What song made you want to play Mandolin?

[Roseweave]

I felt it was best in here as there's no general music forum.

For me it was maybe this -

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I know I wanted an instrument that sounded like that but I wasn't sure exactly what to get. I was even considering a Harp for a while! Then I decided for those high, ringy, fairy tale bard sort of sounds a Mandolin was the best. That opening chord is such a ####### pain to play though!

I have a pretty interesting story about that song too, I always really liked it back when I watched the show it was used on, but I forgot about it for years. I rediscovered it once or twice after watching the show but then forgot about it again. At some convention or other I heard it playing in the background and it was just so haunting it really grabbed me and I just had to know what it was. I thought it was a Yoko Kanno track since she has a lot of tracks like that(she even composed the B side for that single) but I searched through everything she did and found nothing.

So then one day I decided to hum it into the soundhound app of my phone... and it picked it up! I was so amazed. And I'm glad I have this song again, and checked out other songs by Akino Arai.

[lorrainehornig]

Way back in the 70s...Diamond Girl by Seals and Crofts. I saw they were going to be on the Mike Douglas show and Dash Crofts was playing that mandolin and I was captivated (by the mandolin; not Dash Crofts, who was not too shabby himself).

[Turtle]

"The Pizza Tapes", with songs like "Long Black Veil", got me really interested in playing mandolin; Grisman has a butter smooth tremolo and great style. I've always been a big fan of the stuff he did with Garcia. Honestly though, I think the song that really put the hook in me and got me to buy a mando in the first place was "Route 69" by Jim Richter. I realized that a mandolin is NOT just for bluegrass.

[JeffD]

It was the mandolin itself. No particular tunes. (Fact is I didn't recognize a mandolin in a recording or on the radio until after playing for at least 18 months.) I just wanted to play a stringed instrument but I didn't want to be another pseudo lonely five chord guitar strummer playing Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles and Neil Young from a book, like so very many seemed to me at the time.

I just had this genetic defect that prevented me from feeling comfortable being cool. :) So I went on to become stereotypically anti-cool, which is no better, and well, the rest is history.

So with no role models, I just figured the thing out best I could, reading from beginner clarinet books, and just thoroughly enjoying how you could feel like a different person just by holding the instrument.

[jaycat]

Ry Cooder - Kentucky Blues

[bratsche]

I just had this genetic defect that prevented me from feeling comfortable being cool. :) So I went on to become stereotypically anti-cool, which is no better, and well, the rest is history.

I have the anti-cool gene, as well. It's not a defect! :) And for me, it was no "song" per se that lured me in, but rather the imagining of what the Bach pieces I already played on viola and violin would sound like if I played them on their plucked counterparts.

bratsche

[Roseweave]

It was the mandolin itself. No particular tunes. (Fact is I didn't recognize a mandolin in a recording or on the radio until after playing for at least 18 months.) I just wanted to play a stringed instrument but I didn't want to be another pseudo lonely five chord guitar strummer playing Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles and Neil Young from a book, like so very many seemed to me at the time.

I just had this genetic defect that prevented me from feeling comfortable being cool. :) So I went on to become stereotypically anti-cool, which is no better, and well, the rest is history.

So with no role models, I just figured the thing out best I could, reading from beginner clarinet books, and just thoroughly enjoying how you could feel like a different person just by holding the instrument.

Hmm that was part of what influenced me too! I wanted something I could transfer guitar skills over to without being guitar. I always kind of thought I was going to learn Violin or Viola but Mandolin makes more sense for me IMO. Maybe I'll learn Violin some day.

[Loretta Callahan]

Old Joe Clark

[JeffD]

I have the anti-cool gene, as well. It's not a defect! :) And for me, it was no "song" per se that lured me in, but rather the imagining of what the Bach pieces I already played on viola and violin would sound like if I played them on their plucked counterparts.

Among the first "real" music I tried to play on the mandolin was Bach's two and three part inventions. Reason was that Walter Carlos's Switched on Bach, and the Swingle Singers "Bach's Greatest Hits" were played often at home, and I remember folks on FM radio were talking about how Bach in particular was a composer whose music keeps its integrity when played on other instruments. So I thought, mandolin could be one of those instruments. But, as I have commented a few times here on the café, I tried bits and pieces of everything I could find, including Broadway musical soundtrack albums, movie music, whatever.

