How often do you hear a tune and think to yourself, “I know that tune, but what is the name”? I don’t know about you, but it drives me crazy when I can’t remember. Then there is the arguing back and forth amongst folks who all have some variation to the name or think they know the name, but you know what they are claiming as the name is wrong. The time following such events is sure to be spent searching online, listening to sound files, perhaps perusing lyrics, getting distracted by unrelated tunes, and sometimes still results in the frustration of not finding the name of the tune. I have such a tune that the name has eluded me for decades.
Many years ago I went to the National Bluegrass Festival at Winfield Kansas. It was the first time I had attended Winfield and my exposure to smaller festivals was minimal at the time. I could play chords and could sing a couple of songs, but that was about it. My mom and her husband where at the festival and while they were there as vendors, their primary purpose of going was to jam after closing their booth for the day. They were plugged into the jam scene and very familiar with who was who in the various camps around the festival. I met up with them at the festival where they had saved a spot to park my camper next to theirs. There was jamming most of the day and all night every day, frequently right there between the two trailers. That was where I was first introduced to flat picking. One of their friends, Arthur, was a really hot guitar picker and singer; he was at the jams in our camp frequently when he was not at some of the more exclusive jams. I became fascinated with watching how he played and tried to figure out exactly what he was doing. I would record the jams at night and then get up in the morning and try to dissect the tunes I particularly liked the following morning. I spent a great deal of time fumbling around the fingerboard trying to replicate what I was hearing.
Steve Kaufman was the reigning National Flat Pick Champion and was offering some free workshops at the festival. Mom, noticing that I had taken an interest in flat picking, told me about the workshops and encouraged me to go to one of them. Being somewhat independent minded and hard headed, I told her that I would eventually figure it out (still working on figuring it out…). However, one morning while I was trying to make sense out of the previous night’s recordings Arthur stopped by the camp. I suspect that mom mentioned something to him, but I don’t know for sure. He just showed up at the camp and stood there and watched me fumble around for a few minutes before he said, “It looks like you are interested in flat picking”. I told him that I was trying to figure it out as I took another sip of coffee. Arthur said to give him a minute to get his guitar and that he would try to show me a couple of things, so long as I shared the coffee. Having spent enough time on my own and not making much discernable progress, I told him that it would be great if he had time to show me something as I put on another pot of coffee.
A few minutes later Arthur returns with his 1937 D-28 and pulls up a chair across from me. As the impromptu lesson began he asked, “So what tune do you want to learn”? I told him I didn’t really know, but that I wanted to learn how to play something. Arthur said, “Why don’t you help me with a tune I have been working on”. After telling him that I did not think I could be much help to someone who played as well as he did, I told him I would do my best to help. Arthur proceeded to explain to me that the first and most important aspect to flat picking any tune was to know the proper chords, the chord progression, and the timing. He continued to show me the chords of the tune he had been working on. Arthur then explained, “By playing the chords for me while I work on this tune, you are accomplishing the first, and most important step in learning how to flat pick the tune”. So I played chords for this tune; over and over and over and over while Arthur played the melody, changing it up each time. Afterwards, Arthur said, “Keep working on the chords and I will meet you here the same time tomorrow; be sure to have some coffee”.
After he left I remember thinking to myself that I had not learned anything about flat picking; I was doing what I always did…play chords while somebody else picked out the tune. It did occur to me that Arthur might have just been looking for some free coffee. However, Arthur was a good picker so I would give him the benefit of the doubt even though I was feeling a bit hard done by at that point. The next day Arthur showed up as agreed and he asked me to play the chords for him perfectly while he picked the melody. After one time through the tune he said, “Good! Now let’s learn the melody”. He showed great patience and persistence as he lead me through the melody, note for note. He would show me a few notes, then play the chords for me as I tried to pick them out in context. We did not get very far through the tune before he said, “Keep working on the chords and the melody thus far and we will pick up where we left off at the same time tomorrow”. The following day again we started with the chords, followed by the previous day’s portion of the melody before learning the next phrases of the melody. Eventually we made it through the whole tune. Arthur returned every day and we kept working on it until it sounded pretty good at a slow speed. He said, “Now just keep playing it until you don’t have to think about where to put your fingers; then you will be able to play it up to speed at a jam”. So I did.
Feeling pretty happy about my accomplishment I felt like I needed to learn more. Fortunately there was one Kaufman workshop remaining and so I decided I would go and try to learn some more to add to my repertoire of one flat picking tune. I learned some more about the importance of knowing the chords, which had already been permanently ingrained by Arthur, I learned a little bit about some other basic tunes, and a little bit about how to find melodies on my own. However, in spite of all of the little bits here and there, I still only had one tune I could play, and I could not play it well. I kept playing the one tune I knew until I felt confident enough to play it at a small jam session. That night when it became my turn, I figured I would show off my newly learned flat picking skills by playing the one tune I could play. There was only one problem, Arthur never told me the name of the tune. It was the last night at the festival and Arthur had left early to make an appointment back home. So I clumsily asked if anybody knew the tune as I proceeded to play it. Unfortunately, nobody recognized the tune, probably due to the quality of play, but in any case, I never got to play the tune at a jam…ever.
Fast forward a couple of decades or more filled with a number of life events to include some that resulted in being told by medical professionals on two separate occasions that I would never play guitar ever again. It was time for the once a month guided jam and I go to help out as usual. There are a few folks at the Friday jam that I know, but more that I have never seen before. There is one elderly gentleman there with a fiddle, but he is wearing a shirt that says “Guitarist”. The fiddler’s name was Johnny and when asked he explained, “I played guitar all of my life; I even travelled with a small band for a while; I love playing the guitar, but everywhere I go there is nothing but guitars; so I decided to pick up fiddle”. Johnny was a good fiddle player. The scheduled time for the jam ended and a few folks wanted to stay a bit longer for a smaller jam. During this “after jam” Johnny asked if he could do something a little bit different and started to describe the chord progression. We all said sure and started playing the chords as he explained them. He kicked off the tune and immediately I started thinking, “I know this tune, but can’t think of the name”. I kept playing as he sawed away on the fiddle and then he started singing the words. I had never heard the words before, but I liked them. He played the tune again on his fiddle, sang some words that ended with “as the guitars played…” and then nodded at me as he thought I knew the tune. It could have been that he saw the light bulb come on in my head when I recognized that this is the tune Arthur taught me so many years ago and that I had never been able to play at a jam. So I happily played the tune for the first time.
Several folks commented on how good the break sounded, but I had to tell them the story about the tune before immediately asking Johnny, “What is the name of that tune”? Johnny smiled and said that is “Bonaparte’s Retreat”. So while I had looked from time to time without any success, I finally found out the name of the very first tune I ever learned how to flat pick. I hear people all of the time tell folks the first tune they learned and frequently jam class students ask me the same question. I am sure they probably thought it was some kind of mystique thing to shroud the secrets of flat picking when I told them I really don’t know the name of the first tune I learned, as if I actually had any to shroud, but it was the truth. At least now I can tell them when they ask, even though it is an obscure tune at most bluegrass jams. I will remain forever grateful to Arthur for sparking my interest and for taking his time to teach me the tune, as well as a little bit about flat picking as a whole, even if he was only doing it for the free coffee. I hope that I can help folks like Arthur, and others over the years, have helped me. Simultaneously, I will remain grateful to Johnny the fiddle player who told me the name of the tune several decades after I learned it. I am still working on playing it well, but mystery solved; I know the name of that tune, however there are still a lot more that I still can’t name. Maybe the next time I see Johnny he can help me with the names of some other tunes I think I know.
