Blog #1 from Barry R. Willis. July 2021. www.barryrwillis.com/blog
Discussion Blog
Why is bluegrass music so controversial?
What! You’re probably asking yourself about the audacity of the premise…the music you/we love being controversial. Why can’t we just love the music and not hear negative things about it?
Friends, this is the first monthly presentation of important aspects of bluegrass music which need definitive clarification. The source of these discussions is the huge number of conversations and first-person analyses by the people who were actually there to experience each of these topics, the pioneers of bluegrass. These discussions are aspects of bluegrass music which bear serious thought. The source of these thoughts and quotes are in America’s Music: Bluegrass. A History of Bluegrass Music in the Words of Its Pioneers, researched and published in 1997 by Barry R. Willis. Feel free to join the fray at barry@barryrwillis.com/blog.
So, our first discussion is that while Bill Monroe may be the “Father of Bluegrass Music,” he may not be the inventor of it. We’re going to take a look/listen to these pioneers as they talk about this topic and many more. So let’s begin.
If we look back to Mr. Monroe’s early life with his brothers Charlie and Birch, they were singing the country music of the day. It was excellent, that’s for sure. But it wasn’t bluegrass music as we understand it today. Even when Monroe joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1939, the music he was playing was excellent and even had a bit of “drive” to it (and was definitely pleasing the Opry audiences), it was not complete.
Sure, we’ve heard the critics talk about the accordion of Sally Ann Forrester in his band in the early days of the Blue Grass Boys, or the frailing banjo of Stringbean. These features helped produce some very entertaining music, but it hadn’t reached the status of being bluegrass music as we know it yet.
Curly Seckler quoted Lester Flatt (in 1944) about Stringbean: “Well, I wouldn’t want to say exactly how long [Stringbean was gone] but it was several months, and I know as good as we all loved String—and I love that kind of banjo picking because I was raised on it, my daddy played that style and I tried to learn it and I couldn’t. That’s how come I quit fooling with a banjo.. Bill told me one night after String had gone that he was trying out a new boy on the banjo. I hated to hear that because I was really enjoying the work that we was doing with a banjo. Poor old String—it just didn’t fit. He would really drag you [down] on that thumb string on those tunes like we’re doing today.”
After Stringbean left Monroe’s band, it left a gap which Monroe felt was necessary to fill, the sound of the banjo. His fiddler, Jim Shumate, knew of a banjo player who was performing on a Knoxville radio station with Lost John Miller and the Allied Kentuckians. That band also had occasional appearances on WSM which was where Monroe was playing every Saturday night on the Grand Ole Opry.
Earl Scruggs was auditioned by Bill Monroe. Opry star Uncle Dave Macon was there and watched what was happening. Lester Flatt commented, “Well, when he got his banjo out to do a little auditioning for Bill, everybody was ganged around listening just like myself because it was entertaining. And Uncle Dave was standing over there with that gold tooth a-shining, and he listened for a while and he said, ‘Aaahh, sounds pretty good in a band.’ “There was two or three playing with him you know. He said, ‘I’ll bet he can’t sing worth a damn.’”
Flatt was “thrilled. It was so different! I had never heard that kind of banjo picking. We had been limited but Earl made all the difference in the world.” [Lester Flatt Memories,” Bluegrass Unlimited, May, 1986, p. 82]
Earl spoke to author/musician Jim Rooney about the audition for Monroe. “[Before] I worked in Knoxville for Lost John Miller, I was in a group that tried for [a different] show there. We didn’t make it, but Lost John asked about the banjo player in the group, and I started working with him. Then he came to Nashville to start a Saturday morning program. We still lived in Knoxville and worked there and we would come over to Nashville to do the Saturday show. I was friends with Jimmy Shumate who worked for Bill then. The band included Lester Flatt, Birch Monroe, Jim Andrews on tenor banjo and comedy, Shumate and Bill. Each Saturday, Jimmy would want me to quit Lost John and go with Bill. Then, towards the end of 1945, Lost John disbanded and I told Shumate that I was out of a job and would probably go back home, so he set it up for Bill to listen to me. Bill came over to the Tulane Hotel and listened to a couple of tunes. He didn’t show much reaction, but he asked me to come down to the Opry and jam some. He showed interest, but I think he wasn’t sure exactly of the limits of it or how well it would fit his music, but he asked me if I could go to work on Monday and I said yes.” [this from Jim Rooney’s Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters. P. 42]
According to “Bluegrass Touches,” Bill Monroe told Dr. Charles Wolfe, “So when I heard Earl, I knew that that banjo picking would fit my music. It all come from a man in North Carolina named Snuffy Jenkins. That’s where Earl learned from, and all the pickers that played three-finger style. But he could help take lead breaks like the fiddle and would be a great help to me. So that’s why the banjo was in my music. Without bluegrass, Charles, the banjo never would have amounted to anything. It was on its way out.”
So, friends, that December of 1945 is when bluegrass music began. The speed and rhythm and proficiency of Earl Scruggs changed the Blue Grass Boys band forever. This is “classic” bluegrass music.
Lance LeRoy agrees. He told this writer, “In my mind, that was the beginning of bluegrass music. When Earl came, that was my idea of the beginning of bluegrass music.”
Notwithstanding the instant public acceptance and dominance of Earl’s “fancy banjo” (as Bill Monroe used to call it), it was Bill’s weekly presence on the Opry that allowed Earl and his terrific skills to be exposed to the world. So, without Earl, Bill Monroe could never have reached the heights of popularity which bluegrass enjoys today. And without Earl, Monroe may have never become the Father of Bluegrass.
This story and hundreds more can be found in America’s Music: Bluegrass. A History of Bluegrass Music in the Words of Its Pioneers. See www.barryrwillis.com for revised digital download of this out-of-print four-pound book.
Next month we’ll talk about Bill Monroe’s fiddlers of the early 1940s. You may be surprised about this topic. Future topics may include the creation of Earl Scruggs’ banjo book, Earl Scruggs and The Five-String Banjo. This conversation with Bill Keith will amaze you. We’ll later discuss the single-string banjo playing of Eddie Adcock and Don Reno. Eddie has a lot to say.w
Blog #2. August 2021. By Barry R. Willis. www.barryrwillis.com
Bill Monroe’s early fiddlers, and his baseball team.
Friends, this is the second monthly presentation of important aspects of bluegrass music which need definitive clarification. Last month, in Blog #1, we discussed who invented bluegrass music.
The source of these discussions is the huge number of conversations and first-person analyses by the people who were actually there to experience each of these topics: the pioneers of bluegrass. These conversations are aspects of bluegrass music which bear serious thought. The source of these thoughts and quotes are in America’s Music: Bluegrass. A History of Bluegrass Music in the Words of Its Pioneers, researched and published in 1997 by Barry R. Willis. Feel free to join the fray at barry@barryrwillis.com/blog.
And if you’d like to actually listen to these actual live or phone conversations I had with these pioneers so many years ago, you can actually download them by going to www.barryrwillis.com and going to Audio Interviews on that front page. With that download you’ll get hundreds of additions material for this history book. Simply go to Download “America’s Music: Bluegrass”.
This discussion is to clarify the earliest fiddlers on Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the early 1940s. Mr. Monroe explained to author James Rooney that he founded this band in 1938 with fiddler Art Wooten, guitarist Cleo Davis, and then a jug and rhythm player named John Miller. Soon he hired Amos Garen to play bass for him and headed for Nashville where the Grand Ole Opry show was. Tommy Millard was in the band a very short time in 1939 as their entertaining comedian and emcee. Davis often had trouble controlling his straight-man role with Millard’s hilarious skits. Monroe named him “Snowball.”
The earliest fiddlers in Monroe’s band included Tommy Magness, Floyd Ethridge, Art Wooten. According to Neil V. Rosenberg in his Bluegrass history book (p. 56-57), “During this period (1942-1944) Monroe was occasionally carrying two fiddlers with the band so that he could break in the less experienced man on the job with a veteran.”
1942 was a significant year for Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. It was this year that Bill Monroe bought his famous Gibson F-5 mandolin in a Florida barbershop for $150. The instrument was number 73987 and was signed and dated by Lloyd Loar, July 9, 1923.
Later on that year, members of the Blue Grass Boys were Monroe (mandolin), Jay Hugh Hall (guitar), Clyde Moody (guitar), Cousin Wilbur (bass, comedy) and Howdy Forrester (fiddle) who replaced Art Wooten. Forrester had already pioneered twin-fiddling on WSM with Georgia Slim Rutland. Dave “Stringbean” Akeman was hired as comedian, and as a pitcher on Bill’s baseball team. Monroe now had two comedians. Stringbean was Monroe’s first banjoist too.
A comment by Stringbean’s brother elaborated on String’s two periods when he was with Monroe, “As far as I know, Bill didn’t even know he played banjo when he hired him. After he found out he could play, he went to playin’ a little with Bill’s band. Then he left Bill to go with Charlie [Monroe] and then went into the service and then he came back and went with Bill again.”
In October 1942, Carl Story joined Monroe’s band, replacing Forrester on fiddle when Forrester joined the Navy. Story remained with Monroe until October 1943 when Chubby Wise replaced him in the fall of 1943.
Jim Shumate later replaced Wise and played fiddle with the band until Forrester came back from the Navy after the war (October 1945) and claimed his job with Monroe as was his right as a returning veteran. Forrester didn’t stay long and Wise came back.