[AlanN]

"The Pizza Tapes", with songs like "Long Black Veil",

Is that the one where Dawg flubs the intro and Rice mutters '"wtf was that?" Cracks me up every time.

For me, no song, but a picker: Frank Wakefield in the Saratoga bars in the 70's.

[Nick Pooch]

@Turtle
Took the words out of my mouth (or fingers I 'spose). It was Grismans tremolos I fell in love with. Thought it was the best sound strings ever made

[Amanda Gregg]

"Get Up John" from Ricky Skaggs's Bluegrass Rules. I went out and bought a mandolin and then found out that "Get Up John" used cross tuning. Talk about jumping into the deep end.

[Turtle]

Is that the one where Dawg flubs the intro and Rice mutters '"wtf was that?" Cracks me up every time.
Yea, that's the one. Even when he makes the mistake, it still sounds great.

[Roseweave]

Among the first "real" music I tried to play on the mandolin was Bach's two and three part inventions. Reason was that Walter Carlos's Switched on Bach, and the Swingle Singers "Bach's Greatest Hits" were played often at home, and I remember folks on FM radio were talking about how Bach in particular was a composer whose music keeps its integrity when played on other instruments. So I thought, mandolin could be one of those instruments. But, as I have commented a few times here on the café, I tried bits and pieces of everything I could find, including Broadway musical soundtrack albums, movie music, whatever.

Plz plz plz use the name Wendy Carlos, I am trans and I would hate for any of my earlier works to be associated with my male identity. It's actually super offensive since she was forced to keep up the male identity for "professional" reasons at the time even when you can tell from pictures she'd probably already started hormone treatment. There are a bunch of excuses for this but please just take it from a trans person that it's not cool.

[BlueMt.]

For me it was "The Blacksmith" by Planxty then Grisman's Rounder album pushed me over the edge.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z3A5Tgy47M

[Ivyguitar]

Around the Carousel. Scott Napier on the Larry Sparks album Special Delivery. It's Dempsey meets Monroe. Love it.

[Jim Ferguson]

Way back in the 70s...Diamond Girl by Seals and Crofts. I saw they were going to be on the Mike Douglas show and Dash Crofts was playing that mandolin and I was captivated (by the mandolin; not Dash Crofts, who was not too shabby himself).
Same with me Lorraine........I have been a Seals & Crofts fan for many years & it was Dash'samazing mando talents on Diamond Girl & Nine Houses that inspired me........what an amazing talent.
Peace,

Enjoy this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PyqXdCkJ9V0

[JEStanek]

Probably, Ode to a Butterfly by Nickel Creek. That was when all the stars and money aligned to spur me to get my first mandolin.

Philadelphia Folk Festival 2001 or so.

Jamie

[G7MOF]

I first heard a tune called " Banish Misfortune" from that point I was hooked!

[allenhopkins]

Watching Joe Val and Bobby Osborne in early-'60's Club 47 in Cambridge. I was playing banjo at the time (still do), but decided I liked bluegrass, and around 1970 decided to start a band with my brother and a banjo player. Since I was the only one who owned a mandolin (Gibson A-1 I found in my grandfather's attic), I was elected.

It's been all downhill since. And Roseweave, I sure do remember Outlaw Star. Still can't figure out why the villainous brothers were named "MacDougall," though. Who at Takehiko Ito's shop came up with that, I wonder?

[lottarope]

Rod Stewart's "Maggie May". That solo is so heart felt IMHO. That being said my biggest influence to keep playing has been Grisman, especially the jazz stuff. He stretches my imagination and certainly redefined what a mandolin can be and do. Funny I started out with violin til my daughter got to good to keep up with, so I bought a mandolin thinking we could switch off with who played fiddle and who played mando. Once we got it and I held it I knew ild found my life time instrument. She's still way better than me but graciously let's me play along.

