Tag: Country

Hee Haw’s Best Banjo Moments

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The first record I ever owned on vinyl was Roy Clark and Buck Trent’s Banjo Bandits. (Excellent record. Hokey, silly, bouncy, double banjo nirvana complete with bluegrass piano.) Roy Clark and Buck Trent eventually led me to Hee Haw, which gave me hours of entertainment and caused hundreds of that-joke-was-so-so-bad facepalms. The music, though, was first rate — and the ratio of banjos to literally everything else was exactly as high as it should be. Check out these amazing best banjo-y Hee Haw moments.

Jimmy Henley and Roy Clark — “Orange Blossom Special”

Jimmy Henley was a world champion banjo player at just 10 years old. Sure, “Orange Blossom Special” is an overplayed trick song, but dang, Jimmy could play fast and clean as a little kid.

Stringbean and Grandpa Jones — “Little Liza Jane”

Two of the classics of the Grand Ole Opry and Hee Haw — and they were neighbors, too, living in the same holler north of Nashville. Look at Stringbean’s face when he forgets they’re repeating the chorus the first time through it. Let us know if you happen to know who the unidentified dancer is.

Roy Clark and Bobby Thompson — “Bury Me Beneath the Willow”

The world needs more double banjo. Full stop.

Cathy Barton — “Redwing”

Now here’s some clawhammer! “Redwing” is a simple tune, but it’s executed expertly and tastefully. Cathy Barton still plays and teaches today, and she tours with her husband Dave Para.

 Grandpa Jones, Roni Stoneman, Buck Trent, Roy Clark, Bobby Thompson — “Pretty Little Bird”

How many banjos is too many banjos? There’s no such thing. Line ‘em all up in front of a haystack, and you’ve got a party.

Roy Clark & Buck Trent — “Dueling Banjos”

Leaving off right where we started, with the original banjo bandits, Roy Clark and Buck Trent pickin’ an absolute bluegrass banjo staple!

 

That Ain’t Bluegrass: The Del McCoury Band

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Artist: The Del McCoury Band
Song: “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (originally by Richard Thompson)
Album: Del and the Boys

Where did you first hear “1952 Vincent Black Lightning?”

You know, I never heard it before on the radio, but a friend of ours heard this song on the radio in New York City or somewhere. He called Ronnie and said, “You guys ought to think about recording that song.” Like I said, I had never heard it before. Ronnie played it to me and it’s a great story. That’s what attracted me to the song. It was Richard Thompson — the guy from England — he was just playing acoustic guitar on that and he plays with his fingers instead of a pick. He had his own way of doing it, which is unique, too. But really what attracted me to it was the story. I really liked that story and I thought, “Well, you know what? We’ll see what key we can get it in.” I think he did it in Bb, but C kind of suited me better. And I thought, too, it would be good with banjo to tune it down in C and play it. We ran through it, and I didn’t get the melody exactly like he did it, I don’t think, in some spots. Either that or, since I recorded, it I’ve changed it a little. [Laughs] You kinda do that after recording a song: You’ll change little things now and then. But that’s actually the beginning of it right there.

There’s this tradition in bluegrass music of covering songs from outside of bluegrass — it’s kind of been done even since Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs.

Yeah, that’s right.

Why do you think that bluegrass artists like to cover these kind of pop or folk songs?

I’ll tell you what, with me, there’s something in that song that touches me or attracts me to it. It don’t matter where the song comes from, really. I think that’s what it is with most people that record songs from outside the bluegrass realm, I guess you could say. It’s either the story or a different melody that will hit your ear that you like — it’s really a complicated thing, I think. I know, with me, that’s mainly what it is. I either like the story in the song or the melody that’s a little different somehow.