But the above scenario is not the way Chubby remembered it when I asked him about it in a 1993 phone conversation while he was lounging around his home with his wife Rossie. Here’s a portion of that interview:
Barry: “When you joined Monroe, did you take Carl Story’s place? Or was that Howdy Forrester?”
Wise: “I took Big Howdy Forrester’s place. He went into the Navy–into the service–and I got his job in 1943. I happened to hear Bill say on the Grand Ole Opry one Saturday night that Howdy had to go into the service and he had to have a fiddle player. And I just went to Nashville and told Bill I wanted the job, and I did my thing with him and he just hired me right on the spot. So that’s how I got the job.
“When I quit, Benny Martin went to work for Bill. Howdy never did work for Bill again. I quit in ’48. Clyde Moody and I went to the Washington area and went to work for Connie B. Gay, the promoter up there. He had a show called Gay Time at Constitution Hall. At that time he had different artists: He had Pete Castle, you know, the blind singer; Hank Penny, Grandpa Jones, Jimmy Dean, Billy Grammer, Roy Clark, and a number of them on Gay Time in Arlington, Virginia, on WARL. That was back in 1948. Connie B. Gay did all that. As a matter of fact, he kind of got country music started in that area. Let’s give him credit on that. As you know, he’s been dead for some time, but I don’t guess they’d ever heard of country music in that area before Connie started it.”
Carl Story remembered it a bit differently, and probably more succinctly (from what I could tell during those 1993 telephone conversations. Dear reader, as a writer I will normally keep my own opinions out of what I write, completely void of my views. But in this instance, I had to make a choice of how things went back in those days. I chose to go with Carl Story’s version).
Here’s what happened: In the summer of 1942, Carl Story had a radio show at WWNC. Blue Grass Boy Clyde Moody did a guest spot on the show. Because of the War, it was difficult to keep a band together. When Bill Monroe called Story to play fiddle with the Blue Grass Boys later that year, Story knew that it might take a while to get up to the speed at which Monroe played. Monroe and Story were both confident that he could do it, so he left his Rambling Mountaineers in the hotel where they were staying and headed for Nashville. He took Howdy Forrester’s place who had to leave to join the Navy (Forrester would later return to the Blue Grass Boys after the War, replacing Chubby Wise). Other band members were Clyde Moody (guitar), Stringbean (banjo), Sally Anne Forrester (accordion) and Cousin Wilbur Wesbrooks (bass). Story stayed a year until he himself was drafted into the U.S. Navy in October 1943.
Monroe paid Story a salary and ten percent of the sales of pictures, candy, and souvenirs. Monroe also paid all the motel bills. When Story gave notice to Monroe, Monroe hired Chubby Wise. So, for the next three weeks Story and Wise played twin fiddles until Story left.
So here’s “the conflict.” So many people, including Chubby Wise, thought that Wise replaced Forrester in Monroe’s band. But it wasn’t; it was Carl Story. Mr. Wise recalled replacing a fiddler who was going into the navy, but wasn’t sure who it was. Mr. Story clarified this to this writer.
When Story returned from the Navy in 1945, he reorganized his Rambling Mountaineers on WWNC again, this time with banjoist Hoke Jenkins (nephew of Snuffy Jenkins who would soon play join Jim and Jesse McReynolds in Hoke’s Smoky Mountaineers band, and whose banjo style served as the guide for Jesse’s invention of mandolin cross-picking.
This story and hundreds more can be found in America’s Music: Bluegrass. A History of Bluegrass Music in the Words of Its Pioneers. See www.barryrwillis.com for revised digital download of this out-of-print four-pound book and the actual audios of the original interviews as they were conducted. Next month we’ll cover a different subject such as the single-string banjo playing of Eddie Adcock and Don Reno. Yet another blog will feature the true story of Bill Keith, Earl Scruggs, and Scruggs’ banjo instruction book.
Feel free to contact Barry R. Willis at barry@barryrwillis.com or through his website www.barryrwillis.com.
28 JULY 2021
New book – and a mammoth classic – from Barry R. Willis
The Bluegrass Ireland Blog editor writes:
It was a very pleasant surprise to find a comment by Barry R. Willis added to the BIB post two
weeks ago on the death of Byron Berline. Barry Willis is a banjo-player, airline pilot, radio
presenter, and novelist. He has also made a major contribution to bluegrass history: America’s
music: bluegrass. A history of bluegrass music in the words of its pioneers, first published in
1997, with over six hundred pages. I reviewed it in the December 1997 issue of the Irish Bluegrass Music Club Newsletter, beginning with the words ‘This is a great nourishing Christmas pudding of a book, stuffed full of all sorts of good things.’ To pick one example: the chapter on Carlton Haney, published the year before Haney was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
The first edition is long out of print but can still be found, for instance, on Amazon.co.uk.
Moreover, it can be downloaded from Barry’s website, where the audio interviews on which the
book is based can also be accessed. I strongly advise any reader to use also the voluminous
section of the website with a wealth of additional research material, which includes important corrections to the published text – for instance, Jimmy Martin’s vigorous defence of his reputation.
As well as the magnum opus of America’s music, Barry has published two novels
drawing on his own life experiences: The banjo pilot (2018) and Icy Strait, which appeared earlier this year. A feature by Richard Thompson on Icy Strait appeared two weeks ago on Bluegrass Today.
He has also launched a blog for discussion of controversial issues in bluegrass music; the first (July 2021) issue concerns the credit for ‘inventing’ bluegrass (a subject that evoked conflicting views when it was raised on Bluegrass Today at the end of 2020), and the second (August 2021)
is on Bill Monroe’s early fiddlers. Don’t miss the coming episode on Bill Keith’s part in creating the book Earl Scruggs and the 5-string banjo.
© Richard Hawkins
Labels: Banjo, Books, Controversy, History
Blog #3 from Barry R. Willis. September 2021. www.barryrwillis.com/blog/
Discussion Blog
The Single-string Playing of Eddie Adcock and Don Reno.
I met Eddie Adcock about 1990 when he was one of the great acts there at the World of Bluegrass when it was based in Owensboro, Kentucky, His band at that time included the award-winning rhythm guitarist Martha Adcock, and award-winning bassist Missy Raines, They performed on the main stage there along the Ohio River.
It was backstage where my claim to fame in bluegrass is. Allow me to tell you this little anecdote. Eddie parked his station wagon behind the huge stage. It was fairly quiet within the car so my recording of the interview proceeded quite well. He invited me to have a beer as we spoke. He was so very interesting to speak with. This recorded interview can be heard in its entirety by downloading it from my website: www.barryrwillis.com.
As time progressed, we finished our beers; he offered me another. I accepted, again. But this time I spilled a bit of it on his carpet. So that’s my claim to fame in the bluegrass world, folks: I spilled Eddie Adcock’s beer in Eddie Adcock’s car. Not everyone can say that, you know. At the time, I was very embarrassed, but now it is my claim to fame! How about that!
Our conversation included his life, his bands, his bosses, and his banjo style. We will discuss his banjo style here in this blog: Each month on this website, we’ll be discussing other important facets and controversies of bluegrass music history.
While a member of Smokey Graves and the Blue Star Boys,, Adcock used three fingers but mostly with a backwards roll. Don Reno showed Adcock how to play a proper three-finger roll and also showed Adcock how to set up his banjo properly and to use metal fingerpicks. Up until that time in 1953, Adcock was still using plastic picks on his fingers and a metal one on his thumb, which is backwards to “bluegrass propriety.” Also, Adcock was using his single-string style, which he, in turn, showed to Reno. [note: Eddie Adcock made it clear to this author that “I believe that Don Reno was inspired by my single-string playing, and not vice-versa…You see, I began music playing flat picked mandolin, guitar, and tenor banjo. Therefore I picked single-string style.] Only later, when Scruggs with Monroe played Scottsville, Virginia’s Victory Theater, did I, at about age ten even become aware of the use of thumb and finger-picks; but it would be years before I used them myself. What I did was simply to transfer my flat pick method to fingerpicks–it was single-string style, therefore; and that’s all I knew. I had no one to learn the roll from. My main exposure to banjo…I heard Scruggs on the Opry, I tried to duplicate his sounds with a flat pick on my brother Bill’s old Gretsch tenor banjo.”
About this time, the event of Elvis Presley hit the world. Adcock was doing tent shows with Smokey Graves and the Blue Star Boys and doing okay financially. But “When Elvis hit,” said Eddie, “he hit every music industry so hard that they had to revamp and figure out what to do. The only person selling records at this point in time was Elvis Presley and no one else. Country music said, `Let’s add horns and symphonies or whatever the hell we can find to add to try to get a different light ahead of us.’ Bluegrass people said, `I wouldn’t add no horn in my music if it was the last damn thing I ever did in my life. So the bluegrass people separated from the country. Up until Elvis, bluegrass and country were one and the same music…The public knew nothing about bluegrass music until that separation and it got to where, in about 1958, it had a totally different identity. So bluegrass waited it out and, although it’s been slow, it’s working. We have our own identity now.”
