Grey eagle

[AlanN]

I play this pretty much every day, a perfect workout in A (unless TwoHat wants it in Gb <g>).

I have gathered ideas from fiddlers, Herschel Sizemore, Ray Legere, Byron Berline, Joe Carr, Alan Bibey, Pete Martin, Tony Williamson, etc. and come up with a bagful of licks that are fun to play. Like the move from bottom A to high E inside 1 measure. That is a challenging move to get clean.

Another figure is 7-6-5-4 on A string using pinky, to 7-4-2-6-2 going down to bottom A, all closed.

[evanreilly]

Way back when I was a lil picker, I made an effort to track down versions of the 'Grey Eagle' (not to be confused with 'The Old Time Grey Eagle' in C) and came up with 26 different versions.
I think the best mandolin version was a Sam Bush one on someone else's record; Brother Oswald, maybe?
Of course, Monroe does a pretty parh'ful version.
There is also a great version by John Reishmann from way back.

[Steve P]

Two great recordings:
Earl Collins from the LP, "That's Earl" and Ed Haley from the Rounder CD 1133/1134. Both are in A and both are transcribed in my book. The recordings were on fiddle, but they play well on mandolin too.
Steve Parker
www.ragtime-resource.com

[mandolirius]

I do a combination of the Reischman and Sizemore versions, mostly Reischman. Tunes like that are a lot easier to take from other mandolin players than to adapt a fiddle version. I just went through that with "First Day In Town" by Kenny Baker. It was hard to pick out the sequence of notes with all that cool bow stuff going on.

[Ivan Kelsall]

I got mine from Herschel Sizemore's CD ''Back in business''.It's a real finger buster of a version. I'd like to know what record John Reischman's version is on though.Sizemore & Reischman are my 2 favourite Mandolin players - with NO disrespect for all the other awesome players out there,
Sasak

[mandolirius]

Reischman's version is on one of the Good Ol' Persons albums, the second one I think. I forget the title of it.

[Jeroen]

I always keep several tunes with those wide jumpy intervals, like Grey Eagle, in my daily practice bag. Berline's "Huckleberry hornpipe", Gaudreau's "Patrick's horpipe" and O'Brien's "the Crossing" are among my favourites. I have only heard John Reischman's version live (the good old persons with Paul Shelasky on fiddle); great version indeed by a great band.

[Pete Martin]

Try some Benny Thomasson ideas, it is where I got a LOT of my stuff on this tune. I think Matt Glaser wrote a masters thesis on how Benny played Grey Eagle.

[Bernie Daniel]

Grey Eagle is such a great fiddle tune. #When I was learning it I also looked for different versions and I found and there are more ways to play it than Carter has Liver Pills.

I started off playing the Monroe version and I still do. #But there are more melodic versions -- the Sam Bush version on his instructional CD and the Sizemore version on his CD are outstanding and here are four examples from YouTube. #

I really like the all of them but the Joe Clark mandolin version is great and the fiddle version by a young women by the name of Charlette Lewis is really nice too (do not confuse her with some porno star by the same name that I got back from a Google search):

Here are the four YouTube playings of Grey Eagle:

Mark O'Connor fiddle with Russ Barenberg on the guitar - pretty jazzy but really smooth: #

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta0D7yH20sQ

The Joe Clark mandolin version -- cool I learned most of this piece but don't play it anymore as it is a bit more effort than I want and I really can't just play it cold:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D31PXzFNd0

Here is the neat fiddle contest version by Charlette Lewis -- I think she puts a lot of neat licks in it and it is really cool arranement -- and I stole most of it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmX0vhuU2UM

Here is with Butch Robins with Jim Richter -- really good melodic banjo version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Bg0qiV51Q

[Flowerpot]

Sam Bush has got it all tabbed out on his instructional video... I've got the ol' VHS with tab to go with it, somewhere. I always though he had a good version.

[evanreilly]

Uhhh...
Now, how would Bill Play it?
Bill would play The Grey Eagle (http://www.theworld.com/~ereilly/greyeagle.mp3) just like this.
Or, maybe the next day he would play The Grey Eagle (http://www.theworld.com/~ereilly/greyeagle2.mp3) like this!

"You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing!"

[Jonathan Peck]

I just checked out the Tim O'brien version on mandozine. Looks like a great workout as you have pointed out. The first position is mostly closed and the ?third position? (first finger fifth fret) has some great pinky stretches to the 12th fret. I love those!!! Great for stretching out the fingers. Thanks Alan for bringing this tune to my attention

[doc holiday]

I just finished watching the Joe Clark version. I had the pleasure of doing a flatpick guitar workshop with Joe this past fall. Joe's a great musician & a great guy. His Grey Eagle is a killer. Thanks for the link