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Scenic Roots performs at the Brown Grand Theatre in Concordia, Kansas on December 30, 2007.
St. Anne’s Reel
Tommy Jarrell (born Thomas Jefferson Jarrell, March 1, 1901 Surry County, North Carolina, died January 28, 1985) was an American fiddler, banjo player, and singer from the Mount Airy region of North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains.
Although he made his living from road construction (operating a motor grader for the North Carolina Highway Department until his retirement in 1966), Jarrell was an influential musician, eventually attracting attention from Washington D.C. when he received the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship in 1982.
Jarrell’s style was notable for its expressive use of syncopation and sliding ornamentation, and he was adept at singing while playing. His formidable technique and rough timbre continue to influence modern aficionados of Appalachian old-time music and in particular the Round Peak style of clawhammer banjo.
In his later years, Jarrell lived in the small unincorporated community of Toast, North Carolina. His life is documented in two films by Les Blank, listed below. He got his first fiddle with ten dollars he got from his grandpa. That fiddle is now in the Smithsonian Institution.
An annual Tommy Jarrell Festival, established in 2002, is held in Mount Airy, North Carolina.
Arkansas Traveller – Tommy Jarrell
Vassar Clements – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vassar Clements (April 25, 1928 – August 16, 2005) was a Grammy Award- winning American virtuoso jazz, swing, and bluegrass fiddler.
Clements was born in Kinard, South Carolina, but grew up in Kissimmee, Florida. He taught himself to play the fiddle at age 7 and the first song he learned was “There’s an Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor”. Soon, Clements formed a local string band with two first cousins, Red and Gerald. Gerald was the fiddle player and when he got married and left, Clements had to pick up the fiddle. In his early teens, he met Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys when they came to Florida to visit Clements’ stepfather who knew Chubby Wise. Clements heard Wise play and was impressed.
In late 1949, when Wise left Monroe, Clements was hired as his replacement in the Blue Grass Boys where he remained for seven years.
He didn’t always earn his living playing music. In the mid-1960s he was employed briefly at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he worked on plumbing. He also performed several other blue-collar jobs including work in a Georgia paper mill, as switchman for Atlantic Coast Line Railroad; he even sold insurance and once operated a convenience store while owning a potato chip franchise in Huntsville, Alabama.
Between 1957 and 1962, he was a member of the bluegrass band Jim and Jesse & the Virginia Boys. Returning to Nashville in 1967, he became a much sought after studio musician.
After a brief touring stint with Faron Young he joined John Hartford’s Dobrolic Plectral Society in 1971 when he met guitarist Norman Blake and Dobro player Tut Taylor, and recorded Aereo-Plain, a widely acclaimed “newgrass” album that helped broaden the bluegrass market and sound. After less than a year he joined Earl Scruggs, who first earned widespread renown for playing the theme to television sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies.
His 1972 work with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their album Will the Circle Be Unbroken earned him even wider acclaim, and later worked with the Grateful Dead’s Wake of the Flood and Jimmy Buffett’s A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean.
In 1974, he joined Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Peter Rowan and John Kahn in releasing the bluegrass album, Old and in the Way. That same year he lent his talents to Highway Call, a solo album by former Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts.
He was considered by many to be an outstanding fiddle virtuoso and he described his talent saying, “It was God’s gift, something born in me. I was too dumb to learn it any other way. I listened to the Grand Ole Opry some. I’d pick it up one note at a time. I was young, with plenty of time and I didn’t give up. You’d come home from school, do your lessons and that’s it. No other distractions. I don’t read music. I play what I hear.”
In his 50 year career he played with artists ranging from Woody Herman and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band to the Grateful Dead, Linda Ronstadt and Paul McCartney, and earned at least five Grammy Award nominations and numerous professional accolades. He once recorded with the pop group the Monkees by happenstance, when he stayed behind after an earlier recording session. He also appeared in Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville and Alan Rudolph’s 1976 film, Welcome to L.A..
Though he played numerous instruments, Mr. Clements indicated that he chose the fiddle over guitar recalling that, “I picked up a guitar and fiddle and tried them both out. The guitar was pretty easy, but I couldn’t get nothing out of the fiddle. So every time I’d see those instruments sitting side by side, I’d grab that fiddle.”
Big band and swing music were considerable influences upon his style and musical development, and he said that, “Bands like Glenn Miller, Les Brown, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Artie Shaw were very popular when I was a kid. I always loved rhythm, so I guess in the back of my mind the swing and jazz subconsciously comes out when I play, because when I was learning I was always trying to emulate the big-band sounds I heard on my fiddle.”
Vassar Clements played on over 2000 albums. His last album, Livin’ With the Blues, released in 2004, featured guest appearances by Elvin Bishop, Norton Buffalo, Maria Muldaur and others.
His 2005 Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance was for “Earl’s Breakdown,” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and featured Clements, Earl Scruggs, Randy Scruggs and Jerry Douglas.
Mr. Clements, whose last performance was February 4, 2005 in Jamestown, N.Y., died of lung cancer that spread to his brain on August 16, 2005 at age 77.
Vassar Clements doing theOrange Blossom Special
YouTube – 2008La StateFiddleGrandChampionHallie Yarbrough/Carl Bamburg
Hallie and Carl Bamburg,The Gene King Band(Gene King,Jesse Middleton, Mike Estep, Mark McClanahan, Nicki Ezell)playing Maiden’s Prayer/Blackberry Blossom at the Rose Theatre Bastrop, Louisiana August 9, 2008
2008La StateFiddleGrandChampionHallie Yarbrough/Carl Bamburg
The Quebe Sisters Band – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Quebe Sisters Band is an American fiddle western swing group from Fort Worth, Texas, United States. The band consists of sisters Grace, Sophia and Hulda Quebe as well as Joey McKenzie on guitar and Drew Phelps on upright bass. Formed in 2000, the band performs western swing, hot jazz, vintage country and western (Bob Wills, Sons of the Pioneers, etc.) and traditional Texas style fiddle tunes.[1] They are currently based in Fort Worth and tour nationally and internationally,[2] [3]including appearances on the Grand Ole Opry.