[JeffD]

Plz plz plz use the name Wendy Carlos, I am trans and I would hate for any of my earlier works to be associated with my male identity. It's actually super offensive since she was forced to keep up the male identity for "professional" reasons at the time even when you can tell from pictures she'd probably already started hormone treatment. There are a bunch of excuses for this but please just take it from a trans person that it's not cool.

Well no offense meant. I was actually hesitant which to use, but I figured since Switched On Bach came out under Walter, that was the most appropriate.

[Samuel David Britton]

Greensleeves

[David Cottingham]

Ripple

[bratsche]

Greensleeves

That's the one that made me want to play violin, at age 8 in a new town at a Christmas Eve service!

bratsche

[buchrob]

Maybe not the song, instrument or player you expected, but this is one of my favs....



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hidOl8-mTk

Beautiiful extension/complement to Elton's piano style. Davey comes from a Scots folk background.

[OldSausage]

Dueling Banjos.

[Mike Pilgrim]

Ripple.

Thanks, Dawg.

[OU1]

No song in general....the mandolin was easier for me to wrap my hand around to make notes than the guitar....the sound was awesome and I have loved it ever since.....

[lflngpicker]

Mr. Bojangles-- the Dirt Band version.

[Jim Ferguson]

Here is another great Seals & Crofts video from California Jam concert in 1974..........Dash is playing some mean mando lead throughout the song........enjoy.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-v1e3BKW4P0
Peace,

[pryjazz]

Zorba the Greek, with Anthony Quinn, too many years ago. I was fascinated with the sound but never pursued it until a few years ago when I heard Jeff Bird's solo on a Cowboy Junkies tune, I think it was Anniversary Song(?) The notes were like crystal and cut through everything. Obsessed with the sound now, I'm okay with that.

[Turtle]

@David Cottingham, @Michael Pilgrim - I'm glad to see I'm not the only GD fan here. ;)

[Caleb]

Kate Rusby's "White Cockade." I think it's actually a cittern but the sound hooked me into the mandolin world.

[Steve Ostrander]

Ry Cooder playing on Love in Vain, then Dawg playing on Friend of the Devil.

[Richard J]

Don't remember the name of the song, but it was watching Levon Helm playing a mandolin instead of drums.

[JeffD]

Ok, another influence. There was this movie. On television by the time I saw it. Flight of the Phoenix. And one of the passengers was apparently Greek, anyway he played a bouzouki. And I thought it was great. Not so much the music, which I did like, but more that here was a casual, non-performance, kicking back and chewing up time way to be a musician.

I had seen that type of way of being a musician in other movies and commercials. I think there was a Coca Cola commercial with a guy sitting in the bed of a pick up, kicking back playing a guitar, a bottle of coke next to him. Something like that.

But it was a guitar. So this movie, Flight of the Phoenix, showed another way to be a casual kicking back musician. With a bowlback.

And I was hooked. I felt like, yea, I could do that.


And I even lived the dream once. Still years and years ago, I had been playing mandolin for about 4 years. I was riding a Greyhound bus across a large stretch of country, and I took out my Martin bowlback, and played until the driver told me to stop.

Even now, of all the types of musicians one can be, I most of all enjoy being the casual, out of place, incidental musician chewing up time.

[yankees1]

Big Rock Candy Mountain and The Girl I Left Behind Me !

[lorrainehornig]

Same with me Lorraine........I have been a Seals & Crofts fan for many years & it was Dash'samazing mando talents on Diamond Girl & Nine Houses that inspired me........what an amazing talent.
Peace,

Enjoy this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PyqXdCkJ9V0
Wow! I haven't heard that song in ages. I played that album to death when it came out. I saw Seals and Crofts in concert at the Valley Forge Music Faire (which, alas, was torn down for a grocery store). Nine Houses is amazing...I hope people take the time to listen. Thanks for posting the youtube link.

[catmandu2]

Elton...

Not mandolin, but 70s Elton, Steve Winwood, Van Morrison, Pete Townsend, George Harrison, Faces, Mick & Keith et al sure as hell made me want to rock out. What an intoxicating brew--gospel and blues, choirs, horns, pedal steels...

