A miscellany like Grandma’s attic in Taunton, MA or Mission Street's Thrift Town in San Francisco or a Council, ID yard sale in cloudy mid April or a celestial roadmap no one folded—you take your pick.
Happy to say that, but it’s a sad occasion in many ways, because I’m coming back with a tribute to the late great Doc Watson, who passed away on Tuesday at age 89. Of course, Doc was known first as a virtuoso guitar flatpicker—a guitarist who could play with the utmost musicality at unreal speeds: a combination that’s hardly ever found, because usually one of those traits is sacrificed for the other. Not the case with Doc Watson—he was a flatpicking phenomenon; I read a comment about his playing that it was based on “an economy of motion & an economy of sound”—that’s beautifully put. & secondarily, Doc was known as a singer—a rich, casual baritone voice that evinced his good humor & his passion as the circumstance required. As was the case with his guitar picking, he just sang so easily.
But there was more to Doc Watson as a musician beyond the flatpicking & singing. He was also a masterful fingerpicking guitarist who played in a two-finger style (thumb & index finger) much in the Merle Travis tradition—in fact, the video I posted on Wednesday, Doc’s version of “Deep River Blues,” was one of his well-known fingerpicking numbers. & he played a mean harmonica.
But Doc Watson also was an excellent banjo player who also played that instrument in a two-finger “up-picking” style. In fact, the banjo was Doc’s first instrument—interesting how that’s true for so many of the great traditional musicians—tho the oddest thing I found out about Doc’s early playing days is that at one time he was flatpicking fiddle tunes on a Gibson Les Paul.
I’ve loved Doc Watson’s music since I first heard him play & sing “Tennessee Stud” & “Way Downtown” on the great Will the Circle Be Unbroken album, released by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but featuring so many wonderful traditional musicians—not just Doc, but Mother Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, Merle Travis, Jimmy Martin & more. A man who overcame infant blindness to become not only a virtuoso musician, but a beloved figure & an important proponent of traditional music, Watson will be truly missed.
I wanted to showcase Doc’s banjo playing, so I picked his version of “Shady Grove.” I’ll admit that the internet has some disagreement as to who’s actually playing banjo on this recording: while many sources (including Abigail Washburn, if I understand her statement correctly) attribute the banjo on this track to Doc, I’ve also seen at least one source say it was his son Merle (a virtuoso player, again known more for his guitar work) & at least one credit it to Don Stover. So there you have it! But trust me, Doc could play some banjo!
In addition, I thought it would be appropriate to feature a video of Doc jamming with Earl Scruggs, another master musician who passed away recently, & one I regret not commemorating earlier on Banjo Friday; finally, since most of the guitar breaks on that video are done by Merle Watson & Randy Scruggs, I’ve added one of Doc flatpicking & trading leads with jack Lawrence, who was his playing partner after the tragic & untimely death of Merle in a farm accident in 1985. To memorialize his son, Doc started MerleFest, the great “traditional plus” music festival held each year in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
Doc played with real joy & passion—in combination with his incredible chops, those qualities made him a player for a generation. Hope you enjoy this wonderful music.
Pic shows the Doc Watson sculpture on the corner of King and Depot Streets in Boone,
North Carolina. The plaque on the bench reads "Just one of the People". The photo was posted to Wiki Commons by user Geologik, & is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
I’ve written about Bill Keith before in the Banjo Fridayspace, but most of that writing has been devoted to his performance of music that’s outside the typical banjo repertoire. However, Keith’s playing builds fundamentally from the bluegrass tradition even when he travels far afield; & his playing & techniques have contributed significantly to moving this tradition forward, while simultaneously opening up other musical avenues for the banjo to explore.
One of Bill Keith’s big contributions to the bluegrass repertoire has been his using his melodic playing style to further the banjo’s use in interpreting fiddle tunes. Of course whether you’re talking bluegrass or old-time music, the fiddle is the primary melody instrument , with the banjo & (in bluegrass at least) the mandolin playing important but secondary roles. There have been exceptions—Earl Scruggs was certainly the primary melodic mover & shaker for the Foggy Mountain Boys—but as a generalization about the genres it’s certainly true.
