought of Red as the 'gentleman' of the bluegrass mandolin world - never one to seek the limelight, but preferring to act as a support musician of the highest order. Luckily the mandolin world is quite aware of Red's talent!

- from http://www.users.waitrose.com/~john.baldry/mando/rector.html
Norman Blake & Red Rector
County 755 (1976)

Tracks:
01. The Girl I Left Behind Me
02. Denver Belle
03. Lorena
04. The Old Spinning Wheel
05. Mississippi Sawyer
06. Red Wing
07. Cricket On The Hearth
08. Limehouse Blues
09. The Green Leaves Of Summer
10. Freight Train
11. Darling Nellie Across The Sea
12. Darlin' Honey

the moon shines tonight.
from vinyl | mp3 vbr | w/ cover | 47mb

* out of print

thanks to kike again!

"Dakota" Dave Hull & Sean Blackburn - Vol. 1 & Rollin' Along

Porco Rosso just posted a couple of great country-meets-jazz albums over at Guitar and the Wind. He talks about the history of the various attempts to fuse the genres, beginning with Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills. I thought I'd contribute to the musical discussion a bit, so here's an album I've been meaning to post for a while. This album is sorta acoustic western swing, with bits of bluegrass and full on string- or dixieland jazz, and it's all really fantastic music. Dave is one of the best acoustic guitarists around, and the supporting musicians are top-notch too. Pretty much every track is memorable.

Hailed by everyone from Dave Van Ronk to Doc Watson, from the Washington Post to downbeat, Dakota Dave Hull’s guitar style spans a wide musical geography to create an infectious, uniquely personal blend of jazz, ragtime, folk, blues, Western swing, and vintage pop. Dakota Dave is a restlessly curious, adventurous traveler along the broad highway of America’s music. In his playing the masters speak, but in a vocabulary that is Dave’s alone: alternatively mirthful and moving, always melodic.

A gifted composer as well as a strikingly original interpreter of older tunes, Dakota Dave calls what he does "classic American guitar." Folk legend Van Ronk called Dave "one of the best guitarists in the world."

Most of all, Dakota Dave’s music is great fun. As Douglas Greene (Ranger Doug of Riders in the Sky) puts it, "There is an imp within Dave Hull that always expresses itself on the fretboard; a witty, intelligent yet respectful imp who frolics in his music, an imp Dakota Dave neither fights nor lets take control, but simply absorbs into the heart of his style."

On stage or in the recording studio Dave has performed with Utah Phillips, Doc Watson, Robin and Linda Williams, Dave Van Ronk, John Renbourn, Paul Geremia, Spider John Koerner, Cam Waters, Sally Rogers, Butch Thompson, Peter Ostroushko, Garrison Keillor, and Norman Blake, among others. His albums include three with early performing partner Sean Blackburn and five solo efforts (the acclaimed Hull’s Victory and Reunion Rag, both on Flying Fish) with four more, New Shirt, Sheridan Square Rag, The Loyalty Waltz and Time Machine on Arabica Records. Airship, a duo album with singer/guitarist/fiddler Pop Wagner has been raising some eyebrows, too. His three albums with guitar and mandolin ace Kari Larson (also on Arabica) have become legendary.

At the urging of Van Ronk, among others, Dave released his first album of solo fingerstyle guitar tunes in 2002. He followed it up with another two years later and should have a third before too long. Watch for a live album, too.

"Hull is something of a guitar god in his native midwest, where he's been dazzling audiences for over 30 years with his lush finger-picking and quicksilver flat-picking. He is also a sly raconteur with an encyclopedic knowledge of vintage American music."
—Scott Alarik, Boston Globe, March 2004

"There's a million good things I could say about Dave Hull but I'll narrow it down to two: He's an excellent picker, both flatpick and fingerstyle, he collects some fine instruments, and we've been at a lot of good places to eat together."
—Norman Blake

"Dakota Dave brings a modesty and tenderness to the old classics he plays - qualities that are rare among guitarists of his stature and experience."
—Sarah Craig, Manager, Caffe Lena, Saratoga Springs, NY, March 2004

"Hey Dave, thanks for sending me your Loyalty Waltz album. I just put it on to use as background music for something I was reading. Damn you, I never read a thing. Listened to the whole album straight through. Nice album, my good man. Keep on."
—Geoff Muldaur



"Dakota" Dave Hull & Sean Blackburn - Vol. 1 & Rollin' Along

unfortunately, I can't find any information whatsoever about this album; some tracks look to be overlapping with 1980's River of Swing, but not all (see below)


and based on that album, I'm guessing some of the musicians on this one are:
Dakota Dave Hull, vocals, guitars
Sean Blackburn, vocals, guitars
Butch Thompson, clarinet, piano
Peter Ostroushko, vocals, mandolins, fiddle
Molly Mason, vocals, bass
James Mason, fiddle
Mike Cass, dobro, pedal steel
and some horn players, banjo, harmonica
official websites:
Dakota Dave Hull: http://www.dakotadavehull.com/
Sean Blackburn: http://www.seanblackburn.com/


anyway, tracklist is as follows:
1 Old Fashioned Love
2 Blues for Dixie
3 Hillbilly Swing
4 Jingle in my Jeans
5 When You Go
6 Beaumont Rag
7 Fan It
8 Palomino Pal
9 I'll Keep Lovin' You
10 Dixie Cannonball
11 Miss the Mississippi
12 There'll be Some Changes Made
13 Boomtown
14 Walkin' in the Shadow
15 Ya Gotta Have a Moustache
16 Deep Water
17 What's the Use
18 I Don't Wanna Set the World On Fire
19 The Wicked Wind of Fargo
20 River of Swing
21 Searchin the Desert for the Blues
22 Rollin' Along

part 1 | part 2
mp3 192kbps | w/ images but no cover

* out of print
(but you can buy a bunch of Dave's awesome solo guitar records, on his own label, at his website. and you should. I'm going to!)

edit: Porco Rosso did some sleuthing and came up with this info:
Tracks 1-8 are from the album 'Ace Pickin' And Sweet Harmony' (Train On The Island TI-2, 1977)
Tracks 9-15: 'North By Southwest' (Biscuit City 1324, 1978)
Tracks 16-22: 'River of Swing' (Flying Fish Records FF-236, 1980)
All pretty obscure except for the Flying Fish album.

thanks to the original uploader (kike?), from the blues club

Eino Tulikari - Kantele

Here's an odd treat shared by the venerable Lemmy Caution. I pass it along to you, dear readers, because it is the closest-sounding thing I've ever heard to the mysterious instrument of Washington Phillips. This music is heavenly, ancient, stunningly beautiful, crystaline and stately. I would even call it celestial, because it suggests a lilting dance that takes place in the upper reaches of the great blue firmament's invisible constellations, between its starry denizens and sparkling darkness.

Eino Tulikari (1905-1977) was born in the village Halsua in the Pohjanmaa region. He was the most accomplished player of our national instrument, the kantele, in his time. He started studying it when he was five or six, and took part in a competition when he was ten. Before the competition, the jury announced that the winner shall play for the dances that were to be held later in the evening. Eino would have won the competition, but since he wasn't old enough to be allowed to lead the dances, his big brother Oskari, who also took part in the competition, was declared winner.

Tulikari's home region, the Perhonjoki valley, was a flourishing music center. In addition to Eino and his three brothers , the kantele was also mastered by neighbours Matti and Ilmari Karvonen, and Vesteri Tuominiemi played the violin.

Eino Tulikari studied in the Helsinki Music Institute, but after a year he decided to find a more secure way of making a living, so he moved to Jyväskylä and became a teacher in 1931.

As a teacher, Tulikari kept playing as his hobby, and in 1975, two years before his death, he cut an album for the National Music Institute. Here's that album remastered for CD, with four 1956 recordings for national broadcasting company YLE added. He is recognized as one of the old masters, and in fact this recording was the first issued by the Finnish Folk Music Institute in Kaustinen, so his influence is obvious.

Kantele
From Wikipedia

A kantele (pronounced [ˈkɑntele] in Finnish) or kannel ([ˈkɑnːel] in Estonian) is a traditional plucked string instrument of the zither family native to Finland, Estonia and Karelia. It is related to the Russian gusli, the Latvian kokle and the Lithuanian kanklės. Together these instruments make up the family known as Baltic Psalteries.

The oldest forms of kantele have 5 or 6 horsehair strings and a wooden body carved from one piece; more modern instruments have metal strings and often a body made from several pieces. Modern concert kanteles can have up to 40 strings. Modern instruments with 15 or fewer strings are generally more closely modelled on traditional shapes than the concert kantele, and form a separate category of instrument known as small kantele. The playing positions of concert kantele and small kantele are reversed, i.e., to the player of a small kantele the longest low pitched strings are farthest away from his body, whilst to a concert kantele this side of the instrument is nearest, and the short high pitched strings farthest away. The instruments have different though related repertoires.

Robert Stigell's Väinämöinen (1888) decorating the Vanha Ylioppilastalo (Old Studenthouse) in Helsinki holds humankind's first kantele made of the giant pike's jawbone as told in Kalevala.

The kantele has a distinctive bell-like sound. The Finnish kantele generally has a diatonic tuning though small kantele with between 5 and 15 strings are often tuned to a gapped mode missing a seventh and with the lowest pitched strings tuned to a fourth below the tonic as a drone. The Estonian kannel has a variety of traditional tunings. Concert versions have a switch mechanism (similar to semitone levers on a modern folk harp) for making sharps and flats. Players hold the kantele in their laps or on a small table. There are two main techniques to play, either plucking the strings with their fingers or strumming unstopped strings (sometimes with a matchstick).

There have been strong developments for the kantele in Finland lately. Education for playing the instrument starts in schools and music institutes up to conservatories and the Sibelius Academy, the only music university in Finland. Even some artistic doctoral studies are being made at the Academy with traditional, western classical and electronic music. In Estonia, studying the kannel has made a resurgence after some years of decline. A Finnish luthiery, Koistinen, has developed also an electric kantele, which employs pick-ups similar to those on electric guitars. It has gained popularity amongst Finnish heavy metal composers, such as Amorphis.


In Finland's national epic, Kalevala, the mage Väinämöinen makes the first kantele from the jawbone of a giant pike and a few hairs from Hiisi's stallion. The music it makes draws all the forest creatures near to wonder at its beauty. Later, after losing and greatly grieving over his kantele, Väinämöinen makes another one from a birch, strung with the hair of a willing maiden, and its magic proves equally profound. It is the gift the eternal sage leaves behind when he departs Kaleva at the advent of Christianity.

The following is a summary of Poems No. 39-44 from the Finnish national epic Kalevala, which explain the mythological birth of kantele:

Poems 39-41
Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen set out to steal the Sampo from Pohjola. In the course of the journey, their boat runs aground on the shoulders of a giant pike. Väinämöinen kills the pike and fashions a kantele from its jawbone. No one else is able to play the instrument, but Väinämöinen holds all living things spellbound with his playing.

Poems 42-43
Väinämöinen puts the people of Pohjola to sleep with his kantele playing and the Sampo is taken to the travellers' boat and rowed away. The people of Pohjola awaken and Louhi, the mistress of Pohjola, sends obstacles in the path of the raiders to hinder their escape. The seafarers survive, but the kantele falls into the sea. Louhi sets off in pursuit and transforms herself into a giant bird of prey. In the ensuing battle the Sampo is smashed and falls into the sea. Some of the fragments remain in the sea, but others wash ashore and bring Finland good fortune and prosperity. Louhi is left with only the worthless lid of the Sampo and an impoverished land.

Poem 44
In vain, Väinämöinen seeks the kantele which fell into the sea. He makes a new kantele from birchwood and his playing once again delights the whole of creation.

- from http://www.kaiku.com/kantele.html


Eino Tulikari - Kantele (Traditional Finnish Kantele Music)


Tracks:
1. Kantelemarssi (Kantele March)
2. Valssi Halsualta (Waltz From Halsua)
3. Pirunpolkka (Devil's Polka)
4. Niemen-Kallen jenkka (Kalle Niemi's Jenka)
5. Oskarin valssi (Oskari's Waltz)
6. Masurkka (Mazurka)
7. Tulikarin sottiisi
8. Kulkurin valssi (Vagabond's Waltz)
9. Hevosmiesten marssi (March of the Horsemen)
10. Voi jos ilta joutuisi (Oh, If the Evening Would Come Soon)
11. Alotusmarssi (Starting March)
12. Hääpolska (Wedding Polska)
13. Koko maailman valssi (Waltz of the Whole World)
14. Polkka
15. Syyskuun ilta (September Evening)
16. Polkkasikermä (Polka Medley)
17. Tofferin Viljamin marssi
18. Polkansiruja (Shards of Polka)
19. Purppurimarssi
20. Valssi Purpurista
21. Vanha marssi n:o 1 (Old March Nr. 1)
22. Vanha valssi (Old Waltz)
23. Niemen Kallen jenkka

jawbone jamboree.
320kbs mp3, full scans

thanks to Lemmy Caution & da origina uppa

see also this Kantele page & dissertation

I've got a mission for you

Hello.

Firstly I would like to thank you for your blog, you have introduced me to some fine music I couldn't possible have heard any other way. Its a great service to all them musicians and songs that could easily have faded away under the umpteen fads that have come and gone over the ages.

I have a recording of Harry "Haywire Mac" McClintock singing a song called Paddy Clancy. He only sings a fragment of the song. I'm trying to track down the lyrics or another version but to no avail, I'm thinking it either has a different name or this is the only record left of the song. He explains where it came from in the mp3. The tune sounds so familiar I am convinced I have heard it somewhere before. With your ears and knowledge you might know it. I'm sure your busy enough with life and educating the masses through cyber space but if you have any leads it would put my mind to rest.

- Niall
Galway, Ireland.

here's the song:


(download here)
do any of you readers have an answer?

The Dough Rollers

Hello Pirate, First off, let me just say what huge fans we are of your blog, Wrath of the Grapevine. You have a great taste in and knowledge of music and you do an incredible job sharing these things. I saw recently that you put up a post from a new blues band called the black oil brothers. Anyway that brings me to the point of this note. We wanted to send you a track from our album and see if you liked it and would maybe want to post it on your blog. We are three piece, sometimes 4 piece acoustic blues/gospel/ragtime/country whathaveyou band out of New York City, called The Dough Rollers, however we are all in Los Angeles playing a residency for the summer. If you like our music please let us know and maybe we could send you some more songs. This one we're sending you is Operator Blues. You can also hear more tunes at www.myspace.com/malcolmandjack. Like I said, if you're into it drop us a line back, if not, let us know anyway. Thanks for your time. Cheers and thanks for all the great music, Jack Byrne and Malcolm Ford

Thanks guys! New weird America, for sure. I like how comfortably you cross genres, from fingerpicking country blues to jugband to old-time to delta blues and back! And the raw, ragged quality of your delivery certainly suits the music and stays true to the old styles.

Here's some songs:
Drunkard's Hiccoughs
I Heard the Voice of a Porkchop
I Got A Letter from My Darlin
Cool Drink of Water