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After seeing John McLaughlin and Zakir & Co in '78 -- my life was changed forever and acoustic music was it. My desire to play acoustic double-course instruments was primarily kindled by Collin Walcott and Oregon in 1980 -- hearing the al fresco strains of hammered dulcimer at the end of the last track on Roots in the Sky was exotic and I couldn't identify what the instrument was--I imagined it was "bouzouki"--which I knew nothing about at the time...and of course Ralph's big Guild 12-string


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[Dan Cohen]

Andy Statman's "Flatbush Waltz" did me in! July 2nd 1996! Itzhak Perlman fiddled for klezmer bands in a show called "In the Fiddler's House" at Radio City Music Hall in NYC. The bands included Brave Old World, The Klezmatics, Klezmer Conservatory Band, and finally Andy Statman. I was so moved by that song that I was buying a mandolin and finding an instructor Barry Mitterhoff who had me playing Flatbush Waltz surprisingly, to me, soon. I had previously not cared for the tone of mandolins as too "plinky". I found the mandolin easier to play and certainly easier to carry around than a guitar.

[NoNickel]

Seeing Alison Krause/Jerry Douglas/Dan Kaminsky playing "You Hide and Seek" live in Normal Il. Stupidly started off on the dobro, but couldn't stop sounding like dying cats, so switched to the mando.

[Delaware]

Four Dead Guys Waltz by Chris Thile on the Appalachian Picking Society CD

[Denny Gies]

I was playing guitar and joined a new band when we moved. It had two guitar players so I started the mandolin to add something new to the sound and never looked back. One of the best decisions I ever made.

[peterk]

Probably RV-93: and similar music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVnVEcbY3ZI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVnVEcbY3ZI)
Initially I thought I might take up the lute, but chose the mandolin instead as an instrument next of kin which would have allowed me to make a much easier transition to from the violin.

[dant]

anything Grisman from the first 4 or 5 member units until now.


Dan

[Jack Roberts]

Ralph Rinzler's break on Ramblin' Jack Elliot's "Tramp on the Street."

[CES]

Probably, Ode to a Butterfly by Nickel Creek. That was when all the stars and money aligned to spur me to get my first mandolin.

Philadelphia Folk Festival 2001 or so.

Jamie

I'm with you, man. Heard it as intro/background music to a country radio show...instantly realized it was the best song they'd play all day. The banjo in it actually first caught my attention, but it led me on to 8 strings...

[CeeCee_C]

Battle of New Orleans as played by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

[Pushka]

Hiru No Tsuki is really beautiful ~ loved it @w@

I loved the sound of the mandolin for a long time, but didn't really notice it
(like Naruto ending 2 Harmonia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2JCF-fU83I) one of my favorite songs @w@)

But I think this song:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dysG12QCdTA

The mandolin can really pull my heart strings ~ but also can be creepy (which is awesome) ~ Silent Hill Theme (http://youtu.be/QNY6hviXRh4?t=14s)

[kevbuch]

No specific song, just the sound of the mandolin. Also, I want to play with others, and so many already play the guitar. I also feel more comfortable with a smaller instrument.

[Chip Booth]

Battle of Evermore

[JimRichter]

Sam Bush: Sapporo (early 1980s)

[Freddyfingers]

It was the instrument. Years of guitar playing finally caught up with me. Had a mandolin for years, but never approached it the right way. One day the lights came on, and here we are. I now enjoy the instrument, not the styles. That didn't come out right, I like a lot of styles on mandolin, but its the instrument that attracts me. That , or maybe a gypsy woman put the mojo hand on me.

[John Flynn]

There wasn't one song. I had long took notice of mandolin playing in popular music. Tunes like "Maggie May" and "Back in the High Life." I used to think. "Wow, what a cool sound." But I was a guitarist and it took me a long time to start thinking out of that box. Then I wound up in a church choir as one of four, six-string guitarists, which was pretty redundant. I got a small, unexpected bonus at work and spent it on a cheapo mandolin and the Jack Tottle book. I was hooked from the first strum. It didn't matter what tune I was playing, or that I didn't know any better than to play it like a "little guitar." Everything I played on it was magical to me.

[Elb2000]

Don't remember the name of the song, but it was watching Levon Helm playing a mandolin instead of drums.

I also like Levon, especially his playing of Atlantic City, (Springsteen cover song).

[Mike Sayre]

Any Homer and Jethro

[surfnut]

Started with Sam Bush playing at Strawberry Music Fest. Such a cool sound such great rhythm.

[Pittsburgh Bill]

It wasn't a song. It was the size. I wanted to learn how to read music notation and learn to play an instrument. My last attempt was 48 years prior when I took a few guitar lessons and my instructor advised me to save my money and stick with the radio. I think he was really worried about me ruining his reputation as a good teacher!
So moving ahead 48 years and a life in the not so far ahead future of living the majority of the year in a RV, I thought the size of a mandolin to be a better fit than a guitar. Then I heard the Pittsburgh Mandolin Orchestra perform and I was hooked.
Now I can't stop.

[Birtie Dean]

"I'll Fly Away" - Allison Krauss & Gillian Welch (with Mike Compton on mandolin). Even today, just hearing the opening measures, makes me pine to play that well... :)

Edited to correct spelling.

[bohemianbiker]

I don't remember the song they were playing, but 2+ years ago I was at an Indigo Girls concert and Amy Ray was strumming a mandolin and I idiotically thought, "I should be able to do that!" I've been taking lessons the last 2 years now and loving it. bb

[M.Marmot]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niIcxMuORco&feature=player_detailpage

Strangely enough - it was this song

[Elliot Luber]

Both Maggie Mae and Battle of Evermore. Took many years to sink in.

[Paul Kotapish]

This little snippet of "Billy in the Lowground" really caught my attention when it came out on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy album in 1970.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjaXYRr4hxs

Started looking around for a mandolin in pawn shops in Virginia, but didn't really know what I was looking for and sort of forgot about it. Meanwhile Loars were selling for $1,500 . . . D'oh!

A few years later, the confluence of hearing/seeing Kenny Hall, David Grisman, Andy Irvine, Dave Richardson, and Jerry Mitchell sealed my doom. Got a cheap Harmony and starting learning tunes. "Billy in the Lowground" was one of the first.

[Danny Thomasson]

I remember the theme songs from Doctor Zhivago and the Godfather during my younger years always facinated me. But what got me thinking about the mandolin and not the guitar was Copperhead Road and Galway Girl.

[californiajed]

Is that the one where Dawg flubs the intro and Rice mutters '"wtf was that?" Cracks me up every time.

For me, no song, but a picker: Frank Wakefield in the Saratoga bars in the 70's.

I like the one where they stop and Jerry says, "I thought you said you was gonna 'trickle' in?!"

[JeffD]

I guess, after thinking some, what attracted me to the mandolin was how I imagined I would be perceived playing it. I was going for a sort of quirky anti-cool emotionally distant walks alone Clint Eastwood meets Chet Atkins type of vibe.

What I got instead was a nerdy tape on eyeglasses under-socialized pencil box loner who plays, of all things, the mandolin.

[bratsche]

:)) :)) :)) @ JeffD

You mean you don't look like Clint? Dang, that's how I imagined you! ;)

bratsche

[R. Kane]

Ry Cooder's Billy The Kid. I too waited a long time to take it up.

[M.Marmot]

I was going for a sort of quirky anti-cool emotionally distant walks alone Clint Eastwood meets Chet Atkins type of vibe.

Aye - that's just how i ended up adopting a hard-drinking country-loving orang-utan.
113775

[Markelberry]

I went to Winfield and I was done mandolin was it started with fiddle tunes, still trying to learn them! And anything else that I am capable of?

[MSalisbury]

Actually if I had to pin it down to a single song, it would have to be a recording of my father playing Redwing on his Banjo when I was like 4 yrs old. My mom found the old Reel-to-reel tapes of my father and his friends jamming out (including a 4 yr old me rocking to the theme song from "Batman" - tv series, not the movies. You know - "Batman! Batman! Batman! doo-duh-doo-duh-doo-duh-doo-duh-doo-duh-doo-dah-doo - Batman! Batman! Batman!") and had them transferred to CD for my Christmas present about 6 yrs ago. I decided that I wanted to have my "Natalie Cole" moment and play along with my (now deceased) father, and they already had guitars, banjo and harmonica in the mix. Plus about then the Oh Brother movie came out and I got hooked on "Man of Constant Sorrow".