The fact is, the way a banjo & a fiddle produce sound are very different. Everything about a fiddle is essentially melodic, from the warmth of its tones to the sustain produced by the bowing; meanwhile, everything about the banjo tends at its base to be percussive—a banjo is, after all, essentially a drum on a stick with strings. Even the big resonator banjos favored in bluegrass have very little sustain—in other words, the notes die out quickly—& generally sustain is a hallmark of a melody instrument. To compensate for the lack of sustain, the banjo player has a simple expedient—play a lot of notes!
Now this has been going on for a long time amongst banjoists & neither Scruggs nor Keith, nor any of the innovators changed that fact. What they changed has more to do with the way those torrents of notes are generated. Scruggs style was based on syncopated patterns that played “arpeggios”—in other words, the single notes that form chords. In the sense that this is chord-based, one might characterize it as “horizontal” playing, because the left hand is fundamentally forming chords across the width of the fretboard. Keith’s innovation—in dimestore terms—was to produce the notes more in terms of scales than chords, so that the left-hand movement becomes “vertical”—in other words, the left hand travels up & down the fretboard.
I’d hoped to share a video today of Keith playing a banjo trio with Tony Trischka & Béla Fleck on “John Hardy”—the cut is from their 1980 Rounder album, Fiddle Tunes for Banjo. Sadly, I found out embedding is disabled on that video, but you can view it on YouTube here. However, I did find a video of Keith tearing up a couple of standard fiddle tunes in a medley of “Devil’s Dream” & “Sailor’s Hornpipe” (with rhythm guitar backing by Jim Rooney), & that’s a lot of fun as well!
Hope you folks have been enjoying Banjo Friday. Not to introduce a “buzz killer,” but I’ve noticed that the viewing stats for both of the regular music features, Banjo Friday & Monday Morning Blues, have been dropping steadily, & over the past couple of months are really quite low. At this point, they seem to be the least popular features on the blog, which puzzles me a bit. So if you enjoy them, please help to spread the word!
We know that the banjo has a venerable history in the jazz tradition—after all, banjo & piano were stalwarts in the rhythm section of many early jazz combos. But those banjos were by & large either 6-string “guitar banjos” or 4-string tenors & plectrum models. The 5-string banjo wasn’t much of a factor in early jazz, for the simple reason that the 5th string, which acts as a drone in virtually all traditional playing styles, doesn’t fit with the chromaticism that jazz has tended to emphasize.
Of course, we also know that banjo playing styles have changed since the teens & 1920s. The development of Scruggs picking led to a different form of syncopation, & while most of the bluegrass repertoire relies on straightforward I-IV-V chord changes that allow for use of the drone string, Scruggs himself occasionally would play songs from “the Great American Songbook,” as well as ragtime progressions. In fact, “Salty Dog,” which is certainly part of the standard bluegrass repertoire, has a ragtime progression & probably originated in the African-American community. More recently, players like Bill Keith, Tony Trischka & Béla Fleck have all incorporated many jazz elements into playing styles that, at their foundation, are built on bluegrass.
