Hmmm...a fatwah on harmonica players... I think Mr. Hopkins may be onto something.
Hmmm...a fatwah on harmonica players... I think Mr. Hopkins may be onto something.
I guess I'm out of the loop. I thought a Fat Wah was an effects pedal.
So in addition to rules about what instruments can and cannot be included in bluegrass, there are rules about who can and who can't comment about what is and isn't bluegrass!
Does SPBGMA have a guideline, how much you have to care about bluegrass to have a legitamete opinion?
And if Ricky Skaggs himself doesn't seem to care enough about it to use the right number of guitars, what chance do most of us have?
Yer starting to scare me.
OK, I'm hereby issuing Fatwahs against the following in BG music;
Spoons, Bones, Washboards, any wind instrument (excluding mouthharps), washtub bass's, Drums (I don't care what idiots in the studios did in the past, I'm sure the BG artists cringed at their use on their recordings.) 5 Gal buckets, Cardboard boxes, tambourines and maracas, castinets, triangles (OK for Cajun music) and any other percussion instruments besides the mandolin!
Oops! I almost forgot...no d**n cellos either!
Unless you can blow a 'mouth organ' like Toots Thielemans (or like the guy I jammed with at Delaware bluegrass fest many moons ago - very rare), I don't wanna hear it. The honking, 'blues wailing' detracts from the sound and gets in the way, imo. Spoons, and all the rest, same deal.
Mark,
Your Fatwahs forgot to mention Saws. They are particularly irritating to me.
Rich
Right! I jammed one time with a saw player, luckily for the most part the b**jo picker drowned him out...yah, no darn saws!
The late Jimmy Martin and his gang of idiots:
Also a harmonica player...and is that an accordion? Too bad JM didn't have our expertise on what constitutes bluegrass, or he would have avoided all these violations of Bluegrass Shariah. But I guess he's onstage with the Nitty Gritties, and couldn't help joining in their heresy.
I believe the above fatwah gives permission for any true believer to kill him, had he not already passed to his reward.
Allen Hopkins
Gibsn: '54 F5 3pt F2 A-N Custm K1 m'cello
Natl Triolian Dobro mando
Victoria b-back Merrill alumnm b-back
H-O mandolinetto
Stradolin Vega banjolin
Sobell'dola Washburn b-back'dola
Eastmn: 615'dola 805 m'cello
Flatiron 3K OM
Is a Kazoo considered a wind instrument or a "vocal effect" since you can blow all you want but get no sound until you start hummin'? Just checking...
Chuck
Unlike Latin, bluegrass is not a dead language. It is being spoken by many talented people, as such it is evolving. Some like evolution, some don't. This is a fun thread to watch. I think we all have too much time on our hands. lol
Mike
All good things come in fifths
Yes it's evolved from a discussion about Ricky carrying 3 guitars in his BLUEGRASS band, Kentucky Thunder, into what is , or is not, considered proper bluegrass instrumentation in a proper bluegrass band.
You can say bluegrass is evolving. I say it's devolving into something that isn't bluegrass music...roots, americana, whatever...but it's not bluegrass music as I know it anyway. Allen, Jimmy Martin seized opportunities where he could to pad his income as anyone would but he always came back to the core bluegrass sound he loved.
There are some folks around here who seem to be hell bent on changing bluegrass music for change sake...I guess they have some sort of problem with trad BG music...maybe it's not sophisticated enough and they're embarrassed to play/sing it in the city or the burbs...I dunno.
In the words of the late, great Jimmy Martin;
I'm proud to say I'm a Bluegrass singing man, for it's a lonesome sound and the music of our land...
Gotta go back to the man, Bill Monroe.
He stuck with it - through thick and thin, during the lean years - never did he waver from his vision or its core deal of banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, stand-up bass. Sure, the off-shoots occurred - NGDB, hippie-grass, Kentucky Head-Hunters, the assorted 'jam' bands, and mostly, he was 'behind them, 110%, Boy!'
I will or will not call many of the newer things bluegrass (not here, anyway), but if Bill were alive today, he'd still be doing the Bluegrass Boys the way he always did it...at least I *think* he would.
Note: not fair to call the NGDB an off-shoot of bg. They were/are their own deal, with very much important music made, in their own style. John M. is a heck of a picker.
Last edited by AlanN; Oct-01-2009 at 11:23am.
I wonder if a similar discussion would have occurred on Jazzmando.com (had there been such a thing) when jazz began transitioning from Dixieland into swing/big band, then Bop, and then into fusion, with, of course, a lot of gaps/mini-genres/individual styles thrown in along the way...
Zilla, I'm glad there are folks who are die-hard traditionalists and don't begrudge your opinion at all, because I really do love that music. But, I'm also glad there are folks pushing the boundaries of acoustic music and developing their own styles...I probably lament the recent state of country music more, as almost nothing on the radio's actually country anymore. BUT, that's a discussion for another time/thread (that's been beaten to death, btw).
I have no issue with the archtop in KT...I like the rhythmic layer it adds, and it looks good in the band photo shoots as well .