A lot of people ask me, when I do interviews for people that write magazines or have a radio show or whatever, they’ll say, “When you go to record, what kind of songs are you looking for?” And I say, “Well, I never know what I’m looking for.” [Laughs] ‘Til I hear it, you know? I don’t have a certain thing in mind, when I go to record. People send me songs all the time now and they might send a whole CD of maybe 12, 14 songs. Sometimes you might find one in that bunch. And you never know what’s going to attract you, you know? It’s a funny thing.

What do you think makes this song a good bluegrass song?

I don’t even think about that — about it fitting. [Laughs] If I like the tune or the story, I just don’t think about it. I just think, “I could do that song!” I don’t think about where it came from. I know that once I sing it. I may have suggestions of how to do the instrumental parts, but for the most part, I don’t. I just let those guys come up with what they can with the melody. I figure I like for them to be creative, too, and do what they can with the song. I really don’t think about it that way. I just think, “I’d love to sing that.” [Laughs] See what I can do with it, whatever it is.

Now, you know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

That’s true, yeah! [Laughs] It ain’t bluegrass! I tell ya, Justin, I’ve thought about this a lot: All music is related. Somehow there’s a connection in all music. Pop, rock, rock ‘n’ roll, and whatever! In bluegrass, country, or hillbilly, they’re all connected in some way. People think — I used to think myself — for one thing, “Bill Monroe, he come up with this bluegrass music and he didn’t listen to anybody else.” But he listened to a lot of people! He listened to jazz down there in New Orleans and he used to go down there. He’d spend time down there when he was young, because he liked that music. I didn’t find this out, even when I worked for him I did not know that, but I found this out later. For instance, he grew up listening to Jimmie Rodgers. All those yodel things, he got from Jimmie. That was completely different, that was even different than country. I don’t know what you would class that kind of music as. Later in years, once he come to Nashville, he would cover a lot of songs that the country people were doing in those days.

I like that your perspective on it is, if you like it, if there’s something about the song that you like, that’s all it takes.

Because if you record that song, you may have to sing that song for 10 years or longer! [Laughs] So you better like what you’re doing! I’ll tell ya, Justin, through the years I have recorded songs that I really didn’t like. The producer would bring them. I needed songs, but usually, when that happens, I don’t sing them in public. [Laughs] I found out another thing, too: Sometimes you gotta think about a song that you put on a record that you don’t like, because there’s going to be somebody that they’ll buy the whole record for that one song that you did that you don’t like. I’ve witnessed that, too. Sometimes there will be a lot of people that like that one song you don’t like, so you might have to learn it and sing it!

Canon Fodder: John Hartford, ‘Aereo-Plain’

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In September 2016, I did an interview with banjo player and producer Alison Brown for the now-dormant Producers column, and she told me a little bit about her studio in Nashville. Compass Records is headquartered there now, but 40 years ago, it was known as Hillbilly Central, where numerous outlaw and outlier country albums were recorded. “If I’d known John Hartford recorded Aereo Plain here, I would have been even more intimidated than I already was,” she confessed. “You could set the bar so high for yourself thinking about the other music that’s been recorded in the room, but, at the end of the day, you just have to look at it as there’s great energy in the room, great vibes in the walls, and you have to tap into that.”

I had to admit I didn’t know the album or much about the man. I knew the name, but that had more to do with the namesake music festival near my home than with any of his actual music. With minimal research, I learned that he was most famous for writing the song “Gentle on My Mind,” a late ’60s hit for Glen Campbell that was covered by everyone from Dean Martin to Aretha Franklin to R.E.M. to (most recently) Alison Krauss to (most strangely) Leonard Nimoy. I learned that Hartford was influential in the Newgrass trend of the ‘70s, and I learned that two of his songs had been included on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, the Big Bang of roots music in the 21st century. I learned that he was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist who clashed with celebrity of any kind. He died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2001.

It’s always instructive to fill in these odd gaps in your musical knowledge, and the experience got me thinking about the roots canon, if there is such a thing. It’s a broad term that covers a wide range of styles and traditions and formats, from old-time field recordings to blues and gospel performances to the latest folk and country album releases to bluegrass classes in Appalachia. It’s almost impossible to connect all the dots, but it’s interesting to think about: Which record should every roots fan know about? What would a canon tell us about roots music in the 21st century? What would it say about American traditional music at a time when the entire notion of America is up for grabs?