Eddie spoke to this writer of his time with Mac Wiseman’s Country Boys back in 1956, playing frequently on WRVA’s Old Dominion Barn Dance. Mac paid Eddie $90 per week—a lot of money. ”There was weeks that I made $300–selling songbooks in Canada to 3400 to 3500 people,” he reminisced. “That’s what Mac drew in those days. There has never been a star as big as Mac in bluegrass music. A lot of people don’t know that. I sure as hell hope there will be some day. And something else—Mac never missed having a hit record in a ten-year period yet. No bluegrasser can say that. His last one was about ten years ago, `Johnny’s Cash and Charlie’s Pride.’ He’s got more hits than anybody. I was in that last band as his banjo player (Adcock was the last full-time banjo player Wiseman ever had). Mac moved to California and worked as an A & R man for Dot. He made his fortune playing on the road. He still probably makes more today than any of us.”
Eddie told me of one matter which was very sensitive and important to him; it concerns his single-string playing, which is the main focus of this article/blog. He told Peter Kuykendall in an article called “II Generation” (in Bluegrass Unlimited magazine, 1975) that during the ’50s, his single-string playing was strongly influenced by Les Paul’s very popular act. “They made a big change in my single-string work during that time. I think I may have influenced much of Don Reno’s single-string stuff from what I was doing. [Don] didn’t do too much single-string stuff when I first met him but it seemed that I would hear him do more after I had been doing it.”
Adcock continued in this thought, “I have always loved Don, God rest his soul, and his family. He was a sweet man; and I am not telling this to try to shadow his greatness but merely to set the record a little straighter.
“Also that day, I showed Don my playing and he was extremely interested in my single-string style. He was playing mostly the moving chord style then. I didn’t think I was very good but he liked what I did. And he shortly went and told Mac Wiseman, who was having hit record after hit record, and who had just lost Donnie Bryant, that he should take me on.” There, with Wiseman’s Country Boys, he played both the roll and single-string styles.
“…The truth is, I think I did inspire him to play more single-string—but certainly not my single-string. You can ask his kid, Don Wayne Reno [who can play Reno-style exactly like Don Reno did]. He’ll tell you that Eddie Adcock don’t play a damn single note of Don Reno’s single-string style. And at the same time, I can tell you that Don Reno didn’t play a single note of my single-string style. We had a different approach–another way of doing things. We were both guitar players, which made our theories and ideas about playing a lot alike. But at the same time, they were different in the way they were delivered. He was big for barring things where I work out of a scale position. The way I always felt about that is that Don’s sounds faster and mine is faster. He was reaching for it in a different way entirely. Because I came just a bit later on than he did, and I had a jazz guitarist show me the best method of playing that there ever was, he had to struggle to get some of the things I got with ease. By that time, Reno was too far along with his own style to change. And this wasn’t because of talent. It was because he learned to do it the hard way. He did it wonderfully and got good results, but I did it easier because of what that jazz musician showed me.”
In the Washington, D.C. area in June of 1957, Adcock played rhythm guitar with Buzz Busby and the Bayou Boys. He had just started with the band, taking the place of Charlie Waller. Bill Emerson was the banjoist. Vance Truell played bass. Buzz Busby played mandolin. Charlie Waller, according to Adcock, wasn’t with the band at that time. Then, the car accident occurred which resulted in the formation of the Country Gentlemen. Sonny Presley was driving and fell asleep. The accident put him in the hospital for many weeks. Bill Emerson was not in the car. Adcock and Truell were severely hurt. It was a miracle that anyone survived. It wrecked Adcock’s 1927 Gibson Mastertone.
To fill Busby’s regular gig at Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia, Emerson called John Duffey and Charlie Waller to replace Busby and Adcock. Bill Emerson started the band—according to both Eddie Adcock and Bill Emerson in separate statements to this writer. Emerson did the calling. He started the Country Gentlemen.
When Adcock recovered from his injuries in August, he joined Bill Monroe’s traveling band for about six months. Ed Mayfield was on guitar; Red Taylor had just taken Kenny Baker’s place on fiddle. “I worked on Bill’s farm, too,” said Eddie in an interview with Pete Kuykendall. “When you worked with Bill you worked with Bill at everything. We planted tobacco and all when I was with him. He was out there with us right alongside doing his part, too. I don’t regret that at all. It was good training. It’s helped me a lot since then. We used to work six to eight hours per day on the farm, and then go play a show that night.” They made $14 to $17 per night. This was split between four people. “I made less money with Bill Monroe than anyone I ever worked for in my life.”
Again with the Kuykendall interview, Adcock said, “I was with Bill…at a time when he wasn’t drawing flies. That’s not to say anything bad about him, because all of bluegrass was rough then. We worked some places that didn’t even have floors. Sometimes I went two or three days without food.” In a different interview, Adcock said “We worked places with no floors in them. A theater in Kentucky, for example, I remember, two old pot-bellied stoves for heat. They’d shovel coal in them for heat and sit right on the plank seats on the dirt (in Nashville with Monroe). I had a room in the Clarkston Hotel. The biggest part of the time, I had money to buy something. My room looked out on the back alley, so it was a little cooler there. I’d buy a loaf of bread and I’d set it out on the window. I ended up just eating bread. At first, I’d set bologna out there; I’d eat one piece of bread, so I could stretch it, that type of thing. It was a very short while, in fact, until Bill moved me out on the farm, along with Ed Mayfield.” People like Marty Robbins and Porter Wagoner generously helped him out with a little food and money. Mayfield died of cancer about two weeks after Adcock left Monroe.
“I quit music and decided I wasn’t going to be hungry anymore. I barely had scraped enough money to take the bus home.” He got a bill-paying day job.
In the winter of 1958, when Porter Church left the Country Gentlemen (after two weeks as their banjoist), Eddie Adcock joined as banjoist. Adcock was twenty. They had already cut three singles by this time. “The Country Gentlemen wanted me to go with them but I didn’t care to go back on the road. Jim Cox, John Duffey and Charlie Waller stayed up the best part of one night begging me to join them. When I said `Yes,’ I hated myself.”
But this was the band which really kicked off the musical career of Eddie Adcock. This twelve-year stay with the Gentlemen was one of the key ingredients to the group’s success. “It’s just a magical thing. It’s a combination–it’s just something that works. I don’t question it.”
Eddie’s career is interesting and long. But we’re not here to discuss his career—only his single-string style. So let’s finish up our conversation on single-string playing.
Banjoist Tony Trischka (www.tonytrischka.com) told this writer in 2021, “For sure, Eddie told me (probably at IBMA 2013 or 2014) that Eddie was the one that got Don Reno into doing full length single-string work, because Don was only doing short licks before Eddie made that suggestion. Eddie also said that Don taught him some rolls because he wasn’t doing much of that.”
When Eddie was interviewed by Tony Trischka, he said, “I’d heard Earl Scruggs, but Ralph Stanley was the person who made me want to play banjo. Why I created my style was the fear of not being interested in learning [the styles of] Earl Scruggs or [Don] Reno or them people. So I just started playing what I could play: the single-string, Travis style, pedal steel stuff.”
Eddie emphasized, “I want to make sure that everybody knows I didn’t teach Don Reno anything. Don Reno does his own single-string his own way. I learned my single-string even prior to seeing Don. One guy that affected both of us was Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith. He was a hell of a tenor banjo player and I tried to play tenor banjo just exactly like him. So when I got the 5-String, guess what I did? I tuned it like a 5, but I still tried to single string everything. Don heard me play with Smokey Graves [and the Blue Star Boys] and stopped by this radio station—him and Red (Smiley)—and told me he liked my banjo playing. I had two uncomfortable plastic finger picks and he gave me a set of Nationals.
“Don was doing little (single-string) licks. He taught me the roll. I was just doing an (alternating thumb) roll (T I T M). And when I played single-string, it seemed I knew what I was doing. (Don) just showed me the forward roll (I M T I M T I M). I thought it was the most wonderful thing I ever learned. Don was playing licks…single-string licks. I would play a whole tune single-string. And Smokey said ‘more rolls.’
“Don Reno had nothing to do with me playing single-string and, to prove that, I don’t do one single position of the single-string that he does. I know that because Don Wayne (Don Reno’s son) told me [that]. I met Don in ’55, I think. I didn’t show Don Reno anything. I don’t want any of his glory, nor do I want to give any of mine away. I just took the guitar, tenor banjo and mandolin stuff and played it on the 5 string.”
Tony Trischka was kind enough to analyze the single-string styles of Eddie and Don. He wrote, “Eddie Adcock and Don Reno are both banjo pioneers (and in Eddie’s case, still creating) known for their single-string styles. Though, on casual listening, it sounds like they’re doing basically the same thing, they actually each have their own approach. From the transcriptions I’ve done of their playing, and there are, of course, many that I’ve not done, it seems that Don had more of a tendency to work out of chord positions when playing linear licks. His single-string playing on the wonderful “Follow the Leader” has him exclusively choosing notes out of a “D” position, moved around the neck. His single string B part on “Dixie Breakdown” also finds him working out of a D position, but also out of an F position on the C and D chords. With a tune like “Arkansas Traveler,” Don is mixing rolls with single-string on the A Part. He uses the single-string to bring out the exact melody. On the B Part he’s less chord-position-oriented and more scale-oriented, hewing close to the melody of the tune.
“Eddie too, judging from his recordings early on in his career, would sometimes work out of chord positions. I transcribed his single-string solo on “Bluebell” with the Country Gentlemen and he’s working primarily out of a “barre position,” though here and there out of an F position. In a couple of instances Eddie stretches a little bit to break out of a strictly chord box.