Chuck
Mark, I love traditional bluegrass music; it's what I play when I'm playing bluegrass (not that often, these days). (And I'm a life-long Yankee with an Ivy League degree, who's lived in a Northeastern city most of my life.) I love to sit down with a good banjo player* and pick Footprints In the Snow, I Wonder Where You Are Tonight, I'm Coming Back But I Don't Know When, Rank Strangers, The Fields Have Turned Brown, Ocean of Diamonds, Once More, and all the other great Monroe, Stanleys, Flatt & Scruggs, Martin, Osbornes, etc. songs from the '40's through the '60's.
But there have been changes and evolution in the music since Monroe put it together 60+ years ago. The Country Gentlemen in the '60's broadened their repertoire to include everything from Bob Dylan to Gordon Lightfoot to Les Paul & Mary Ford. Jimmy Martin had a snare drum in his band back in the '70's (I've seen films re-released on DVD); Flatt & Scruggs recorded with Charlie McCoy on harmonica and Kenny Buttrey on drums. One of the big BG hits from not that long ago was Fox On the Run, lifted by Cliff Waldron and Bill Emerson from British rockers Manfred Mann.
I don't like many of the recent changes (did you check out Bad Bascomb?) any more than you do. I never got close to "newgrass," though I admired the instrumental skills of people like Fleck, Courtney Johnson, Sam Bush and others. Long unstructured acoustic jams leave me generally unmoved, even when they're performed by the McCouries or other bands I respect. I find modern BG "smoothies" like Alison Krauss enjoyable to listen to, but they don't reach me like, say, Wilma Lee Cooper or Olabelle Reed.
But I think the difference between your approach and mine, is that I don't say "that's not bluegrass," any more than I'd say Charles Ives "isn't classical music" or Archie Shepp "isn't jazz." It may not be bluegrass that I like, but I don't police the boundaries of the music. (Cut to Pogo cartoon of Churchy LaFemme as "Border Guard Bill.") There's bluegrass I like, bluegrass I don't like, and lots of it that I'm basically indifferent to. And bluegrass has become so big and world-wide and varied, that there's always lots to like.
So, to finally clamber down off the soapbox, Ricky Skaggs can have three guitarists, one of them playing arch-top. He can put accordion and saxophone, clarinet and pennywhistle on his recordings, and drag the mediocre Bruce Hornsby and his piano along on as many concerts as he wants to. I won't say, "Jeez, Ricky, that's not bluegrass." I may say "Lose the piano player, and I'll like it better," though.
* I don't think "good banjo player" is an oxymoron, despite the Cafe majority opinion!
Allen Hopkins
Gibsn: '54 F5 3pt F2 A-N Custm K1 m'cello
Natl Triolian Dobro mando
Victoria b-back Merrill alumnm b-back
H-O mandolinetto
Stradolin Vega banjolin
Sobell'dola Washburn b-back'dola
Eastmn: 615'dola 805 m'cello
Flatiron 3K OM
Allen, now you've gone and done it...How can you dis Bruce Hornesby!! I mean, he did record "Mandolin Rain," right? RIGHT?!!
(Just kidding, I say lose the piano player, too!)
Chuck
I don't care if they have 20 guitars, as long as Paul Brewster is with them I will listen. He's a tenor machine.
I think Ricky Skaggs could bore me to death with just on guitar.
Jimmy Martin sitting in with the Dirt Band is pretty irrelevant, although stiff. There are enough examples of his use of a snare drum, both on records
(in the 60's) and on stage; pretty annoying as the drum often covered the guitar.
BG is almost in its absence of a role or tradition for percussion. I'm sure someone like Joe Craven could contribute interesting stuff in a BG context. I just watched a DVD of Alison Brown doing a Celtic medley with Craven playing rhythm with his hands on the head of the banjo.
My main problem with the archtop guitar rhythm is it covers up the mandolin chop, same with a snare. It renders a mandolin chop totally irrelevant. Flatt and Scruggs had an extra guitar for a long time, because they lessened the role of mandolin in their band. And I guaran-d##n(ala Al Gore)tee you that it wasn't Lester or Earl's decision to record those stupid Dylan etc. songs with the drums, harmonica, etc on that last album...it was the label/producer...And Jimmy Martin used snare, mostly to give his son some spending money, and because that F-4 he always carried didn't have a decent bluegrass chop...there!!! How's that???
D C Blood Mixt Company
'96 Ratcliff Silver Eagle/Angel
'09 Silverangel F5 distressed
'09 Ratcliff A model distressed
..Blue Chip pick user...
www.facebook.com/davidcblood
www.facebook.com/silverangelmandolins
http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/album.php?albumid=109 photo album url
Whatever you choose to call this, I like the music.
Clark Beavans
Go back and listen to Bear Tracks with Crowe and Big Paul Williams on the F4, or Sweet Dixie with Emerson and Earl Taylor on the above-mentioned F4... and then see if you want to modify that statement.
Jimmy had perhaps the most powerful rhythm guitar until Del came along, that made the mando chop less important than in Monroe's band, where he often had inexperienced guitarists/bassists. You'll note the chop was much less pronounced when Martin was in the BG Boys than in the 1960's. Listen to Sally Goodin and Soldier's Joy (Greene, Rowan) where the chop is extreme.
Last edited by swampstomper; Oct-03-2009 at 6:44am.
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