Those questions became the foundation for this new column called Canon Fodder, so named because I like obvious puns. Each month we’ll examine a new album by an influential artist and explore its impact across generations. Hopefully this will allow us to approach some old artists in new ways, to hear familiar songs with fresh ears. If you have any nominations for albums to consider in this column, please leave them in the comments section below. I can’t promise we’ll get to each and every one of them, but I’ll definitely add it to the list.

In the meantime, it seems worthwhile to kick things off with Aereo-Plain. Brown is right: It does sound intimidatingly magnificent. There are only a few instruments on these songs, but they’re mic’d beautifully to capture the minute grain of Hartford’s banjo and the vibrations of every string on the strummed guitar. Even the goofball vocals at the end of “Boogie” — sung low and phlegmatic, as though making fun of the song that just played — are recorded lovingly and carefully, as though every mucus rumble were important. What makes the album remarkable isn’t so much the sound of the instruments, but the way they interact with one another. They’re alternately genial and hostile toward one another, supportive and undermining. The banjo plays a practical joke on the guitar; the guitar reciprocates. Especially on “Symphony Hall Rag” Hartford evokes a parallax quality in the production, with the rhythm guitar so deep in the background of the song that it sounds out of focus, which makes the song sound slightly askew.

Actually, all of Aereo-Plain sounds slightly askew … most of all Hartford himself. He comes across as something of a mad hatter on these songs — a Frank Zappa parodist for the roots set, pushing bluegrass as a countercultural force. He understands there’s power in wackiness and, even more than Pete Seeger, he believes the banjo can be a weapon against capitalism, complacency, the mainstream, the music industry, electrified instruments, or even conventional song structures. “With a Vamp in the Middle” is a meta song about itself: “I wrote this song with a vamp in the middle,” Hartford declares, but he never really gets to that vamp. He just keeps playing and singing.

If loneliness pervades these songs, it’s largely an effect of the times, an inescapable by-product of living in America during the early 1970s, when the hippie dream was curdling into something of a nightmare of violence and regress. Nixon was already a crook, but hadn’t been impeached yet. Altamont had killed the ‘60s, but the ‘70s hadn’t quite defined itself yet (at least not in America; in England, glam was already starting to define the era). Singer/songwriters like James Taylor and Cat Stevens were starting to make inroads into the mainstream, but no sound or movement defined the pop or country landscape.

Hartford sees not a land of promise or possibility, but a society gone to seed, eaten alive by progress: “It looks like an electric shaver now where the courthouse used to be,” he sings on “Steamboat Whistle Blues.” “The grass is all synthetic, and we don’t know for sure about the food.” It’s not that he wasn’t made for these times; it’s that the times aren’t made for human beings. “We’ll all sit down at the city dump and talk about the good old days,” but it’s the way he sings “city dump” that makes you think the phrase is redundant. He may decry the commodification of country & western on “Tear Down the Grand Ole Opry,” but Hartford understands that music may be our last connection to a more fulfilling past, and Hartford is content to sit down there among the refuse just pickin’ and strummin’ and singin’ and fiddlin’ while Rome burns.

These songs long for a return to the American pastoral, an escape from the pressures of progress and politics to a pre-industrial ideal and, for that reason, the album sounds alarmingly current. “Sittin’ on a 747 just a-watchin’ them clouds roll by. Can’t tell if it’s sunshine or if it’s rain, rain, rain,” he sings on the title track, his voice rising into a comical falsetto. “Rather be a-sittin’ in a deck chair high up over Kansas City on a genuine ol’ fashioned authentic steam-powered aereo plane.” It’s a dream and a mission statement — one that knows the very idea is an innocent impossibility.

