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Was listening to this which I found very beautiful. It was a student of mine who introduced me to the Gillian Welch/David Rawlings stuff....
https://youtu.be/kk6V7S7Skcc
Also been listening to a bit of Tony Rice again recently - so many beast crosspickers out there, but Tony is so musical, and the voice (as it used to be....)
Hit me up with some more stuff.
I think this was my introduction to bluegrass music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSG3shlHG7c
Here's a couple good performances of great songs:
Dave Alvin performs Merle Haggard's "Kern River"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbtuw6ptZW4
Iris DeMent "Our Town"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FikZwgj89HI
Awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl_eNu4NUVI
And this is gold.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MujqxMoH0iI
As guitarists, especially in America, it is a big part of the instrument's heritage.
I find as a player, with the climate of little public interest in jazz, and jazz gigs so scarce, if you try to remain a busy guitarist, you are bound to encounter it.
Some guys take up the slack of no jazz gigs by trying to teach, but for players, it means moving into other genres of music if you have a strong desire to perform music publicly, and do it with other musicians.
I've been finding that the genre represented by the term "Americana" is rich with musicians who are deep into tradition and commited to preserving it, yet moving it forward, just like jazz musicians. In a way many of the earlier styles of jazz fall into the Americana genre.
I find these musicians are more open to jazz than jazz is open to them....except for some guys like Frisell and Ribot.
I love a lot of it, and play often in "classic country" type groups, everything from Hank to Waylon...one of my more interesting gigs involved learning Luther Perkins' guitar parts to about 50 Johnny Cash tunes, note for note. It's surprisingly tough to play just like him.
Hot country picking is just jazz on the back pickup:)
And some guitar players:
Chet Atkins & Jerry Reed "Jerry's Breakdown"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni8KBhnebwE
Chet Atkins "Maybelle" with lesson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGr1JYSGtM4
Apparently , The Darlings were actually The Dillards of "Duelling Banjos" fame, among others !Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
[QUOTE=gtrplrfla;602670]Despite his tremendous influence on country thumb and finger-pickers , Merle never seems to receive the credit he deserves outside the finger-picking community.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUxJN2iPGfg
Western swing is jazz.
https://youtu.be/xhd62j5rUjw
I love Merle Travis!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s00MV1sY37c
I love a lot of stuff like this. Really enjoyed Asleep at the Wheel's recent outings with Willie Nelson too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYQzyDa1bTc
Legend has it that Buddy Rich, upon having a heart attack scare, when being admitted to the hospital, was asked if he had any allergies. "Two", he said, "country, and western".
Gene Watson has been called the litmus test for a country music fan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhxnckKH_Z4
Country is where I pretty much live, so long as it's big enough to include the country blues, gospel, and western swing that I grew up on. That means Gatemouth as well as the Carter Family.
I don't even mind the "I, IV, V in the key of G" stuff that most folks think of as quintessential country. But the mix of mountain modals and blues vocabularies with Tin Pan alley changes are the coolest part of the tradition.
Billy Joe Shaver grew up with that stuff, and he uses lots of iii, vi, ii, V progressions in his songs. His son, Eddy, would do the blues players thing of cooling out the changes. Their best live performances of Old Chunk of Coal were clinics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B-JCvBe39Q
I remember reviewing this guy's first album many moons ago and later interviewing him for some magazine. '80s? Early '90s? Can't recall. But I thought he had that high lonesome quality in his voice that I've always been drawn to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB8eCvMG0I8
One of my favorite country songs----everyone from Steve Earle to Taj Mahal have done this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHbGhEfnh2E
Jerry Reed had a big hit with this one, from the movie "Smokey and the Bandit." Nice guitar solo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHZJej98_T0
Both Bluegrass and Western Swing have a lot of things in common with jazz. The solos are heavily improv based and can be very adventurous.
i like that ricky barnes cut. hadn't heard him before.
if the OP is looking for more stuff along the tony rice - rawlings/welch arc, the work julian lage and chris eldridge are doing is pretty cool.
my favorite norman blake tune-- julian is more restrained than usual on this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmakSRU4EYA
Country music is misunderstood. I live in Texas and it's amazing how many Texans have never heard of Lefty Frizzell. Not to mention Gene Watson, Moe Bandy and Johnny Rodriquez. Big stars that had lots of hits. I find it curious that this style of music is so ignored even among so called 'music heads'. To the same degree as straight ahead jazz is among mainstream society.
Nothing against the left of center stuff, but for me this is the real deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miPX638p2ZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ6uyNmm0xg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgxkMlJG4hE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1ERasQUPlw
Supposedly Bob Dylan was obsessed with this next one and listened to it over and over. And drove way out of his way to meet Stewart at a club he was performing at. I guess this is why Dylan is the major artist that he is. Or that Blonde on Blonde is considered by many to be the greatest rock album of all time. All Nashville sidemen played on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F-k0lLsLmw
I'm a sucker for tex-mex stuff...Texas tornados, doug sahm...anything like that...
I like Joe Ely, esp the live album he did fairly early on: rock, Tex-Mex, some blues, country, the whole shmear....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDC4...212BFB&index=8
I don't know if this qualifies as Tex Mex but here goes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K3szlIdZ3Y
Here's some genuwine Tex Mex
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZJiGu6Gz8E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiQbtRYty1Q
that was a great album-- wish i'd seen that tour. he opened for the clash. the late, great jesse taylor on guitar--Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
the studio lp that followed, musta notta gotta lotta, is one of my favorites, too. joe still brings it-- saw him just a couple months ago.
dale and jesse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GngozWadKr8
I had a girlfriend who was wild about "Musta Notta Gotta Lotta". It didn't thrill me as much, though it's not that I disliked it.Quote:
Originally Posted by klk
I forget the name of the album this came out on. Think it was on High Tone. Liked it a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XZy...=RD_XZyGhg2IpQ
Here's a nice photo of Doc Watson with Earl and Lester btw--It's Earl's birthday today.