“In terms of right hand approaches, Don Reno, as far as I know, always played his single-string style by alternating thumb and index on succeeding eighth notes. In contrast, Eddie would sometimes use three fingers of the right hand: thumb, index and middle, in that order. This is called a forward roll. He would do this often when playing scales and this approach would crop up in his other single-string work as well. Later in his career, Eddie would be less beholden to strict chord positions and would be freer to move within chord positions. Witness “Call Me the Breeze,” His note choices would also be a bit freer and less diatonic (do re mi scale oriented) than Don’s.
“These are my impressions based on transcribing solos and watching them both in person and in videos. There of course may well be exceptions to my limited overview, considering the entire arc of their careers, and music they may have made at home, that stretched beyond what’s out there for public consumption.
“The bottom line is, Don and Eddie have each greatly stretched the boundaries of what can be done on the banjo and any comments I’ve made are not intended to show a preference for one over the other. My respect for both of their contributions runs very deep.”
Reno historian and student of Reno’s music Jason Skinner posted a 1979 interview of Don Reno in a video called Bluegrass on the Road which took place at Bill Grant’s Bluegrass Festival at Salt Creek Park, Hugo, Oklahoma. Don Reno said, “I was always a breakdown lover, you know. I used to play fiddle a little bit. I wanted to get the same notes on the mandolin as I could on the fiddle, you know. Rolling [on the banjo], it’s hard to do that so I decided, you know, that you can’t use a straight pick and push them a straight (this part of the interview was a bit unintelligible) take two finger picks so I come up for a deal of down on the thumb and up with the first finger. It’s a split-second timing and you get the same effect that you get with a flat pick but then if you want to roll you got your finger picks on so he can roll. And that’s how I come to come up with a one-string stuff, you know—what they call a flat pickin’ now, I guess, on the banjo. I know somebody’s always coming up with a new name—whatever you do. And I don’t care what they call it as long as you listen to it.”
At this point, we need to introduce Jason Skinner, a very proficient Reno-style banjo player, and even plays Reno’s guitar style as well. Jason commented on the difference between Reno’s single-string style versus that of Eddie Adcock.
Mr. Skinner wrote to this writer in 2021, “Hey Barry, Don and Eddie use totally different single-string passages. Unless Eddie does a Reno lick on purpose, most of Don’s single-string licks are based off running through a D or F position chord. Eddie uses a lot of single-string licks based off a barred position. I really don’t play much Adcock style but that’s what I’ve noticed by listening and watching Eddie. Not sure if he purposely avoids Don’s signature patterns to distinguish himself from Don, or that’s just what he came up with naturally.
Jason added, “Eddie himself told me they use totally different single patterns. Which is obvious if you listen to Don and Eddie. A lot of people try to put Eddie and Don in the same boat. Their styles are completely different. Yes, they both have elements of guitar playing, but the styles are not the same. Eddie gets pretty upset when people do that…notable banjo players that should know better. And I don’t blame him. Eddie is one of the very few that developed a completely different style of his own. There’s really on a handful of banjo players that have done that…especially notable banjo players that should know better.”
Skinner continued, “We talked about this very thing at Don Wayne Reno’s house one time. Although I don’t play much Adcock style, I love his playing. I do throw in an Adcock-influenced lick once in a while in my playing, I usually stick to strictly Reno. Adcock should be considered a master right up there with Reno, Scruggs and [Bill] Keith.”
Here’s Jason Skinner doing displaying what Don Reno does on his banjo: “Double Mountain Rock” – YouTube
A lot of folks used to ask Don Reno to play “Arkansas Traveler.” You can see Reno’s style on full display here. Thanks to Jason Skinner for posting it. Also in the band at that time were Mack Magaha on fiddle, Ronnie Reno on mandolin, Red Smiley on guitar, and I’m guessing that’s John Palmer or Duck Austin on bass.
As long as we’re displaying the styles of these two men from examples on the internet, let’s see what Eddie did with “Downtown Boogie.” Eddie’s style is on full display here. And here.
More of Don Reno’s style is on display with Don Wayne Reno and Jason Skinner playing “Limehouse Blues” back in 2017 at a workshop in Clarksville, Tennessee.
So, Readers, you can tell that the styles are completely different. Each man created his own style of single-string banjo playing. Each can be studied separately. Reno began his style to differentiate his playing from Earl Scruggs who had just gained considerable fame during his tenure with Bill Monroe. Eddie created his own style out of his own creative skills, also knowing that he needed to innovate in a way which would make use of his tremendous musical talents. That’s it for this month’s history blog. Next month we’ll plan on delving into the story of Earl Scruggs and Bill Keith and their creation of Earl Scruggs and the Five String Banjo and the controversy which goes with this story. For more bluegrass history, go to www.barryrwillis.com. For more of these blogs, go to www.barryrwillis.com/blog .
Note from Chuck “The Duke of Pearl” Erikson. September 2021
I read Banjo Pilot and very much enjoyed it, and am going to read the sequel..
I read all the articles [in your blog] and it’s a fascinating story about Eddie and Don’s relationship and influences. Your stuff is an unequalled historical gold mine of backstories that’s worth many rereadings.
Hope you’re managing to stay healthy, purposeful, and fulfilled. God didn’t intend for those who love Him to be the most boring people on earth.
Chuck
Blog #4. October 2021. By Barry R. Willis. www.barryrwillis.com.
This book, a collaboration between Earl Scruggs, Bill Keith and Burt Brent, is the first serious and certainly significant contribution to banjo players interested in learning how to play banjo the way Earl Scruggs did.
William Bradford “Bill” Keith is one of only a handful of banjoists who expanded the horizons of bluegrass music when he exposed the world to entire tunes of melodic banjo playing. This he did when he joined Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. The entire story is here, verified by Mr. Keith before it went to print in America’s Music: Bluegrass – A History of Bluegrass Music in the Words of Its Pioneers (written by Barry R. Willis and published in 1997. All rights reserved). This publication is now available digitally on this website.
When I presented the final copy of what you’re about to read to Mr. Keith, he read it through carefully and shook his head, muttering that what he says here may offend some people but it’s the truth. So we published it.
The following comes directly from America’s Music: Bluegrass and comes complete with all the footnotes associated with these quotations. Here is his story:
The contributions to bluegrass music by William Bradford Keith are legendary; they changed bluegrass music. His melodic banjo playing is often called “Keith style” picking. Tony Trischka wrote, “Earl Scruggs gave us drive, syncopation, and the smooth, three-finger right hand roll. What he didn’t provide for us, though, was a way to play scales or the long, flowing melody lines that grow out of them. With this new style, it became possible for a banjo player to pick fiddle tunes note-for-note as the fiddler would. In addition, an entirely new repertoire of exciting licks and runs grew up; and suddenly, there was something to play besides Scruggs style.”
As for using Scruggs/Keith tuners, he didn’t actually invent the method of re-tuning strings which Earl Scruggs used in songs such as “Flint Hill Special,” but he did help invent the D-tuners which make the songs easier to play and have a much cleaner look on the banjo.
Bill Keith was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, in 1939. Around 1952, he played the plectrum banjo in the Boston/Cambridge-based Dixieland bands. He studied the tenor “Dixieland” style of banjo chord construction and music theory at Exeter Academy and Amherst College.
In 1957, he bought and began playing a $15 longneck five-string banjo. He used Pete Seeger’s instruction book and strove to learn Earl Scruggs’ style. He was influenced by Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Don Stover, Don Reno and the Lilly Brothers. He was already somewhat accomplished on the ukulele, piano, tenor banjo and plectrum banjo. His five-string style was patterned after Pete Seeger’s style for the next couple years, then he began concentrating on Scruggs style—still with a longneck banjo. Keith and Jim Rooney began playing local gigs around the Amherst, Massachusetts, area. He made his first television appearance with this banjo on a local television station near college in 1957. He also played in a local bluegrass band and soon stepped up to a Gibson bluegrass-style banjo
A significant influence on Keith was Billy Faier who played “Sailor’s Hornpipe” using the banjo in a hammering-on style. Nevertheless, “My inspiration was a fiddler,” said Bill Keith, “When I heard a fiddler playing ‘Devil’s Dream,’ I said I could get those notes to come out in that order on the banjo. I know where those notes are—I just have to play the notes, not rolls. That was the winter of ‘59 to ‘60. This was when I first played ‘Devil’s Dream.’ It wasn’t recorded until ‘61.”
Probably the actual occasion for developing this melodic style of banjo playing was due to weekly visits to Nova Scotia fiddler (living in Massachusetts) June Hall. She would play many fiddle tunes, including “Devil’s Dream” for him. That is where he decided that he wanted to play the melodic style banjo. Keith also began developing “Sailor’s Hornpipe” into a medley with “Devil’s Dream.”
In reference to some authors who had written that Bobby Thompson was playing this melodic/chromatic music while he was with Jim and Jesse several years before Keith played it with Monroe, Keith replied, “I spoke to Jim and Jesse themselves and they don’t really remember Bobby playing fiddle tunes ‘cause when I got down to Nashville (1963) there were a lot of people saying that they had never heard that before. And Jim and Jesse were among them.”