Perhaps Hartford knew, or perhaps he didn’t know, that tinkerers and inventors had been trying to build such a contraption since the 1840s, when an aerial steam carriage was patented by the British inventors William Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow. Even before the Wright Brothers went airborne at Kitty Hawk, they had managed to fly a small craft on a steam engine, but they couldn’t reconcile the power of the steam with the weight of the engine. It was folly, and maybe that’s why Hartford longs for the freedom of such a fantastical vehicle. There’s power in folly, an unbridled joy in whimsy that sounds like an intense form of dissidence and defiance.

LISTEN: Jason Hawk Harris, “The Smoke and the Stars”

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: Jason Hawk Harris
Hometown: Houston, TX
Song: “The Smoke and the Stars”
Album: Single
Release Date: April 28, 2017
Label: Free Man Records

In Their Words: “I’ve been writing music since I was 9. You could say that, all these years, I’ve just been waiting for this song to come out. It finally did. It clawed its way out of me and left me on the floor in a pool of blood, smiling like a lunatic. The lyrics themselves are the best explanation I can give. Explaining the song would be to offer a mediocre paraphrase. In general, I’m a fan of the idea that music is best experienced without pre-conceived notions. And with that, I’m going to shut up so you can listen.” — Jason Hawk Harris

LISTEN: Curtis McMurtry, ‘Loves Me More’

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Artist: Curtis McMurtry
Hometown: Austin, TX
Song: “Loves Me More”
Album: The Hornet’s Nest
Release Date: February 24, 2017

In Their Words: “The narrator of ‘Loves Me More’ endorses free love in all directions, while remaining irreverent and competitive. I’m excited about the arrangement, especially the interplay between the cello and the muted trumpet. Using three-part vocal harmony added another layer to the lyrics, as well, since there are at least three people involved in the story (probably more).” — Curtis McMurtry

Photo credit: Todd V. Wolfson

The Essential Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Playlist

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The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were born out of the burgeoning Southern California folk-rock scene of the late '60s and early '70s. The band was the brainchild of the singer/guitarist duo of Jeff Hanna and Bruce Kunkel, who had worked together as members of the New Coast Two and the Illegitimate Jug Band. Along with Ralph Barr, Les Thompson, Jimmie Fadden and, briefly, Jackson Browne, the band started gigging around Long Beach, California, in early 1967.

After Browne departed for his solo career and John McEuen signed on as a multi-instrumentalist, the band released their eponymous debut disc and won themselves enough attention to score a Top 40 hit, appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and open for a strange melange of performers that ranged from the Doors to Jack Benny.

The next several years were difficult for the band as they released a string of commercially unsuccessful records, struggled with disagreements about the band’s direction, and found themselves being treated much like a novelty act. That all changed in 1972 when Jimmy Ibbotson joined the band and they embraced the sound of traditional country and bluegrass. They released their most commercially successful album, Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy, won another Top 40 hit (“Mr. Bojangles”), and opened the door to recording what was their career-defining album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Tracked in Nashville, Will the Circle Be Unbroken was a monumental triple album that paired the long-haired, anti-establishment California boys in the band with country legends like Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, and Maybelle Carter. By making that record, the band effectively bridged the gap between two generations of country musicians … and produced amazingly beautiful music in the process.

By the early '80s, the band had changed its name (to just the Dirt Band) and winnowed its roster down to four key members: Hanna, Fadden, Ibbotson, and keyboardist Bob Carpenter (with McEuen leaving in ‘86 and returning in 2001). Musically, the band adopted a contemporary country sound that played well on the radio — and at the record stores — scoring themselves three Top 40 and two Top 10 albums. Their quirky left-of-center style remained even as their sound softened, as witnessed by their appearance in Steve Martin’s hit, “King Tut,” as the Toot Uncommons.

In ‘89, Will the Circle Be Unbroken II was recorded (with contributions from John Hiatt, John Prine, Levon Helm, and Bruce Hornsby) and a third Unbroken collaboration was created in 2002 with a guest list that included Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Tom Petty, and Dwight Yoakam. In the midst of these collaborations, the band spent the 1990s and 2000s making records that blend country, rock, and string music into their own unique sound.

