Bluegrass: a Primer

Titling this blog Banjo52 might imply more knowledge of bluegrass and other roots  music than I actually have. On the other hand, I love a lot of it, and Karin at altadenahiker.blogspot.com has just reminded me that there might be folks out there who could use an injection of mountain music but don’t know where to begin. So here’s my ounce of contribution toward a beginning dose of bluegrass. 

My list and links are tilted toward artists who are not so nasal or shrill that they’d put off the new or casual listener. If you google a few of these folks, you’ll also see and hear that bluegrass is a specific kind of country music. While there’s some overlap with Nashville, as well as blues and folk music (especially Scots-Irish), bluegrass is its own critter.

The traditional band includes acoustic guitar, banjo, bass, fiddle, and often mandolin and dobro.  Drums? Piano? Brass?  Never, as far as I know, but “Fusion” is one of the F-words of contemporary culture . . . .  Fusion is also the reason I haven't included Steve Martin or Bela Fleck; they are supremely talented banjoists, but their musical adventurism usually takes them beyond bluegrass, at least in my loosely defined terms. 

Ralph Stanley and Bill Monroe go back to the 1940s or earlier, so they have some of that shrillness, but it’s still good stuff.

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs began to make inroads into the folk music of the 1960s, and Alison Krause and Emmylou Harris have completed that trend.  Also try the inimitable Doc Watson. I can’t imagine his offending anyone, and newcomers might embrace his mellow voice and soft brilliance on guitar.  If someone objects to his lullaby (next to last in the following lists), keep it to yourself. 

The first three below are older artists, followed by a few notable younger performers (though only Chris Thile is anything like a kid—well, Gillian Welch might not have any gray hair yet). 

Mother Maybelle Carter  (or, the Carter Family)

June Carter Cash    (Maybelle’s daughter, Johnny Cash’s wife)

Jim and Jesse

Tony Rice

Gillian Welch

Iris DeMenthe

Chris Thile  

Black Diamond (West Virginia)

Tom Adams

Norman Blake

Leo Kottke

Too Much of a Good Thing? 

Also, you could google any of the names John Hartford mentions in this link in addition to hearing a somewhat homogenized version of a classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy_CZDtIuz0

Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKjnMMMYE-c 

Doc Watson and Chris Thile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_w6IBbwWxc

June Carter Cash 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eydz4l07jl8

Doc Watson, a lullaby     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSIFzSX7E0

Sleepy Man Banjo Boys (even kids do it): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXcRI0BdioE

I hope this info, fundamental as it is, starts a stampede.  If you do some wandering on YouTube, please permit yourself some extra pleasure by looking entering “clog dancing” in the search bar. 

Roots Music, "Make Me a Pallet"

olive branch

If you don’t care for lowland blues, acoustic blues, bluegrass, or roots music (the inclusive term, I guess), you might excuse yourself from today’s post. And while you're away, get a life. Or you could sample each piece for a few seconds or more, just to broaden your horizons.

YouTube - Mississippi John Hurt Make Me a Pallet on the Floor

YouTube - Gillian Welch - Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor

YouTube - Doc Watson - Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor

YouTube - Mississippi John Hurt — Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor

The blog titled Robert Frost’s Banjo got me wandering around on YouTube, starting with Taj Mahal and Dave von Ronk, which led to Mississippi John Hurt, which led to young Christine Pizzuti at I Play Banjo Now, and that connected to Gillian Welch’s YouTube version of “Make Me a Pallet.”  She in turn credited Doc Watson as her link to the song.  I’ve liked “Make Me a Pallet” since I first heard Hurt’s rendition in the sixties, but the fact that I enthusiastically like all four of these versions makes me wonder if I should . . . worship it. 

I wonder too if Sarah Palin’s bus tour will . . . LISTEN . . . to all available versions of whatever. Taj Mahal (Harlem), Dave von Ronk (Brooklyn), and Christine Pizzuti (New Palz) are New Yorkers, but variety is the theme here, if I have one. Taj Mahal majored in animal husbandry at U. Mass.  There is a John Hurt museum in Mississippi (which I learned at Robert Frost’s Banjo, located in Idaho). Doc Watson’s place sits somewhere in the mountains of western North Carolina, and Gillian Welch is a Californian whose beginnings included membership in a goth band.  She performs with her partner, David Rawlings of Rhode Island, who does things on the guitar that strike me as original and terrific. 

Sometimes I forget to be grateful to the U.S. and the world of music for such happy accidents.  Yes, variety can be work; yes, it’s worth it.

(Biographical info is from Wikipedia).

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Bluegrass Miscellany

Photo: Valerie Smith and Liberty Pike band

Say what you will about bluegrass music as the theme for roadkill, incest, and judge-your-neighbor honky gospel, you won’t see scenes like these at the symphony or the mosh pit.

Pickathon 2010 | OregonLive.com

Pickathon 2010 | OregonLive.com

If you're interested, here's the site to copy and paste for more photos where those two came from:

http://photos.oregonlive.com/oregonian/2010/08/pickathon_2010_5.html

Or have a listen to one of these, at least for a few seconds. The first reveals something of a pro, something of the myth:

YouTube - Still Fiddling In the Ozarks

The second is a young pair trying to get in touch with the bluegrass classic, "Cripple Creek." It's usually played as an instrumental, maybe because Chester Burnam's lyrics can get a little racy:

I got a gal at the head of the creek
Goin' up to see her 'bout the middle of the week.
Kiss her on the mouth just as sweet as any wine,
She wraps herself around me like a sweet potater vine.

Goin' up to Cripple Creek, goin' in a whirl.
Goin' up to Cripple Creek to see my girl.

YouTube - Cripple Creek

Happy Monday.

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Movie Review: Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone: A+


Is there anything lofty or even fundamentally human about a primitive mountain code? A clan’s code? Where are the boundaries between the individual and any group, from family to neighbor to law enforcement? Where do loyalty, love, and submission intersect? Where does the changing role of women fit into all of that? In the mountains? Well, mebbe.

Set in the Missouri Ozarks, Winter’s Bone is a must see. Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old girl, is the heroine (not merely a protagonist, but a bona fide heroine). She’s the caretaker for her 11- and 6-year-old siblings and lives in a rundown mountain home with her demented mother.

Despite her courage, Ree asks for nothing more, but the law will not leave her alone with the little she has. Her father, Jesup, busted again for creating “crank,” something like crystal meth, has put up the property as security against his court appearance a few days hence. Will he show, or will he leave his family to fend for themselves while he lights out for the territory? Yes, this might be the darker flip side of a Huck Finn journey.

The adult males in these hills have names like Teardrop, Jesup, and Thump. The country-fi-cation could be too much, but I fell for it big time, and I predict most viewers will. If the characters don’t get you, the landscape will—or the music. Listen for very nice renderings of “Farther Along” and “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens,” by Meredith Sisco. There’s other music, but I really heard those two.

Rewriting Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor (especially "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" or “Good Country People”?) is risky business. We owe so much to those giants of the past, and it’s so easy to cross one line into cynicism about country folk as mere critters, or that other line, into romanticizing them, that one wonders why any artist takes the chance.

There must be something big, maybe some fundamentally human thing, in the rural American South to make it worth revisiting so often. Winter’s Bone is one more reason to hope superb writers and film makers keep trying.

Apparently it’s hard to find Winter’s Bone in theaters, and I have no idea whether phone calls to your local Roxy will help. But it’s worth a try. There will be talk about this as best movie of the year or the decade.

On another note, beyond Altadenahiker and Ken Mac's recent interest in rodents, is there a reason for today’s second photo? Oh, I ‘xpect. See the movie.

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Winter's Bone, Mac Wiseman, Mythology

Set in the Missouri Ozarks, the movie Winter’s Bone is a must see. But it raises a question for folks like me: “Roots music and other mythologizing of mountain life—how far are they from the reality?” And more broadly, is it possible to know a way of life without living it? Is it possible and honest to romanticize a way of life if you have lived it?

I reserve the right to say more about Winter’s Bone, but for now: see it. It will win awards, and you don’t want to be standing in the cloak room with your nose against the wall while everyone else is cool and knows what’s going on.

In the meantime, meet or get re-acquainted with Mac Wiseman, maybe the richest, most fluid voice in Bluegrass. If you like it at all, I hope you'll wander around at YouTube, which has some of his other best stuff.


YouTube - Mac Wiseman-Did She Mention My Name (70's)

YouTube - Mac Wiseman Jimmie Brown The Newsboy

YouTube - Mac Wiseman - Wabash Cannonball & Old Folks at Home



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The Carter Family

YouTube - Anita Carter - Don't Worry 'Bout Me - Prague 1978

That's Anita Carter, sister of Helen and June Carter Cash. They are the daughters of Mother Maybelle Carter. If you don't know her or the family's classic, "Wildwood Flower," take a listen. This is American History, so sit down and be good. And watch Maybelle's right hand on the guitar. I recently read a description of her picking style, and it's baffling.

YouTube - The Carter Family - Wildwood Flower

I'm having a good time with June's 2003 CD, titled Wildwood Flower, one folk or country classic after another. Her version of "Sinking in the Lonseome Sea" is rivaled only by Odetta's version (titled "The Golden Vanity," I think). Now I want all of Anita Carter's songs plus Marty Robbins' oldie-goldies. Happy weekend, exploring the Carter family stuff available on YouTube. What a resource. Maybe progress isn't all bad after all.

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Individualism: Glenn Gould and Other Heroes

Individualism?


For context, you might need to look at Hardsleeper43.blogspot.com, Saturday, Nov. 14, in order for my comments today to make more sense. But I’m in the midst of paper-grading again, so I’m going to use my long-winded comment to him as the core for my post today. It makes for something like a follow-up to my Sunday thoughts about Maurice Manning’s poems in Bucolics.

Among many other intriguing comments about pianist Glenn Gould, Barbaro (at HardSleeper43.blogspot.com) says, " . . . after a few minutes you begin to wonder if everyone else is playing them 'wrong.'"

Here’s my reply, plus a bit more.