But “I never met Bobby [Thompson] until after I had worked with Bill Monroe. He had already worked with Jim and Jesse and we know that he recorded quite a few things with them including ‘Dixie Hoedown,’ one of my favorites which has a little bit of what later became his style, I think. Other things like ‘Banjolina’ were pretty much ‘Scruggsy’ rolls and not all that melodic. In fact, there are only parts of the ‘Dixie Hoedown’ that are. The fact is, when I began working with Bill Monroe in the spring of ‘63, Bobby Thompson was with the Army National Guard in South Carolina and he told me he used to listen to Bill Monroe on the Opry on Saturday nights when I was playing. I was featured on the fiddle tunes with that band on six instrumentals which had a lot of melodic stuff in them. So I feel that I could have had an influence on Bobby. But I don’t feel that I influenced him in the direction he took in the bluesy thing and the stuff on ‘Area Code 615.’”
During the early 1960s, Bill Keith started transcribing many of Earl Scruggs’ songs onto paper. He did this by using tablature. When asked if he invented this technique of teaching and writing, he replied emphatically, “Absolutely not! I learned from Pete Seeger who points out that the lute players of the 18th century used it. He adapted an earlier form of it to the banjo and the first time I saw tablature was in Pete Seeger’s book in 1957.”
Keith also learned a lot about bluegrass music from Don Stover when the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover had a band. The 1961 “lessons” were merely visits to Stover’s house—Don wouldn’t demonstrate, said Keith. “In ‘61 and ‘62, I saw heavy amounts of Don (Stover) at the Hillbilly Ranch where he and the Lilly Brothers alternated half-hours with another band. And I spent many an evening there nursing a few beers,” he told Pete Wernick in a January 1984 interview.
In September of 1961, just before Keith went into the USAF, he (banjo), Jim Rooney (guitar), Joe Val (mandolin), Herb Hooven (fiddle) and Fritz Richmond (bass) recorded “Livin’ on the Mountain.” It was released in the spring of 1962. (Between the time of the recording session and its release, Eric Weissberg’s “New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass” was released, said Keith. They played as the Berkshire Mountain Boys at Club 47, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and featured Keith’s melodic-style of banjo playing. One tune on the LP was “Devil’s Dream.” That same month, he won the banjo contest at the First Annual Philadelphia Folk Festival with “Sailor’s Hornpipe” and “Devil’s Dream.”
In the summer of 1962, Bill Keith started traveling. In the fall, he joined the Kentuckians with Red Allen (guitar), Frank Wakefield (mandolin) and Tom Morgan (bass) in the Washington area and at WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia; he took Pete Kuykendall’s place with the group. His association with Morgan was an apprenticeship in banjo-making there in D.C..
During this period with Red Allen, Bill Keith and college friend Dan Bump decided to go into business together building a banjo. They eventually settled on reengineering banjo tuners. They built this business up in the winter of 1963, when most of the work was done by Bump because of Keith’s touring schedule with various groups. Bump sent the first D-tuner prototypes to Keith while he was in Nashville working for Monroe. Keith showed the pegs to Scruggs who approved of them. Production of the finished product began on a more serious basis in 1964. Scruggs wanted to lend his name to the product but was under contract to the Vega Company and was not allowed to do both unless he was involved as a shareholder with the new company. They all put up money and they were on their way. In 1968, this Cambridge company began making pewter objects. Eventually Bump lost interest in business and sold the Beacon Banjo Company back to Keith about 1989. Keith expanded it to sell many musical items by mail order.
That December, while still working with Red and Frank and Morgan in D.C., he saw Earl Scruggs in concert. The concert was at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, with Merle Travis opening the show. After the show, Manny Greenhill introduced Keith to Scruggs. Keith showed Scruggs his book of tablature. Peer International had recently published a book of Earl’s tunes in music notation. Keith, able to read music, found many errors and explained them to Scruggs who could not read music. Scruggs was impressed so he asked Keith to go to Nashville to work on another book which Scruggs was asked to write for Peer. This was like a call from heaven for Bill Keith: Earl Scruggs asking for his help. Keith had literally spent countless hours transcribing Earl’s solos note-for-note and had totally absorbed all of his work. Keith joined Scruggs in Nashville in early 1963, and began working on Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo.
The book came out in 1968 from Peer International Corporation. Keith did all the tablature and exercises and did the recording of the album as well. “It was my tape recorder and my roll of tape and my microphone which was set up in his back room and we wrote out the text that he had to say on record. And since he had to play the exercises as they appeared in the book, I had to play them for him because he couldn’t read the tablature. This was something he had played, but he couldn’t tell what it was [by] lookin’ at it. Then I would turn the machine on and he would play it for the instructional record.”
Keith explained, “When we were workin’ on it he told me I would be gettin’ my share and he gave me the shake of his hand and I guess I was a little too green not to insist on having it all down there in writing. After all [he was] my hero and so forth. It was later I saw mention in Time magazine that the book had sold a million dollars retail. And I hadn’t gotten my first penny—not to mention anything for the record which was retailing for ten bucks apiece. And I knew that you can have those records pressed up for less than a dollar. Here he had zero production expense doin’ it in the back room on my machine. I just thought, ‘Hey! There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars here. Why doesn’t he deem that it’s time that I should see some of it?’ So I asked. I had always been welcome at his house. I seemed to be then until I brought that up. His wife kind of snickered and said, ‘You should have had a contract.’ I was real bitter about that and it wasn’t until several years later that I finally decided I’m not goin’ to live with this and resolve it. I went to a friend who was a music lawyer and we went through and…Earl spent a lot more money on his lawyers than what he ended up offering my lawyer…but it was a pittance on what he had implied [that I would get]. And, in the process, I’m permanently on his ‘out’ list.”
Everywhere Keith went at this point—whenever he played this medley of “Devil’s Dream” and “Sailor’s Hornpipe”—jaws would drop. And in March of 1963, backstage at the Opry at the old Ryman Auditorium, Bill Monroe and Kenny Baker were back there at the dressing room. Baker came back to where Keith was and said, “If you want a job with Bill Monroe, you’ve got it.” Rual Yarbrough was Monroe’s banjoist in the Nashville area but Monroe needed a regular banjoist for touring. Del McCoury, who had played one performance on banjo with Monroe was offered a job at the same time as Keith and both men auditioned for the banjo job the same day. Monroe asked McCoury if he could play guitar, an answer which was in the affirmative, and hired him on guitar and as lead singer. Keith was then hired on banjo. Bill Keith was the first Yankee to join the Blue Grass Boys. Because Monroe didn’t want two “Bill’s” in the band, he always called him “Brad” after his middle name, “Bradford.”
Keith learned a lot about bluegrass music while with Monroe. Those days with Monroe added to his understanding of how to make music that works—to make it do what you sense it should do—rather than simply following established rules.
Monroe capitalized on the musicianship of this band which included Keith, Del McCoury (banjo and guitar), and fiddlers Vassar Clements or Kenny Baker. This helped Monroe keep his band together and helped keep bluegrass alive in spite of the decidedly folk and Beatles era. Keith stayed ten months, until December. Keith left Monroe’s band because the place the band appeared, Hootenanny, had blacklisted his youthful banjo idol, Pete Seeger. Keith quit because of a principle.
Late in 1964, Keith joined the Jim Kweskin Jug Band in Boston. He used his Gibson five-string banjo (in G tuning) with a flat-pick. He bought a steel guitar while with this group. Members included Maria Muldaur and later Richard Greene (fiddle). Keith stayed four years with Kweskin…and away from bluegrass music. The group disbanded in 1968.
In 1969, Keith joined Ian and Sylvia and the Great Speckled Bird, playing country rock for a year. He commuted between Canada and Boston for this job. He played some banjo, but mostly steel guitar. When this ended about 1970, he moved to Woodstock area where he partnered with Jonathan Edwards, made a few records, and toured. Edwards then decided to retire since he had achieved significant success with his music. Keith then joined the Blue Velvet Band with his old pal Jim Rooney (guitar), Richard Greene (fiddle) and Eric Weissberg (guitar, banjo).
Bill Keith helped form Muleskinner in 1972, which wasn’t much more than a put-together band for a Bill Monroe television gig in Hollywood, California. Members were himself, David Grisman (mandolin), Peter Rowan (guitar), Clarence White (lead guitar), Richard Greene (fiddle) and Stuart Schulman (bass). Muleskinner musicians had been practicing the previous week at their gig at The Ash Grove. As it turned out, Monroe had trouble getting there from his Sacramento gig. He eventually called and told them to go on without him. The concert video was released in 1992.
About 1975, Keith worked with Judy Collins. In 1977, he toured in Europe with Tony Rice and David Grisman. This was followed by a tour of Japan with the David Grisman Quintet with Richard Greene and himself as guests. They toured as two separate groups: one with Greene, Grisman and Todd Phillips, the other with Grisman and Joe Carroll. Shortly after this tour Keith, having spent much of his time between America and Europe, moved back to the U.S.. Bill Keith became an original columnist with Frets in 1979. In 1989, he was settled in Woodstock, New York, where he teamed up with Eric Weissberg, Kenny Kosek and Jim Rooney as the New Blue Velvet Band. With this band he made his fifth trip to Japan and occasionally toured Europe. They weren’t interested in pursuing the festival circuit fulltime and were content to enjoy a home life as well as playing their music.
His 1993 CD was “Beating Around the Bush.” In 1995, he was in Richard Greene’s the Grass Is Greener instrumental band with Greene (fiddle), David Grier (guitar), Tim Emmons (bass, whose place was taken by Gene Libbea that fall), and Kenny Blackwell (mandolin until the summer of 1995 when Butch Baldassari took his place). Tony Trischka took Bill Keith’s place in late 1995.