Herein, we offer a brief playlist of tunes that we consider essential to knowing the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, from their days as cosmic cowboys through their latter-day hits (and, of course, all three versions of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken.")

Squared Roots: Scott Biram on the Legend of Lead Belly

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Though Lead Belly was merely a man, his story reads like the stuff of legends. He had multiple encounters with the law, was sentenced to a chain gang, escaped, killed a relative, and got thrown back in the hoosegow, earned himself a pardon because the governor was a fan. But then he stabbed someone else and got put back in prison, this time in Angola, where Alan and John Lomax found him. He was released, again, after serving his minimum and pleading with the governor, but committed a second stabbing, in the late ’30s. All the while, he so impressed everyone who heard him that he also landed himself in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Known primarily for playing 12-string guitar, Lead Belly also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and diatonic accordion on the hundreds of songs he recorded over the course of his all-too-brief career.

Texas songwriter Scott Biram grew up on those songs and, later, learned the stories that went with them. In his own bluesy, folky, soulful Americana style, Biram hears the inevitable echoes of Lead Belly coming through, including on his latest release, The Bad Testament. The influence is there in the miscegenation of musical styles, but also in the way Biram approaches his role as raconteur.   

Why Lead Belly?

Well, Doc Watson was taken! [Laughs]

[Laughs] Fair point.

I would definitely say he’s among my biggest influences — Doc and Townes Van Zandt are my other two. Lead Belly has been in my life my whole life. My dad listened to him a lot when I was a kid. I have quite a few songs where I do a little rant in the middle, where it’s not really singing as much as it’s telling a little story or saying something. I think I got that from listening to Lead Belly.

Right. Must be nice to have parents who listened to cool music. I grew up on Barry Manilow and Dionne Warwick.

[Laughs] There was definitely a lot of Eagles and Crosby, Stills, and Nash at my house. But my dad listened to a lot of Doc Watson and Lightnin’ Hopkins and stuff like that.

I can see why he would gravitate toward that stuff. Lead Belly really did have a singular style — this mix of blues, folk, gospel, and country on a 12-string guitar. What was it that spoke to you in that mish-mosh or maybe it was the mish-mosh?

I think a lot of it had to do with just being a part of my life when I was a kid with my dad listening to it so much. We had this vinyl record that was the soundtrack to the film Lead Belly which is a pretty obscure movie, not really easy to find. I think they filmed it in ’76 or something like that. I was a little kid. They filmed it in the little town that I lived in and I was in my dad’s arms on the edge of the set while they were filming the scene where Lead Belly shot his friend and went to prison.

Well, one of the times he went to prison …

One of the times … yeah. [Laughs] So I heard that soundtrack a lot, which wasn’t actually Lead Belly playing on the soundtrack. It was Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and someone named Hi Tide Harris who I haven’t been able to find too much on, even with the Internet.

Once I got into roots music, when I was a little older and started playing bluegrass and started really playing the guitar a lot and learning blues, Lead Belly was just naturally somebody that I gravitated toward. And his story is so interesting. I read all the biographies. I read a lot of biographies on musicians that influence me so that I don’t just have a shallow knowledge of them. If I’m going to be playing some of their music, I want to definitely know as much about them as possible.

That’s awesome. I had never studied much of his life until prepping for this. But, I mean … the guy recorded hundreds of songs, worked with the Lomaxes, had a radio show on WNYC, went to Europe, and was in and out of prison multiple times — sang his way out of jail a couple times — all before dying at 50 or 51. That’s some hard living. Can you imagine spending even a couple years in his shoes?