Well, now try to summon up an audio “picture” of great jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin playing a 5-string banjo: does that kind of blow your mind? If so, get ready to listen to the sound of Ryan Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh is without question of the most singular talents in the banjo field today, & you can hear him in either bluegrass or jazz incarnations depending on whether you choose his 2007 bluegrass-flavored release Songs for the New Frontier or the rather amazing 2010 Ryan Cavanaugh & No Man’s Land; the latter not only features jazz sax great Bill Evans (& indeed, Cavanaugh has also toured with Evans & is featured on Evans’ latest release Dragonfly), but also features his regular backing band: Kevin Knapp on electric bass, Tyson Rogers on keyboards, Bryon Larrance on drums. The album is an EP, but a generous one—its five tracks clock in by my off-the-top-of-my-head” calculations at around 36 minutes. On four tracks, Cavanaugh plays a regular old acoustic 5-string, that at times is reminiscent of McLaughlin like lead lines & at other times might almost conjure sitar music—but all the while retaining at root its banjo nature. On the other track, “Johnny Mac,” Cavanaugh breaks out a Deering Crossfire, a fully electric banjo, & puts this instrument to wonderful use—the added sustain & bite are integral to the song’s sound. That’s the Crossfire in the first video below, tho “Grand Dragon” on the recording is played with an acoustic.
A review of Bill Evans’ Soulgrass show traces the history of bluegrass & jazz coming together, pointing out the importance of David Grisman’s “Dawg Music,” which among other things melded bluegrass & Gypsy jazz elements, thru the Newgrass revival & Fleck’s own playing, to these current incarnations involving Cavanaugh.
There are links to the Ryan Cavanaugh & No Man’s Land album on iTunes & AbstractLogix at the band page (link on the first mention of Cavanaugh’s name); the EP is also available at live shows & on Spotify.
The videos showcase two sides of Cavanaugh: both jazz & “traditional”—tho the duet in the second video between Cavanaugh & Rex McGee on “Angeline the Baker” is not like any version you’re likely to hear on someone’s front porch! The first is with his own group (with Kenny Anderson on sax), playing his tune “Grand Dragon” (as mentioned above.) This is someone who looks to make a big impact on banjo music, so enjoy!
Happy Friday, friends. It’s the last Friday of February, so, how about some bluegrass banjo?
Actually, “Newgrass” banjo might be more to the point, but what a superstar band of newgrass/bluegrass pickers we have in today’s video! & an interesting song, too, originally penned by Mark Lindsay & Keith Allison of Paul Revere & the Raiders, & as such one that might not initially seem a likely candidate for a full-on bluegrass breakdown. Actually, however, “Freeborn Man” had been covered by bluegrass legend Jimmy Martin back in the 1970s—in fact, one of the major retrospectives on Martin’s career is the CMH 2003 release Jimmy Martin: Songs of a Freeborn Man.
Now for our purposes here in Banjo Friday we’re focusing on the banjo player in this super group, none other than Béla Fleck; we’ve had occasion to feature Fleck’s work before here, but in the past we’ve concentrated on his experimentation—his work in world music & even in adapting the 5-string banjo to classical & jazz music. But like the other great contemporary banjo innovators such as Bill Keith & Tony Trischka, Fleck’s roots very much go back to bluegrass, & I thought it would be fun to showcase him in that setting. By the way: Fleck gets both the first & the last solo in the video, so don't touch that dial!
Of course, given the talent of the players in this group, you’re not likely to switch the video off before it’s done! Tony Rice on guitar & vocal; Sam Bush on mandolin; Mark O’Connor on fiddle; Jerry Douglas on dobro; & Mark Schatz on bass—that’s about as good as it gets folks. Rice is simply one of the best flatpick guitar players there has been in recent years—amazing technique, amazing inventiveness, amazing musicality; Bush is a dynamo, frenetic but on the money; Douglas a non-pareil dobro picker; & O’Connor is simply amazing—I had the privilege of seeing him live at the Weiser Fiddle Festival several years back & the room just crackled with energy when he played! As far as Fleck goes: his banjo chops can stand with anybody’s.
This was recorded at the big roots/Americana music gathering MerleFest some time in the early 90s. MerleFest is an event put on by the great Doc Watson in honor of his son Merle, himself a fabulous musician who died an untimely death in a tragic farm accident; Doc calls MerleFest “Traditional plus,” & it’s a venue where you can hear musicians as diverse as Earl Scruggs & Elvis Costello or Taj Mahal & Emmylou Harris.
I know you’re going to enjoy this tune—great uptempo bluegrass!