The Quebe sisters grew up in Krum, Texas in a devout Presbyterian home. Their mother homeschooled the girls.[4]
The three sisters started taking fiddle lessons from Sherry McKenzie (Joey’s wife), a former national fiddle champion, and later from Joey, also a former national fiddle champion. In 2000, the Quebes moved to Burleson, Texas, where the McKenzie’s lived.[4]
The sisters learned traditional Texas-style fiddling. The girls began entering fiddle contests and had success early on; winning several state, regional and national fiddle championships.
Their Website
Leavin’ and Sayin’ Goodbye – Quebe Sisters Band
Mark O’Connor – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mark O’Connor (born August 5, 1961 in Seattle, Washington) is a widely known professional fiddler, prominent in country music and in classical music. As a teenager he won national championships on the guitar, mandolin as well as the fiddle. His mentors were Texas fiddler Benny Thomasson and Jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. He has recorded solo albums for Rounder, Warner Bros. Records, Sony, and his own CD line OMAC Records.O’Connor has won two Grammy awards; one for his New Nashville Cats album and another for his Appalachian Journey album he did with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer. He was named Musician of the Year by the Country Music Association six years in a row (from 1991-1996). His collaborative single Restless (with Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs and Steve Wariner) won the 1991 CMA Vocal Event of the Year award.
O’Connor has crossed musical genres, composing, arranging, and recording folk, classical and jazz music. His Fiddle Concerto has received over 200 performances making it one of the most performed concertos written in the last 50 years. He has composed six violin concertos, string quartets, string trios, choral works, solo unaccompanied works and a new Symphony. He has worked and recorded with a wide variety of artists, such as Chet Atkins, James Taylor, Michelle Shocked, Alison Krauss, David Grisman, Tony Rice, Bela Fleck, Renée Fleming, Stéphane Grappelli, Patty Loveless, The Dixie Dregs and Wynton Marsalis. Some of his more recent albums are or contain tributes to his musical mentors and inspirations, including Niccolò Paganini, Benny Thomasson, and Grappelli.
He has contributed music to the PBS Series Liberty! The American Revolution (the companion album is Liberty!). He recorded his “Fanfare For The Volunteer” with the London Philharmonic for Sony Classical, and one of his most critically acclaimed orchestral pieces Americans Seasons for Sony Classical as well. O’Connor recorded a 2 1/2 hour double CD of his music with the mandolinist Chris Thile entitled Thirty-Year Retrospective. It celebrates his thirty years as a recording artist on his own OMAC label. He also provided the soundtrack to a 30-minute animated film on the story of Johnny Appleseed (and released the music on his 1992 album Johnny Appleseed), narrated by Garrison Keillor, He contributed four tracks to a 1993 album on the theme of The Night Before Christmas narrated by Meryl Streep that was recently reissued for Starbucks. One of his most popular compositions, Appalachia Waltz (appearing on the album of the same title), has been adopted by Yo-Yo Ma as part of his live performance repertoire, and used frequently as music for weddings including two of Vice President Al Gore’s daughters. O’Connor hosts an annual fiddle camp (the Mark O’Connor Fiddle Camp) in Tennessee and an annual Strings Conference in San Diego, California. O’Connor is currently living in New York City working on new music. One of his recent efforts is his piano trio entitled Poets and Prophets which is inspired by his boyhood hero Johnny Cash. Currently O’Connor and Rosanne Cash have teamed up for concert dates premiering their collaboration in New York at Merkin Hall, January 2007. He plays on Ken Burns’ The War.
On April 28, 2009, O’Connor teamed with prominent chamber musicians Kavafian, Neubauer and Haimovitz to present his second and third string quartets, amalgamating bluegrass with classical styles, at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. A recording by the same artists is to be released on O’Connor’s OMAC label during May.
Grey Eagle – Mark O’Connor
Aly Bain – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aly Bain MBE (born 15 May 1946 in Lerwick, Shetland) is a Shetland fiddler who learned his instrument from the old-time master Tom Anderson. Now considered one of the finest fiddlers in the Scottish tradition, he became nationally prominent as a founding member of The Boys of the Lough, with whom he played for 30 years. He has worked on several international television series, regularly collaborates with prominent musicians from across the globe, and occasionally records as a solo musician. In 1993 his autobiography “Fiddler on the Loose” was published by “Mainstream”. It was written with Alastair Clark. He received an MBE in 1994 for his musical accomplishments. He also has received five honorary Doctor of Music (DMus) degrees, including ones from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and from the University of St Andrews (in 2003) In addition, on the 27th November 2007, Aly – along with Phil Cunningham – were awarded Doctor of Letters from Glasgow Caledonian University for their contributions to music and to the education and encouragement of young musicians [1]. In 2006, he was inducted into the Scots Traditional Music Hall of Fame. In 2007, he and Phil celebrated their 20th anniversary of touring as a fiddle and accordion duo.In May 2005 Bain was awarded an honorary degree by the Open University as Doctor of the University.[cit
Scottish Tradition : Aly Bain & Phil Cunningham 3
The Bankester Family at the Kentucky Opry, playing for the Jackson Purchase Friends of Bluegrass on December 1, 2006.
