Baker Plays Monroe - required listening

[tmsweeney]

I just downloaded a copy of "Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe" and wished I heard this amazing recording 20 years ago. The playing is first rate and the musicianship is extraordinary.
If you are into Bluegrass at all - this is required listening.
If you are interested in Bluegrass but are not sure where to start- this is as good a place as any.
If you are not into Bluegrass then I still recommend a listen, as it may change your heart.

[JeffD]

If you are into good music well executed - this is required listening.

[Joe Mendel]

Excellent album, I have it on CD and still have my vinyl copy.

[Timbofood]

It's pure KENNY! Another album from his catalog that all should at least listen to thirty or,forty times is "Bucktime" with Kenny on guitar and Buck Graves on dobro.

[John Hill]

Indeed a great album by any measure.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Another one for me, which i'd put along side the KB/BM recording is ''Kenny Baker - Master Fiddler''. There's some really sweet tunes on it. ''Frost On The Pumpkin'' & ''Baker's Dozen'' are also well worth collecting - in fact anything by KB is worth having !,
Ivan

[UsuallyPickin]

Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe "usually" pops up on peoples "name ten great Bluegrass albums" lists. As Ivan posted Kenny Baker Master Fiddler is also excellent. Between the two I probably have hundreds if not thousands of listening hours. For future reference Noam Pikelny , a masterful banjoist, released a recording " Noam Pikelny Plays Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe" with incredible banjo takes on Bakers breaks. The fiddle chores on the recording were handled by Stuart Duncan mandolin by Ronnie McCoury Guitar by Bryan Sutton with Mike Bub on bass. A most excellent take on a classic recording. Check it out ..... R/

[farmerjones]

Whoever said Bluegrass is not a sophisticated Music, never got as far as to investigate Kenny Baker.
I live in a hotbed of Upper Missouri River style fiddling. While it's quite sophisticated, it's not Bluegrass. Each of Bill Monroe's fiddlers brought their own fingerprints, to the show. But Kenny's sophistication seemed to appeal to Monroe in such a way as to elevate Monroe's ideas in music.

In Baker Plays Monroe, Bill "just happened" to be in the studio that day and offered his mandolin playing services. You hear the repartee of the two Masters. I've heard Bill Monroe play that high part in J. Ridge, but on that day he chose to hand it back to Kenny. One doesn't hear Fiddlers Pastime much around the campfire. Nor do you hear Stoney Lonesome. Two great tunes in dearly love to play. I don't know if it's required listening, if you're a guitar flatpicker, but if you're a Bluegrass fiddle or mandolin enthusiast, I'd say absolutely.

[AlanN]

Leave it to the Japanese. Somewhere in the stack, I have a .pdf of the mandolin solos from each cut, done up by an (unknown, to me) obsessed picker who transcribed every solo Monroe took on that record. As I recall, all in notation and tab. Need to try to find that.

[Pete Martin]

If you are into Bluegrass at all - this is required listening.

Most good Bluegrass fiddlers play most if not all of these tunes. If you want to play with then, learn these.

[brunello97]

If you are into good music well executed - this is required listening.

That's what I know. I'm not a big BG fan, but this disc is just a crusher. Dudes in Trichekistan would / should be rocking to this.

Want World Peace? Drop some Kenny Baker instead of some bomboleos…...

Mick

[tmsweeney]

Brunello97 you are so right
Listening to this music makes me think, "heck don't stress it, take a moment and enjoy life, this music will get you started or deliver you to where ever you are bound to be".
I recall Norman Blake speaking highly of Kenny as one of his Fiddle Heros, the fiddling on this record is just damn fine.
The adaptation of the "Turkey in the Straw" fragment into all kinds of turnarounds and transitions shows up in Blake's music quite a bit, I'm sure Baker is at the root of that, and so too Monroe to some degree.

[mrmando]

A few years back my mandolin orchestra decided to do a concert where we'd play some American folk-inspired music and also have a couple of local bluegrass bands play a set each. We invited probably the two best local bands: the Hot Young Studs (since disbanded, but two of the members are now playing with national acts) and the Wizened Old Geezers (kind of a supergroup of local veteran players).

The concept, which we made clear to both bands from the beginning, was that for a grand finale we'd bring all three groups on stage and play "Lonesome Fiddle Blues" from the Baker album. I wrote out the orchestra parts and also made charts available to the bands.

Some of the Wizened Old Geezers didn't read music and weren't all that familiar with the tune, but they worked on it and got their parts down. Meanwhile, the Hot Young Stud who'd been our point person was picked up by one of those national acts, and left us in the hands of his bandmate, who didn't seem concerned about returning my emails, or indeed about communicating at all.

A month goes by.

When I did finally hear from the Stud, he had every excuse in the book: none of us read music, we don't know the tune, we're too busy, I haven't been playing much fiddle lately, boo hoo. Long story short, the Studs decided to sit out the one tune they were asked to play with other musicians—the tune that embodied the concept and the reason for doing the concert in the first place. Not to mention that it's an absolutely foundational tune from one of the ground-zero essential bluegrass albums, one that no self-respecting bluegrasser has any excuse for not being familiar with, and that even if the Studs couldn't be bothered to learn a melody or harmony part, they could have invested the five minutes it would take to figure out how to read the chord chart and play backup in waltz rhythm.

We paid the Studs their agreed-upon concert fee, but I have to say i'm not particularly anxious to repeat that experience.

I won't say every bluegrass band must play material from this album, but I think curiosity is an essential part of being a good musician, so I'm unimpressed by musicians who refuse to learn stuff, be it a Baker/Monroe tune or something else.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From farmerjones - "Whoever said Bluegrass is not a sophisticated Music,....".I don't know who said that,but i've heard many folk say exactly the opposite,that Bluegrass music is a very sophisticated music form. For me,even back in the early days when maybe things were a bit 'raw',the way the bands performed was as sophisticated as any band in any other form of music - i'm thinking of 'Dixieland Jazz' here as one example. Bluegrass Music is an utterly incredible music form,in whichever guise it comes. I still regard it as the 'music of one man' - Bill Monroe,but other bands have expanded the genre,some for the better,some maybe not (that's down to personal taste),but Bluegrass music in it many forms is still as thrilling to me as it was when i first heard it 52 years ago & it was Kenny Baker & Bobby Hicks's twin fiddling on ''Stoney Lonesome'' with Bill Monroe,that got my fiddle switch flipped - awesome !,
Ivan

[AlanN]

play "Lonesome Fiddle Blues" from the Baker album.

That'd be 'Lonesome Moonlight Waltz'. Funny, I had heard the legend that Richard Greene came up with the bridge to LMW, as it was felt it was too harmonically advanced for BM to have penned it. Hearing Bill play it on the Baker record, he did juss fahn

and Bill plays the A note in bar 3 on the A part, not the C, as many do. My first exposure to this number was on the Tiny and Jethro Back To Back record on Kaleidoscope. Beautifully realized with take-off solos and harmony, it was a perfect choice for those Bill Monroe-clone pickers to do their thing on.

but I think curiosity is an essential part of being a good musician, so I'm unimpressed by musicians who refuse to learn stuff, be it a Baker/Monroe tune or something else.

So true. And I'd add in 'open-mindedness'. I hit a regular jam where there's a banjo picker who fits this bill. In his case, his closed-mindedness stems from lack of skill. If he can't play it, he dismisses it. Poor, poor, poor.

[Timbofood]

Gee Martin, maybe there's just not enough to keep the hot young studs interested. Attitude can kill a band PDQ, let alone a "stud"
If you want to fly some "not terribly old geezers" out and try again, just send money, I know some geezers who would find it a ton of fun.
One of them "reads" but we don't let him use anything sharp

[mrmando]

That'd be 'Lonesome Moonlight Waltz'.

Yes, it would ... and I went back through old email threads to reconstruct that story and make sure I had the tune title correct, and then I typed the wrong tune title anyway. I'm getting to be a bit of a geezer myself.

My first exposure to this number was on the Tiny and Jethro Back To Back record on Kaleidoscope.

The chords we used were based more on the Tiny/Jethro/Dawg version than the Baker version ... but still, there was nothing about them that would have presented the Studs with any real difficulty.

[stfiddler]

You can find a copy of the much eulogized 'Japanese Transcriptions' here. These are all Baker's parts notated (and in mandolin tab). It's all handwritten, which adds to its charm and it's really interesting to see how Baker and Monroe had individual interpretations of these classic pieces.

[Mandomax]

Thanks stfiddler! That site is a wealth of music. So many tunes to learn, so little time! Thanks again

[mingusb1]

One of my favorite records. I don't know of a sweeter tune than Mississippi Waltz...in any genre.

Z

[Nick Gellie]

You can find a copy of the much eulogized 'Japanese Transcriptions' here. These are all Baker's parts notated (and in mandolin tab). It's all handwritten, which adds to its charm and it's really interesting to see how Baker and Monroe had individual interpretations of these classic pieces.

Donal Baylor has been around for years playing bluegrass and country music. He is a bit of a legend in the bluegrass scene in Australia. He has some good notation on his website for a lot of popular bluegrass songs and tunes.


Thanks for alerting me to his website - very useful stuff on there.