[JeffD]

:)) :)) :)) @ JeffD

You mean you don't look like Clint? Dang, that's how I imagined you! ;)


Well on a very cloudy day, from a distance, at twilight, if you wear glasses, ...

[Gan Ainm]

Steeley Span "The Bride's Favorite / Tansey's Fancy" from Below the Salt. It made me happy. A college friend built me a basic kit flatiron type mandolin (Thanks Pat!) and its been uphill since then!

[JeffD]

Below the Salt was a great album. I wore a new groove in that thing playing it so much.

[Paul Kotapish]

Steeley Span "The Bride's Favorite / Tansey's Fancy" from Below the Salt.

Those were the first jigs I ever learned--from that same Below the Salt LP. Hacked through it phrase-by-tortured-phrase on a funky phonograph player and drove my housemates nuts. Oh to have had the Amazing Slow Downer in those days! Still enjoy playing those tunes nearly 40 years later.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haef8QSRg3Y

[acousticphd]

"Sacred Heart" by Peter Ostrouschko in particular, but any of his waltzes would have brought me on my knees to the mandolin.

[Gan Ainm]

Those were the first jigs I ever learned--from that same LP. Hacked through it phrase-by-tortured-phrase on a funky phonograph player and drove my housemates nuts.

Well whatya know Paul, my SECOND favorite all time Jigs- laboriously learned in the "old days" from some great recording or other- was "Hare in the Hat". (And at a contra dance a few years later I was most impressed with myself that (at the time) you were playing the same mando as mine the Flatiron A-5 2. Thanks for all the tunes.

[Bill Baldridge]

Twenty years ago, I was in a studio recording a demo of some songs I had written. The friend who was producing the project brought in one of his friends to add a mandolin to the mix. It was my first chance to see and hear a mandolin up close, in that case a 1918 Gibson A. When I got home I put away my D-28 and started my love affair with the looks, feel, and sound of a mandolin.

[ollaimh]

I was inspired to play bouzouki by planxty just like mt, above but mandolin by Ossian's album st Kilda's wedding. gie' me a lass wi' a lump o' land and the title reel st Kilda;s wedding blew me away. great singing and harp and fiddle as well. I played st Kilda's wedding by ear the first ime I picked up a mandolin an have never looked back.

that Ossian album ranks as one of the best celtic albums of all time

[BigBri]

New member here... thought this looked like a fun topic to make my first post in!

When I was growing up, my Dad really enjoyed Jimmy Buffett songs and learned to sing and play along with many of them. As a result, I am also a big fan of Jimmy's (who can forget "Cheeseburger in Paradise"?)

Anyway, the first time I heard his song, "There's Something So Feminine About A Mandolin," I fell in love with the beautiful and haunting tone. At that moment I knew that I had to learn to play the mandolin one day... and add that song to my repertoire!

Here it is many years later, but I am now well on my way to achieving that dream. Thanks Dad and Jimmy!

Here's the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqBw0ztIqc8&list=PLC937423E076918F4&index=11

[bradlaird]

For me it was not a song. It was a man.
https://twitter.com/bradleylaird/status/436165364720758784/photo/1

[Perry Babasin]

Growing up in the underground FM radio days, I have always marked albums rather than particular songs. For me it was "Into the Purple Valley" Ry Cooder, "Angel Delight" Fairport convention, "Parcel of Rogues" Steeleye Span, "Where's the Money" Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks and "Summer Breeze" by Seals & Crofts. I saw all of them live and I have to say they blew me away. And later; "Live" Stephane Grapelli and David Grisman, "The David Grisman Quintet" (any album), anything by Nickel Creek and then I started playing...

[Joel Glassman]

This one:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6UqMuz2chI

Just played the "bing-bong" lick.