So there it is, Friends: the truth of the controversy which Mr. Keith wanted you to know. He told me this story so I could publicize it. I don’t think Mr. Keith was vengeful, but I do think he wants us all to know the truth according to William Bradford Keith.
Next month’s blog will probably be the answer some of the questions I get about my novel The Banjo Pilot. I’ll ask the readers if they think the protagonist Duke Steel is a good pilot. We’ll delve into this question. Many also ask me, the author, if I am Duke Steel. And they ask if all those adventures are true. Well, we’ll talk about it and then we may introduce the sequel Icy Strait. The Alaskan Adventures of the Banjo Pilot.
A Note from Larry Perkins, the man who plays the style of Earl Scruggs better than any man on earth. And a banjo collector aqnd salesman
Howdy Barry! Thanks so much for sharing this with me… great work, as usual. Unfortunate that William Bradford and Earl couldn’t/wouldn’t pull it together somehow..
Bill Keith and I got to be friends, and he mentioned this stuff to me a few times – he knew I was good friends with Louise and Earl. As is usually the case there’s Bill’s take on the story, the Scruggs’ take on the story, and somewhere betwixt those two stories is what really happened and why. I didn’t know Bill or have the experience with him that I’d had with the Scruggs’, but my sense of it is both were honest, ethical people, essentially…
I do have some questions about the Bobby Thompson part of Bill’s story. I understand he (Bill) would like to be seen and credited as the author and progenitor of the chromatic/melodic banjo. I’m from the Carolinas and knew a bunch of the old timers – Carol Best, who was playing fiddle tunes much the same way Keith/Thompson did… some of the older players called that the ‘Bostonian lick’… some called it the ‘hydraulic stuff’. Anyway, the point is most of those folks knew Bobby Thompson had been playing that ‘note-ee’ stuff for years, long before they ever heard of Bill Keith… some said that Bill made a point to visit Bobby’s trailer in Spartanburg SC in the late ’50s/early ’60s (he did, in fact) and were of the opinion that that’s where/when Bill started learning – then went on to take credit for coming up with it himself, which didn’t set well with some folks at all.i never got into all that stuff with Bill. Bobby just Loved to play – I don’t think he cared a thing about getting credit for anything. If being credited for being the first and best was important to Bill Bobby would join the chorus singing Bill’s praises, I think. Bobby was a fine, fine fellow who felt extremely lucky to get to make a living doing what he Loved. Thanks so much for thinking of me and sharing this with me! I’ve thought of you…
I still have people coming around or contacting me about writing the ‘book of Earl’. Amazing the interest there is in him. I began keeping notes on my interactions with Earl and just about every word he said from when we first got acquainted in ’77, and all the visits with he and Louise – and often brother Horace, and during the 12-13 years they were my neighbors and landlords, and finally the three years
I stayed with and took care of him 2-3 years before he died (or whatever happened that ended it for him)… during this time, especially around the breakfast table, he began talking about things, things I had never heard about or had a clue about though we had been close friends for about 30 years…
I’d make a mad dash for my bedroom and start tapping away on the computer, trying to remember everything he had just said, and finally told him what I’d been doing and asked if he had any objections to my bringing the computer to the table to keep some notes. To my pleasant surprise he said, “no, not at all…in fact I wish would. I’d like for people to know this stuff if they’re interested. I just don’t want to be here when they find out.. completely understandable. I’ve been feeling that way about it too. I’d like for people to know Earl’s story as told by Earl – I’d just as soon them not hear it from me. So I haven’t felt inclined to get involved with anyone about it yet. The publishers, university presses, and professional writers who have come down to talk with me about it haven’t really tripped my trigger… some just see the need for the book and want to do it but don’t really know enough about the subject to bring up the questions that would Inspire me to remember things I didn’t keep notes on that would make for a much better book. A couple have come across as if they would want to edit Earl’s natural way of expressing himself with his Carolina brogue out of it to make it ‘proper’… the last one, a writer from National Geographic of all things as much as said there’s really not that much interest in such a book but he would be interested in doing it because he’s a ‘shade tree banjo player’ when the subject of possible financial arrangements was raised, like I would just be fortunate to have the book written and published because it would be good publicity for me. I said, ‘so National Geographic is in the business of sending writers and editors out to investigate potential books on subjects there’s little to no interest in, is that what you’re telling me?’ Mercy… so I haven’t done anything with anyone about it yet. If you have any ideas or admonitions regarding this I would sure appreciate your sharing it. Great hearing from you! Lp
Great to hear from you, Larry. I’m really pleased you remember me through all these years, since our first meeting at your home when Jimmy Martin and John Hartford were there. I was loving the music and the simplicity of your life.. Certainly was different than mine…and probably still is since I’m a retired guy living alone in a big house on the Big Island of Hawaii. And I recall your performance at the Bell Cove with Mr. Bill back in the ’90s.
Anyhow, I did interview Bobby Thompson by phone a couple times after he’d been seriously affected by his disease (MS if I recall). His wife (Judy?) had to interpret a bit of what he was saying to me because of the way he was slurring his words. I often play Bobby’s part on “Misty” by comedian Ray Stevens. This is soooooo powerful. I believe he was playing an RB-1 at the time.
May I suggest you contact Fred Bartenstein to help you with Earl’s book. I’d bet he’d jump on this, just as he did when I presented Uncle Josh’s bio to him, and the idea that he could do a great job on it. As you undoubtedly suspect, he did a much better job than I could have done because he has an intimate knowledge of such matters and an unending list of close friends who could contribute to help make “Bluegrass Bluesman” a great success.
The same goes for you and your contacts. if you could follow a similar format as what Fred did, you’d have a winner. The main thing we did is not to change a single word of what Josh told me. His phraseology is still there. That being said, if Fred isn’t interested in this book, let me know and we’ll do it together. What do you think about that?
I didn’t know Earl wanted his story told. It surprises me, actually, because he wouldn’t meet with me, probably because I’m not a friend like you were. I didn’t want to push myself on him but as I was creating his biography for my “America’s Music: Bluegrass” book, he wanted some parts of it changed. He contacted Pete Wernick, a mutual friend, to reach out to me. I changed his biography to suit his needs. I just complied with his simple request that I leave out an article by the “Tennesseeans” about the Earl/Lester split. I thought it was good history, but since he asked, I left it out.
Larry, I’ll be placing your note to me onto my blog as a part of the discussion aspect of bluegrass history, which it’s supposed to be. I hope that’s okay with you because it has some great insights about Earl and Bill and Bobby in there. The whole idea of my blog is to have people discuss its history. And I thank you for your input.
Barry
From Richard Greene:
Hi Barry, this is fantastic. Please email me.
Richard
From Dennis Schut in Austria:
Thank you Barry! Interesting reading and of course I have the book! However, I don’t think it is completely correct that there was a time in Bluegrass history, that there was” nothing else to play, than the scruggs style”…. ( a bit repetitive and boring) as there was already a long time the Reno style. But for that you need to be a musical genius and only very few banjo players dare to try. Best wishes from the beautiful mountains of Austria,
Dennis Schut
From Ira Gitlin:
Great job, Barry.
Ira
Larry PerkinsFrom Dr. Elena Corey, musician, writer. October 2021.
Thank you, Barry, for offering this very informative glimpse into the life and style of Bill Keith. It says a lot about you that you are able to get beyond your ownself and give the world such worthy insights. I also will be eager to read “Icy Strait.”
I hope your health is good & that you’re getting time to pursue time-consuming projects you value.
Please do keep me informed of your various writing offerings; I’m happy for you that they are receiving good feedback.
Your friend, co-writer, co-musician and especially co-Christian,
Elena Corey
Note from Bill Palmer. October 20, 2019
Hello Barry:
This information tallies almost exactly with what Bill Keith told me at a number of different bluegrass conventions over the years. One person that I have some additional information on is Bobby Thompson. I had been playing the banjo for maybe a year and a half when the New Christy Minstrels came to Houston to play the Emerald Room at the Shamrock Hotel. At that time, Larry Ramos was their banjo player. I managed to wangle an invitation to meet him in his room at the Shamrock.
We discussed all sorts of aspects of being a member of the New Christy Minstrels. One thing I didn’t know was that Larry didn’t record the banjo tracks that had been heard on the albums up to that point. He said there was a guy named Bobby Thompson who did all of those tracks, then taught him the parts by rote. Larry had a Gibson RB-250 with a Seeger-style neck on it. If memory serves, that neck had been custom made for him by Bernardo of Arizona, who was one of the two “go to” custom luthiers that served the recording industry. The other was Mike Longworth. I knew Mike pretty well. He lived in Bell Buckle, Tennessee.
But that’s another story.
Bobby Thompson evidently spent more time in the studio than anywhere else. He was in big demand in the recording industry. I think where the confusion about what Bobby had actually done might be from the fact that he didn’t play fiddle tunes (as you mention) in this style, at least when he played with Jim and Jesse. There were several of us who “discovered” a key lick that enabled us to play scale runs without playing consecutive strokes on the same string, and this lick, as well as its derivatives, were the basis of what most people considered to be the Keith style. Bill’s discovery of that lick was totally independent of Bobby’s. On the other hand, Bill knew exactly when Marshall Brickman and Eric Weissberg saw him doing what he did, and pinched the basis of what he was doing.