No. [Laughs] I mean, I can imagine, but I’m probably not going to do a very good job of imagining what something like that would be like. I’m just a guitar player. [Laughs] Actually, he only sang himself out of prison once. There’s a legend about him that he sang himself out twice, but really, the second time was kind of exaggerated. I think he was in prison in Louisiana, at that time, and he got out on something called “good time” which is, I think, probably good behavior.

Right. He served his minimum and got out. Here was an interesting thing that I learned: He played at the Apollo, but the Harlem audience didn’t really resonate with him as deeply as the folkies did. He had a lot in common with Woody Guthrie, maybe more so than some of the old blues guys, but why do you think the Black audience didn’t connect?

First of all, he was a country guy. And I don’t mean country music; I mean from the rural South. So I’m not sure anyone from New York would really see it as anything but a spectacle, at that time. But, also, I wonder — and I’m just guessing here — I know that John Lomax used to kind of have him dressed up in a prison uniform and stuff like that, kind of clown him around out there and make him seem like he was just straight from the prison. I imagine that might have been a turn-off to some people in Harlem back then. I know Woody Guthrie, when he went to New York and was supposed to be on something and they wanted him to dress, as he described it, “as a clown,” he said he’d be back in a few minutes, went downstairs, and left. Didn’t even come back to the studio. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah. I read that Life magazine did a three-page spread on Lead Belly and the title of the article is not something I’m going to repeat.

Yeah, I get ya.

And it was considered an honor that he was getting this prominent placement. But it makes sense that the minstrel thing wouldn’t fly.

It might’ve been a turn-off to people in Harlem. If there was anyone from the South who lived in Harlem at that time, they probably weren’t impressed by it because, to them, it was just a reminder of what they just left.

The other thing I love about listening to his stuff and pouring over his stories is that he lived through an era of history that was rife with huge moments and he documented history as it happened, writing songs about the Titanic, the Hindenburg, Jim Crow, FDR, Hitler, etc. Pete Seeger carried his style forward. Bob Dylan, to a certain extent. Who else do you hear carrying the Lead Belly torch?

You mean documenting history as it happens?

Yeah. Ani DiFranco does a bit, which she picked up from Pete Seeger.

Honestly, nobody comes to mind that is documenting current events in music so much that it’s actual historical stories in the songs. There are a lot of people saying their thoughts about the current states of everything, but I can’t think of anyone that actually sings a story about a tragedy.

Santiago Jiménez, Jr. — Flaco Jiménez’s brother — has a record called El Corrido de Esequiel Hernandez: Tragedia de Redford. The album is titled after the song about a kid in Redford, Texas, down in the desert on the border, who was walking his goats one day and the guys in the DEA or Border Patrol came and shot him because he had a rifle walking, like he did every day, with his goats. He was basically a shepherd and he got shot. That’s the only one I can think of that pops out and that’s not a popular artist or anything. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Right. I was just thinking Hurray for the Riff Raff does it a little bit. Rhiannon Giddens, a little. But no one to the same extent. I mean, if you read Lead Belly’s song titles, you can trace history.

A lot of the time you have to listen to it as “The Hindenburg Disaster, Part I” and “Part II” because they couldn’t fit the whole song on the single. They had to put it on both sides!

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: An Unbroken Circle

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In 1971, Richard Nixon was president and the United States was divided. It was an era marked by civil rights struggles, Vietnam War demonstrations, and labor union losses. The counterculture movement that evolved in the 1960s was continuing to take shape and was intrinsically linked to the outpouring of a whole generation’s worth of musical innovation. Amidst social upheaval, at a time when your music reflected your politics, a common ground was forged among unlikely sources. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s milestone 1972 album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, single-handedly bridged generational and cultural gaps by pairing country music veterans with young hippies from Southern California.

“I don't think we realized the sociological impact that that record would have,” says Jeff Hanna, founding singer and guitarist of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. “On the surface, it looked like, 'What the hell are they doing making music together?'”

