You Are Old, Father William

Sep 17, 2020 | Welcome Column

Yes, I have to accept it, my hair has become very white, and I shall soon be clocking up my three-quarter century. I have not paid too much attention to this, but I have noticed over the last few years that my attitude to many aspects of life, including music, has become more reflective. I look back on my years of intensive involvement with bluegrass and recognise that I now listen to many more types of music. What they have in common is that you learn to play them by ear, and they originate from what can be loosely thought of as ‘folk music’, with or without overdrive.

 
After seeing Pete Seeger in a television programme back in 1964 I started to learn about old-time and bluegrass music. I was told by my early mentors that bluegrass was ‘commercial’, old-time was the real deal. I acquired some New Lost City Ramblers LPs and another Folkways disc ‘Mountain Music of Kentucky’, and tried to get my banjo sounding like the guys on these recordings. Some years later I moved to the London area, where there were more musicians, and I was encouraged to play bluegrass banjo. In one particular bluegrass band, the fiddle player (himself rooted in old-time music) told me that when I had first joined he thought I sounded like an old timer down from the mountains. I now realise this was intended as a compliment, and in some respects I regret having sold out to bluegrass. In later life I have rediscovered my old-time roots and take full advantage of what I can listen to and purchase on line.
 
The availability of recordings and learning material on and via the internet has been a quantum leap for music enthusiasts around the world. Just to be able to hear the music, see people playing it and analyse what is going on using computer software, all this was beyond our wildest dreams even thirty years ago. An excellent banjo player I knew in the 1970s refused to show anyone how to play ‘his’ licks – he said it had taken him years to develop his playing, and other people should go away and learn stuff by their own efforts. He had a point – you must learn to listen to music carefully and work out for yourself how to play it. But the other side to this argument is that it is a great time-saver if someone shows you what to do. It provides a solid basis for people to develop their own music, through the principle of “standing on the shoulders of giants”. Students of physics are taught Newton’s Laws of Motion, Einsteinian theory and beyond – they are not left to work it all out for themselves – and once they have a grasp of what is known some will go on to develop our understanding of what is still unexplored.
 
Regrets, I’ve had a few…. Pete Seeger in his banjo manual had the right idea in teaching his basic strum and double thumbing before introducing the intricacies of three-finger playing. IMHO too many learners nowadays just want to start with bluegrass tunes, without realising that there is so much you can do with your thumb and index finger alone. And it doesn’t have to be frailing / clawhammer, which is much more demanding in the early stages of learning until you can get your thumb working right. You can equally well play many good tunes using the basic Pete Seeger method and I wish someone had shown me this when I first acquired a five-string.
 
So my approach to learning nowadays is to listen to the variety of music that I have come to enjoy over the decades. I enjoy borrowing musical ideas, licks and phrases from wherever. After decades of thinking that Bill Monroe’s recording of ‘Turkey In The Straw’ was the gold standard I’m now entranced by Loose Marbles’ swingy rendition on YouTube. Come to think of it, some of their improvisations might be transferable to the mandolin…… And listen to Tuba Skinny’s version of Blue Moon of Kentucky played on the streets of New Orleans. As the person who uploaded the video remarked, “If Elvis can do it then so can Tuba Skinny!”
 
John Baldry
September 2020

Read about: