Lookout Blues

[tmsweeney]

James Bryan played fiddle with Norman and Nancy Blake as part of the Rising Fawn String Ensemble, their music showing strong influences from their native region near Chattanooga where Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee all share borders. He played with Bill Monroe and with Tennessee Ernie Ford and studied for a time in Ireland with the great Bobby Casey. He appears with Carl Jones playing traditional and original music these days.

I had both his Albums "Lookout Blues" and "The First of May" on vinyl but lost them in the shuffle of things. I recently found Lookout Blues on "Take's Bluegrass Channel" and so have listened to that pretty much every day for the last few weeks. So I learned "Off She Goes" which is very different from the version in O'Neils so I am thinking it is really a different tune with a shared title. I also took a stab at Bryan's own "Lookout Blues" which is very indicative of his style and of the music of that Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama border region.

Here's my attempt on Octave

[vernob]

Thanks for that tune. I'm a big fan of Norman and Nancy. I also liked the tone of your octave. Keep on.

[tmsweeney]

Glad you enjoyed it, James plays a bunch of stuff from Cole's 1001 Fiddle tunes on that record that I have also experimented with.

I was influenced by Norman and Nancy's mando playing as much if not more than the Dawg, we used to play the grooves off of any Norman vinyl we could get our hands on. Still looking for " The First of May" digital if anyone has seen it. Specifically "queen's polka".