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band formed in Long Beach, California, in 1966 and became a staple of the wave of California rock that included acts like the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Eagles who were all exploring old-time country sounds in their own music. By the time the recording sessions for the Circle record began, the Dirt Band was fresh off the success of their cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles,” which had become a Top 10 pop single. Record executives and fans, alike, were anticipating a follow-up in the same vein. But the band’s manger and producer, Bill McEuen — brother of band member John McEuen — had another idea: to get the band in the studio with the bluegrass and country musicians that had influenced them when they were coming up.

“I have a lot of respect for [the Dirt Band] for doing it, for going out on a limb, you know, and doing that kind of thing in the middle of a career that was just really on its way up at that point,” says multi-instrumentalist and longtime Dirt Band collaborator Jerry Douglas. “They were the famous people on the record and their guests were the people that they were introducing to their audience, you see. So it was kind of going out on a limb for them. You know, the record company didn't wanna do it. Nobody wanted to do it. They just kind of pushed it through and it was a success.”

When it came time to recruit a slew of Nashville greats for the project, the generational divide ended up working in the Dirt Band’s favor. Their friendship with the Scruggs family began when Earl Scruggs brought his children, who were fans of the band, to a gig they played at Vanderbilt University in 1970. Scruggs became the first artist they invited to guest on the Circle record. They snagged Doc Watson the same way: his son, Merle, was a fan of the band.

“One of the things that was really interesting with a lot of these acts is, their kids were fans of the band. There was kind of a stamp of approval from the younger generation,” recalls Hanna. “And Merle Watson said something like, ‘Well daddy you love the way they sing and play.’ And also the invitation was, ‘We've got Earl Scruggs.’ And Doc said, ‘Yeah, that sounds like fun,’ so there it went.”

Other guests included heavyweights like Jimmy Martin, Mother Maybelle Carter, and Roy Acuff.

“I mentioned to Bill McEuen, at one point, that I'd read this article about Roy Acuff where he said he'd play real country music with anybody anywhere. And we talked about that and Bill said, ‘Well, let's see if he'll put his money where his mouth is,’” Hanna says.

But Acuff wasn’t an easy sell: His initial meeting with the band didn’t go as well as they were hoping. It turns out that the idea of West Coast hippies in their early 20s recording in Woodland Studios in Nashville was a bit of a hard pill to swallow.

“[Acuff] came in and he was just largely unimpressed with us. He was kind of like — he wasn't totally negative — it's just kind of flat and he said later, ‘Well, I don't trust a man that I can't see his face,’ and we all had like massive beards and mustaches and long hair,” Hanna remembers. “Meanwhile, we got in the studio and recorded our tracks with Merle Travis and, lo and behold, Roy Acuff comes strolling in, or sort of quietly walks in the back of the studio at the end of the day. And Bill played him — it was either ‘Nine-Pound Hammer’ or ‘Dark As a Dungeon’ — one of those. And Roy got this big smile on his face and he said, ‘Well, that ain't nothin' but country. I'll be here tomorrow. Be ready.’ So we cut those tracks, so he was in.”

The result was a monumental cross-generational album that combined genres and styles.

“Just to put it in context: You've got Merle Travis's Travis-picking; you've got Earl Scruggs' Scruggs-style banjo; you've got Maybelle Carter, Carter scratch; and Doc Watson — even though flat-picking isn't named after him, it should be,” says Hanna. “I mean, just all these guys that were just so big in our world.”

The Dirt Band’s love of country and old-time sounds goes way back, so it was a natural progression for them to want to honor and record with these musicians.

“A lot of us got into bluegrass because of the folk boom in the mid-60s. A lot of us also had older siblings and they'd bring home these records by Peter, Paul, and Mary or the the Kingston Trio,” says Hanna. “When I first started playing guitar, I bought a Pete Seeger instructional LP and book that had a section about the Carter Family and Maybelle Carter and her playing style, as well … I was a huge fan of the Everly Brothers. We all were. The Everlys, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Little Richard: that stuff killed us. But I think something we all had in common was our deep love of the sounds of Appalachia. And blues for that matter. But a lot of it was acoustic music, I've gotta say.”