Anyway, I’m glad you had a chance to get this info directly from Bill. He and I had many discussions about all sorts of musical things that most people don’t even consider important.
But we did!
Bill Palmer
Barry’s Blog #5. November 2021. Was Duke Steel a Good Pilot? www.barryrwillis.com/blog
This month’s blog strays a bit from the history of bluegrass music to more of a personal note. It pertains to the main character in my two novels: The Banjo Pilot (2018) and Icy Strait (2021), the Alaskan Adventures of the Banjo Pilot. We’re going to discuss some of the questions I’ve been asked by the readers of these books.
I’ve been asked if I am Duke Steel. Well, no…and yes, in a way. We share a lot of the same characteristics such as conservatism and Christianity. And I’ve put Duke in my place in some of the adventures I’ve had as a pilot. I’ve experienced many of the things Duke went through, but I’ve created him to be as strong as a competent pilot needs to be. But, was Duke Steel actually a good pilot? Let’s delve into it.
The first part of The Banjo Pilot” deals with Duke flying a mid-1940s Beechcraft Bonanza. It was brand new in those late 1940s when his Pop gave it to him. Duke used it to fly to various bluegrass events where his Pilot Mountain Boys band was to play. I chose this plane because Earl Scruggs had a plane and would similarly fly to various gigs, flying home as fast as he could to take care of his mother back in Nashville. So that’s where I got the idea of making Duke Steel a pilot as well as a musician. And Duke, a fictional character, knew Earl since they were both from North Carolina.
This first chapter with Duke flying is with his wife Sweetie at his side. She was his high school sweetheart. I chose the name “Sweetie” because that’s what Mike Snider from Gleason, Tennessee called his wife. Snider had a great act in Branson, Missouri, in the early 1990s and became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
Well, as this chapter relates, Duke is returning from Beanblossom, Indiana, from a gig there rather late in the day. He’s in a hurry to get home and encounters what we bush pilots call “get-home-itis.” It is an almost irresistible urge to get home (or land the airplane) even if the conditions—weather or skill level—dictate that it might not be a good idea. Yes, I’ve been there, but I didn’t succumb. I can’t say I’m really very smart, but all through my aviation career I was able to recognize this urge, then put it aside. It takes a concerted effort to not be caught up in this.
So Duke got get-home-itis and was also trying to please his wife, make her comfortable with his flying skills, all the while fighting fog, clouds and mountains and temptations of all types. He blamed others for the weather not being the way it was supposed to be instead of simply doing the best thing. What was the best thing he could have done? Well, I think it becomes self-evident after you’ve read the chapter.
No, folks, Duke Steel did not exhibit good flying skills here because he didn’t do the safest thing, which was to overfly his home base in Mt. Airy and go south to the clear skies of Winston-Salem.
The last chapter places Duke in a precarious flying situation again. This was twenty years later and he was a skilled airline pilot and trainer of other pilots so you’d think he’d learned how to be cautious enough to avoid irrational and unsafe thoughts. You’d think so, but he didn’t! He pressed on with a bad engine, bad icing conditions, and deteriorating destination weather instead of making a 180 back to the safety of good weather. So, again, he makes the wrong decisions.
Some readers might interpret him coming out alive in both instances as him being a good pilot. But his character flaw in the beginning was so ingrained within him that he when he got anxious and pressured, his murky thinking clouded his judgement. That was his character and he was never able to get away from it…in the first book. Duke survives in the first book and goes on to fly the bush just like I did up in Southeast Alaska. So my frame of reference for Icy Strait was my own experiences up there when I flew for LAB Flyways in Juneau and Haines, Alaska, in 1975 and Alaska Island Air out of Petersburg the next year. I ruined my back with the fifteen to sixteen-hour days so I had to quit that kind of flying. I found a job flight instructing in Oregon, a job which didn’t require the lifting I had to do up there in Alaska.
I experienced many of the stories I placed Duke in. Some stories I made up,.like, in The Banjo Pilot, I take the reader back to my first day in class at United Air Lines. I placed Duke at Eastern Airlines because it was local to him, but that first day in the classroom actually happened to me just as Duke experienced it…except for him being hired to fly Boeing 707s. The year was correct for B-707s just beginning operations, but Eastern used Douglas DC-8s instead of the Boeings. I flew Boeings and know nothing about the DC-8 so I just placed Duke at Eastern on the 707. I guess you’d call this “artistic license.” And now the reader understands a bit about the hiring process of what it takes to get on with a major airline like I did. And I sure loved that career!
In Icy Strait, I recall when Bob Green landed into Hoonah unsafely, so that story is true. Of course, I changed his name for the book. And that same person later crashed that airplane into the side of the mountain carrying all those Japanese businessmen. That green and white Piper Seneca airplane is still there on the side of that mountain, just as I described it in the novel. When Bob Green did that awful crash, I was working at Alaska Island Air in Petersburg, flying Cessna 180 floatplanes. (I was making decent money and managed to pay off my college loan during that time.) Again folks, I place a pilot’s faulty skills here in the form of a story. Flying as a career can be extremely challenging and not suitable for everyone as a chosen profession. I’m trying to point this out in these novels.
No, I never crashed a plane or killed a wife. I made that up. I’ve never experienced child prostitution or the mafia. I studied up on those and tried to present these stories as a pilot like Duke might experience them and how he might react to them. I think you’ll find these stories interesting.
Duke’s wife, Doris, worked at the Klondike Bar. I portrayed the bar as I experienced the Red Dog Saloon in 1975. Protagonist Kenneth Barker’s name is similar to fiddler Kenny Baker; that’s why I chose that name. He is fictional.
In the first novel, I place Duke Steel as the interim banjoist with Bill Monroe, taking the place of Don Reno who had just returned from the Army. Reno’s return and his stint in the Army and with Bill Monroe are legendary. But Duke is fictional so he never played with Bill Monroe or, of course, knew Don Reno. I placed him there in the Blue Grass Boys long enough to learn how to play Monroe’s style of bluegrass. He was supposedly replaced in Monroe’s band by Rudy Lyle, another legendary banjoist.
Duke’s matter of unease around women and the younger generation is me. I have yet to figure them out.
I hope the reader can read these books, enjoy them, then discuss them with me. Those events were a very important part of my life and I am glad to share them with you.
The Feud Between Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs
Blog #6 by Barry R. Willis. www.barryrwillis.com December 2021
There have been many discussions about what we might call “The Feud.” A general summary of this might be to tell you that when Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs left Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys band in 1948, they didn’t speak for over two decades. Call it jealousy or hate or resentment or whatever, it did exist.
This month we’ll discuss various aspects of this bluegrass history controversy. Hang on; we may step on some toes.
In 1955, Flatt and Scruggs became permanent members of the Grand Ole Opry. Until that time, they were only guests. Josh Graves (who joined Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys about 1955) told this writer of Bill Monroe’s attempts to keep Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs off the Opry, “When they worked together [in the Blue Grass Boys] they were the best of friends and were a great band. As far as I’m concerned, that was bluegrass! When Lester and Earl went out on their own, there was some jealousy there and they didn’t speak for twenty-two years.
“Bill was that way,” continued Mr. Graves. “I knew him before that and when I came in with Flatt and Scruggs, Bill wouldn’t speak to me. But the boys in [Monroe’s] band talked [to me]. They didn’t want us to but we did. People like me and James Monroe and Joe Stuart talked a lot and that’s how Flatt was booked at Bean Blossom (which was Monroe’s festival in Brown County, Indiana).. I’d go tell Lester good things Bill had said about him, and James [Monroe] would tell Bill the same things about Lester. So in ‘71 or ‘72, when Lester was asking about the June schedule, I told him we were going to Bean Blossom. He said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ So when we got there, Bill came backstage, grabbed me and said, ‘How’s my boy?’ Then [he] turned around and shook hands with Lester and welcomed him to Bean Blossom
“Bill was on stage and said that folks wanted them to sing some songs together and Lester looked over at him and said, ‘Can you still cut it?’ I remember that. And when they hit the stage with those songs, I don’t think there was a dry eye out there.” (This last quotation is from a 1980 article in Bluegrass Unlimited magazine by Dr. Charles Wolfe.)
Dobroist and International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Fame inductee Josh Graves told this writer that when Flatt and Scruggs split, Josh continued with the more traditional sound of Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass. However, according to Graves, the reason for him choosing one band over the other was not because of a musical preference (certainly the men’s groups were very different), Graves said, “Hell no! I just wanted to make a living.” He loved both men and found it difficult to choose one over the other.
Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe also made up while Graves was with Flatt’s Nashville Grass band. Scruggs and his Earl Scruggs Revue performed at Bean Blossom to show off his new band which included Graves. Interestingly, Flatt wouldn’t speak to Graves for the two years that Graves was with the Revue. Graves described the reason for leaving Flatt, “Well, we got to where we couldn’t get along. And there was a lot of controversy in the group and I just got tired of hearing it.” (This quotation by Josh Graves was made to this writer at his home in November 1994.)
IBMA Hall of Fame member Curly Seckler would not elaborate on this feud to this writer but did tell this me that while Flatt and Scruggs’ popularity was at its peak, Bill Monroe couldn’t even keep a band together. Seckler described how popular the band of Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys was, “Lord, you couldn’t carry the mail that they was gettin’ home in that bus hardly. They were just stackin’ ‘em in!”