That's a great line and thought. I wonder if you've hit on the measuring stick for all greatness in the arts. There's only one Gould, one Mozart, and so forth. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds good.

Of all the significant writers in the canon, how many sound exactly like a predecessor or contemporary? I haven't done my research, and this is not an objective test, but I bet the answer is "none." Apparently we value the new, the individual, or the unique that much. I’ve always thought something along these lines—haven’t we all, including authorities on the subject of art?—but saying it just then felt like a splash of cool water in the face. Refreshing cool or icy? Not sure--it does raise the bar, doesn't it.

Then, of course, there's a companion issue, one that's contextual and therefore bothers that quasi- and half-assed-New Critic in me: as the saying goes, "You have to get here to get there." Maybe this: could there be Whitman if there hadn't been Wordsworth? Academic scholarship might over-do the search for influences on any given artist, but exploring the question somewhat seems reasonable (or necessary?).

Don't people say we had to have Mozart before we could have Beethoven? So, in a related field, I wonder who had to come first in order to open the door to Gould. Or Coltrane. Or Willie Nelson.

I think it's widely accepted that bluegrass grew from Scots-Irish music in order to be re-born as Appalachian music. Yet the banjo itself was born in Africa, or so I read somewhere.

So when students or friends insist upon their free will or individualism, I think, and sometimes say, “Really?”

Roseanne Cash's C.D., THE LIST

On October 11, I mentioned my inclination to like Roseanne Cash’s new C.D., The List, after her interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. Ms. Cash came across as a down-to-earth, likeable human, and I found it hard to imagine her as the product of such a star-studded life with her father or in her own career. Also, the few passages NPR selected from the songs on The List sounded great—both the song selection and the performances. I bought the C.D., and now that I’ve listened to it several times, that initial impression has been pretty much borne out.

To re-cap, in 1973, Johnny Cash made a list of what he considered 100 essential country songs and gave them to his daughter when she was 18. As Ms. Cash says in the liner notes, however, these are important American songs more than country music alone—for example, “500 Miles” and “Long Black Veil” from the folk tradition.

Ms. Cash’s rendering of those two, by the way, are among my favorites on the album. As she and Terry Gross agreed in the interview, she slows down “500 Miles” so much that there’s a sense of desperation in it. That’s an interpretation that’s valid and could have been lost to us in the wake of all the versions we might have heard by now, some of them pretty homogenized. Also, by “desperation,” I do not mean melodrama; this version has plenty of dignity and self-control, but it’s more earnest than the marshmellow-and-campfire overtones the title might have accrued over decades.

Ms. Cash’s “Long Black Veil” surpasses any version I’ve heard, except for Joan Baez’s, which was my introduction to the song. The simple guitar work (I think that’s her husband, John Leventhal) is perfect—impossible to miss, but not at all in competition with the vocals.

“Bury Me under the Weeping Willow” illustrates another tradition (bluegrass or mountain music) to which Ms. Cash is faithful. Her voice is just right for the song, and she seems to want to honor the tradition, rather than faking it with artificial bluegrass gestures or some jazzed up interpretation on a tune from the hills.

Maybe the nicest surprise for me is the first track, a piece I’d never heard before, “Miss the Mississippi and You.” It’s a bluesy, swing thing, and every note, every move seems right.

My mild reservations about the other songs boil down to two tendencies. First, there’s more modernization than I’d like—some wah-wah, other electric gadgetfying, including some of that growling machine that sounds like a cross between a dinosaur burp and a rhino fart. Shockingly, it appears for a few seconds in “Long Black Veil,” but in each listening I recover enough to soak up the song one more time.

These new-fangled electrics are only occasional intrusions. My second and larger concern is a tendency to slow things down too much, to turn slow songs into dirges—for example “Take These Chains from My Heart.” Or a fast song goes molasses, in the case of “I’m Movin’ On.”

And here’s a note, not a complaint. Surely people hear some of the quality of Patsy Cline in Roseanne Cash’s voice. As Ms. Cash herself noted in the NPR interview, that is a mixed blessing, for there is only one Patsy Cline. In fact, I wonder if the Cash/Leventhal tendency to slow things down too much is an effort to avoid sounding like a Patsy Cline clone. If so, the price is too high. Besides, Ms. Cash’s voice is plenty satisfying in its own right.

As if you need my instruction, please take my comments for what they’re worth. I am mostly unschooled in music, and there’s very little I’ve liked since about 1980. I plan now to look at other reviews of The List to see what people say when they know what they’re talking about.

On the other hand, I love things as various as: several pieces from Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well, some of Leonard Cohen’s work, a lot of Odetta and Joan Baez, some jazz, a lot of classical music, practically all of Patsy Cline, a lot of Linda Ronstadt, and a lot of the 1970s country stuff, particularly Willie Nelson singing and Kris Kristoferson writing.

In short, I’m not sure how stuck in the old days I am, but I surely won’t deny a dose of it. So it’s that guy who’s saying Roseanne Cash’s The List is very pleasing, much more often than not, and I hope it sells. This kind of music sweetens a commute and needs to survive.


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