Singer/songwriter Jackson Browne joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when he was 17 years old, after meeting them at a gig at the Paradox club in Tustin, California, a little town in Orange County. “Getting to play with them was a huge installment in my musical education because I got to sit there and play these really intricate songs,” Browne recalls. “I mean, they were all better players than me, so I learned a lot.”

What struck him immediately about the band, he says, was their vast musical palette.

“The Dirt Band was great because they were true music fans and music aficionados. They weren't just kids that were playing folk music that they heard. They dug deep, is what I'm saying,” says Browne. “They found recordings of the Memphis Jug Band and those things were hard to find. I mean, like that wasn't just lying around. And they were kind of musicologists even then, from the very beginning.”

This year, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band celebrated their 50th anniversary as a band. In commemoration, they returned to Nashville for a star-studded concert at the famed Ryman Auditorium last September, which aired on PBS and was released on DVD. Aptly titled Circlin’ Back, the show was both a nod to the first Circle record and a career retrospective that incorporated the musicians that have impacted the band’s history. Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Rodney Crowell, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, Jerry Douglas, and Jackson Browne were among the handpicked guests.

“What was even cooler to me than playing the show that night was the rehearsals that we had before,” Douglas recalls. “The first time you do a run-through of one of those songs is so magical. It has all of this extra spark and fear and everything in it. So there were sparks flying in the rehearsal hall when we were doing these things and trying to figure out who played on what.”

Just as the Dirt Band introduced their audience to their earlier influences on the first Circle record, the Circlin’ Back anniversary show connected the next generation of artists and fans together. Musicians like Vince Gill and Jerry Douglas, who remember buying the first Circle record when it came out, are now considered “little brothers” of the Dirt Band. Although they are each musical powerhouses in their own rights, the anniversary show was an opportunity for them to play with some of their heroes.

“I think the first time I played on the song with Jackson Browne that I played lap steel on, I held my breathe through the whole thing,” Douglas says. “I'm such a fan of all of those guys and then they bring Jackson Browne in, and I'm playing on this thing with Jackson Browne and I'm just going nuts inside. So much raw emotion that's happening.”

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has always had the ability to tap into emotion. Through their shared love of traditional music, they impacted legions of listeners by bridging generations and styles. Their legacy is littered with stories of parents and children bonding over the first Circle record, which is arguably one of the most significant releases in the history of music. At a time of cultural unrest, it showcased music’s ability to bypass divides and cross boundaries. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was Americana before Americana had a name, and their genre-bending illustrates the most important facet of music: how it connects us all.

Photo of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in the early 1970s courtesy of the artist.

3×3: Jimmy Lumpkin on Zeppelin, Norway, and Southern Manners

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: Jimmy Lumpkin
Hometown: Fairhope, AL
Latest Album: HOME
Personal Nicknames: JL Fresh

 

Bombarded by beach buzzards! Cute though, huh?

A photo posted by Jimmy Lumpkin (@jimmy.lumpkin) on

If you had to live the life of a character in a song, which song would you choose?

"Ramble On," Led Zeppelin

Where would you most like to live or visit that you haven't yet?

Paradise, or Norway maybe

What was the last thing that made you really mad?

Myself

 

Dangerous Alligators

A photo posted by Jimmy Lumpkin (@jimmy.lumpkin) on

What's the best concert you've ever attended?

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Van Morrison — in the rain.

What's your go-to karaoke tune?

Sorry, don’t have one; would probably be “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd

What are you reading right now?

Nothing at the moment, but I love the bookstore and the familiarity of the written word. I am always seeking that spark.

Whiskey, water, or wine? 

Whiskey, and water. And Wine. 

North or South? 

Wherever you’re at, there’s always an upside — and down. Whichever invites me back. Still, I’m Southern in manner and heritage. Without bias.

Facebook or Twitter? 

All my Facebook posts are Tweeted, I believe.