It has been said by some that when Monroe heard that Flatt and Scruggs was coming to Nashville, he said the only way they would look right in Nashville was on the street with a cup. It seems like “the upstarts,” as they were called, had made it to the big time in Nashville too. Seckler added, “In my opinion, when he thinks that there ain’t no room out here for the rest of us, I don’t believe the good Lord would put a man here on earth if he didn’t have something for him to do. There’s room out there for everybody, I don’t care who they are. Look at the thousands out there now makin’ a livin’ at it (bluegrass). He felt like that—that we weren’t entitled to the Opry—but he’d better thank his good Lord every time he passes Sparta, Tennessee, get down on his knees and kiss Lester Flatt’s grave—in my opinion! ‘Cause if it hadn’t been for us, I don’t believe he would be where he is today. That’s my honest opinion!”
Mr. Seckler emphasized that he was in the Foggy Mountain Boys band when that band got into the college circuit and “made the thing go.” Monroe is well known for not being a businessman, said Mr. Seckler, but Lester and Earl viewed their music as a business—with a very tough manager, Louise Scruggs, to run it. According to Seckler, “We worked! We worked seven days a week, year in and year out. In my opinion, they’re the ones who put it on the map.”
Lance LeRoy, who was a bluegrass band booking agent and member of the IBMA Hall of Fame, in a 1996 letter to this writer, told of a time when Bill Monroe tried to keep Flatt and Scruggs from the Opry. ”The fact is that in 1953 when Bill Monroe heard that Martha White Mills wanted Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs to be members of the Grand Ole Opry and to host the regular Martha White time slot, Monroe, motivated only by pure jealousy and spite, apparently fought it bitterly with Opry management. He even circulated a petition backstage at the Opry for the other members to sign, stating that whoever signed it was opposed to Lester and Earl being made members of the cast. He succeeded in keeping them off for more than a year.
“Of course, any good journalist would ask at this juncture, ‘Do you have proof?’” LeRoy continued, ‘I do indeed, and the strongest kind of proof. One night backstage at the Opry while it was still held in the Ryman Auditorium, Roy Acuff came in Lester’s dressing room, one of the small rooms that were barely large enough to hold a five-piece band. It was in 1970 or 1971 and I think, possibly the latter. Roy began reminiscing with Lester and I stood there and heard Acuff relate an incident whereby Bill Monroe brought the petition to him. Acuff said he read it and it specified that Monroe’s music belonged to him and that Lester and Earl should not be brought in to compete with him. Acuff said he signed it but very soon began to realize that the music belonged to Lester and Earl as much as to Monroe. He thereupon looked Monroe up, retrieved the petition, and made Monroe scratch his name off. He said he felt that Lester and Earl would be a credit to the Opry and had every right to be there. Acuff added that Ernest Tubb refused to sign it when it was presented to him by Monroe.
“I would like very much for you to quote me on this in your book and I stand behind every word of it. And proudly, The truth should be told. Hastily. late at night… Best Wishes.” It was signed Lance LeRoy.
Mr. Carlton Haney (also a member of the IBMA Hall of Fame) was there at the backstage of the Opry when he witnessed the feud. As you might know, Mr. Haney was Bill Monroe’s band manager for several years. He told this writer Monroe “had a disagreement with the Opry people about puttin’ Flatt and Scruggs on the Opry playin’ what he felt was his music…to say that Martha White Flour contacted WSM about puttin’ Flatt and Scruggs on the Opry to do their show. They were one of WSM’s biggest advertisers. And Monroe opposed this. And there was some talk with other artists and all about it. But Flatt and Scruggs added a pioneer Dobro player who turned out to be one of the greatest: Josh “Buck” Graves. And it changed their sound so much; it was so different from what Monroe was still playin’ that Monroe stopped his opposition to them comin’ on. And that’s about the way it was!
“Now if you want to put what Lance said about Acuff, that’s fine. But see, Acuff ain’t here to defend hisself and neither is Monroe. You can mention this because everybody in the music business knows that Monroe was opposed to them goin’ on the Opry. Some of them know that it was because they changed their sound with a Dobro and never did use the mandolin. You see, there’s no mandolin breaks on any of their records and they never took any on the Opry. But that wasn’t in the deal; there was no deal made that they had to do that. They did that because they didn’t want to sound like Monroe. They didn’t want to.”
Next month we’ll have another excursion into another controversy in the world of bluegrass music.
Barry R. Willis. banjobarry5@gmail.com
Hi, Barry,
Thanks for instalment #6 of your blog, dealing with the persistent myth that when Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt left the Blue Grass Boys early in 1948, Bill Monroe was so angry that he did not speak to them for ‘over two decades’. The evidence you present makes it clear that the animosity was focused on 1955, when Flatt & Scruggs became members of the Grand Ole Opry despite Monroe’s vehement opposition.
However, the relationship had not previously been as bad, and the evidence for that comes from the most famous instrument exchange in bluegrass history – when Earl Scruggs traded the 1938 Gibson RB-75 #518-1 he was then playing to Don Reno in exchange for the 1934 Gibson RB-Granada #9584-3, plus a Martin guitar to compensate for the poor condition the Granada was in. The two banjos became the main instruments of their new owners for the rest of their careers (though Reno for the last ten years of his life performed and recorded with a Stelling Golden Cross, keeping the Gibson ‘Nellie’ at home).
The exchange has been dated to either the summer of 1948 or early 1949. The important point is that it took place when Reno was a Blue Grass Boy (Mar. 1948-July 1949), and when Monroe and his band were playing as guests on the WCYB radio show that Flatt & Scruggs had in Bristol, TN/VA. The occasion is described by Earl on p. 163 of Earl Scruggs and the 5-string banjo (revised ed., 2005): ‘Lester and I invited Bill to be a guest on our radio show, and he accepted the invitation.’
Bill had undoubtedly been upset when Lester and Earl left him, but it appears that at this short time after the split they were still on speaking terms. As Tom Ewing writes in Bill Monroe: the life and music of the Blue Grass Man (2018), p. 147, ‘It’s clear that there were no ill feelings at this point, but they were not yet competitors.’
All good wishes, Richard Hawkins Editor, The Bluegrass Ireland Blog February 2, 2021
Note from Fred Bartenstein. February 2022
Thanks Barry.
Sonny Osborne once said that half of what Carlton Haney said was true . . . but you could never tell which half. Anyway, here’s the story Carlton told me (Carlton worked for Bill in 1953 and 1954, so this story must date to that period):
Bill, Lester and Earl remained on good terms after the latter two left the Blue Grass Boys. Bill was playing somewhere and ran into Lester and Earl, asking them to pick one with him on stage. They told him they would like to, but hadn’t brought their instruments. Later Bill was walking in the parking lot and saw the instrument cases in Lester and Earl’s car. And, according to Carlton, that was where the feud began. Carlton claimed firsthand knowledge of the Opry/Cohen Williams incident in ’55 and regularly told a version of it that squares with other chronicles.
Fred
****
I responded to Fred in this message:
Yeah. Carlton told me that story too. I believe more than half of what he told me…except the part about Pythagoras. I was enraptured with what he told me but reached out to Bill Keith for his opinion on what Carlton was saying.
I typed out the entire interview I had with Carlton and sent it to Bill Keith who had a degree in music. He said Carlton had taken his little bit of music knowledge and “gone too far.”
Notwithstanding, Carlton had a terrific memory and was a story teller without equal. I loved him.
In any case, I loved what he shared with me…including the Opry experience you may know about.
Barry
Here is a Facebook note from ex-Blue Grass Boy Doug Hutchens. It is relevant to this blog because it references the publicity feud which Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt had for many years. Hutchens was there in the midst of it and remembered:
Doug Hutchens May 11, 2020 ·
Its hard to believe that it has been 41 years since Lester Flatt passed.
I was working at Alice Lloyd College and had just came in and turned on the evening news. I think it was Roger Mudd who said “Today in Nashville Tennessee, Country Music Entertainer Lester Flatt died”.
I sat and tears flooded my eyes. I had been working with Bill Monroe when he and Lester “Buried the Hatchet” after a long time so called publicity feud.
As I sat there I remembered all the times that he and Bill got together after that reunion on June 20, 1971 after they walked on stage at Bean Blossom, shook hands and sang Roll in my sweet baby’s arms and Little Cabin Home on the Hill. While Bill was taking a mandolin break, Lester looked over and said “Its been a long time, Bill”, Bill was in mid break and simply nodded. Few heard this because its not on the tape of that reunion, but I was sitting at the corner of the stage and heard it.
In the fall of 1971 after returning to college, I attended a show at Sandy Ridge School when Lester appeared there. I was sitting in the 3rd or 4th row and when they took an intermission Roland White came out and told me that Lester wanted to see me. I went down the hallway to the classroom where they were and Lester was talking to someone, I spoke to Haskell McCormick [of the McCormick Brothers band] and when Lester finished his conversation he kinda nodded his head sideways for me to come over as if he wanted to say something that he didn’t want others to hear. He ask me how I was doing and after I said things were fine, he asked “Did you and Bill have words?” I said no that I had left the band to go back to college to which he said “Well, I’m glad to hear that” and that “Me and Bill worked a date a couple of weeks ago and I saw that you weren’t with him”.
It was so nice to have someone like Lester to even care. I sure miss you Lester.