Attachment 26817
As one of the world's biggest country music fans I wouldn't be doing my people justice if I didn't say that a lot of what's being talked about on this thread is the country equivalent of fusion. Sure, the Nashville Sound has always been Pop. Chet Atkins when asked 'what is the Nashville Sound?' put his hand in his pants pocket and jiggled his change. Like it or not that's always been a big part of real country music, at least for many decades. I'll still take Little Jimmy Dickens or Mel Street over Tex Nobody and his Austin Hipcats. Anyday.
If it was good enough for Parker it's good enough for me.
here's one of George Jones' favorite songs. Maybe one of Bird's to. He was alive in 1949.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuAaH446wes
Also from 1949, the original recording of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Y3mnj-8lA
Speaking of Nashville and its sound---Willie Nelson talks about that in his autobiography. He liked and admired Chet Atkins but didn't care for the way Chet produced his (Willie's records). It's a big part of the reason Willie went back to Texas, where he did mighty fine....
Here's Willie from "Willie and the Family Live", a great live shot of Willie sounded then. He talks about this song in his autobiography.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wzVqKbBzDc
I don't think Nashville was a good fit for Willie as a recording artist. As a writer, you bet.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Great version of FMB. Thanks. 1949 was a good year for music.
O yeah, he wrote a lot of great songs there.Quote:
Originally Posted by mrcee
Nashville has been about selling product: Jukebox plays, singles, albums, CD's, downloads, and now streams. I would argue Nashville is more like 'fusion' as they take elements (writer, singer, player, image, etc.) and package them as a product designed for mass appeal and sales. The elements come from, or imitate, the vastly diverse country artists struggling to get heard.Quote:
Originally Posted by mrcee
Whether they be: Honkytonk, cowboy, Americana, Alt Country, cow punk, country punk, outlaw, Bakersfield, roadhouse, etc., my favorite country music comes from artists with a passion for writing and playing their own music and making their own sound.
Great song. The studio version was cut in Muscle Shoals with the swampers rhythm section and Jerry Wexler producing.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
The album on Atlantic was one of his first of his post Nashville releases.
The live version of "El Paso" featured Jack Pruitt playing lead, but Grady Martin was used on all Marty's western songs.
Grady used that similar Tex-Mex style very effectively and on all the tracks I have he never used the same phrase twice !
Grady was very versatile, too, and played rock-a-billy style on many records in the mid '50's .
There is a lot of great guitar work in country, always has been, but...too often guitars are just used to create a wall of twang that is something that can be marketed to a certain segment, or they are just showoffy. Nowadays I actually prefer alt country, that owes as much to the Stones as to Hank Williams.
Not to digress too far, but not too long ago I did a little research on Tic Tac bass--played on just about every Nashville recording of the 60's and early 80's--rather interesting. Definitely a cool sound.
The full album isn't up on Youtube, but the first 20 minutes of Willie's 2004 Live at Billy Bob's is like a tour through guitar history-- bits of CC, Django, Mother Maybelle, --. Willie is maybe the last really important representative of that period in American music before corporate radio sliced and diced it into consumer brand niches. It was only after everything had been stuffed into tiny little, carefully regulated boxes, each associated with a particular demographic and even politics, that mixing them became a genre of its own.
Much as I like good postwar honky tonk weepers, I think that the consolidation of the corporate recording and publishing industry in Nashville was one of the worst things that could've happened to country music. The region was so much more musically-- and racially segregated --than Texas. Not that Texas didn't have nasty Jim Crow practices, but the Bible Belt suspicion of dancing and even of drums meant that the corporate culture there took on a different flavor than it could've have done in, say, San Antonio or even Dallas.
Of course, Willie really was a hipster. I like his beatnik outfit here, complete with expressionist backdrop painted by some poor refugee from art school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wyD1G8iJUQ
A little more Jerry Reed is never a bad idea... ;o)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXk9qywB6Kg
Cow Punk was a mix of country, rockabilly, rock and folk from the days before Alt. Country. Some of these artists were solid performers.
Dwight Yoakam returning to his Cow Punk roots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYfAON5WM64
Cow Punk diva Maria McKee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wX6uSSpUKU
Although given a birthday greeting up stream, one of my long-time personal favorites and, IMO, far too seldom mentioned guitarists is Earl Scruggs, whose guitar playing was overshadowed by his considerable talents as a banjo player.
Scruggs forged an amalgam of banjo rolls, Maybelle Carter style, single string, and bluesy alternating bass supported-melody into a very personal guitar style.
Here are a few choice examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dc05ia0KTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE73TjcXIXM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA6jWj0bTi8
Enjoy,
Jerome
yeah, always liked earl's guitar picking. never heard him play banjo on any of the gospel tunes, at least not in the early days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYTqx0LhzCQ
take some water, wash it off. heh.
Grady Martin helped Willie Nelson a lot in developing his nylon string style.Quote:
Originally Posted by gtrplrfla
Here's Jack Pruett's wife Jeanne Pruitt doing her big hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6n-UQ9k8rI
I've posted this before but it's always worth another listen. Leon Rhodes (-no relation) plays some pretty mean guitar here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVCBTpA5fVc
Hank Williams "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is a worthy tune.
http://youtu.be/XcUvFBjiGwo
love me some leon.
and some grady martin, especially his early stuff with red foley or sides like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzKJUEQLTvI
Yes, and we have Ms. Jones covering a Hank Williams tune from the best selling Blue Note album in history.
https://youtu.be/G6JOXHfet40
To prove she was a real Texas girl, she, tele virtuoso Jim Campilongo, and company put together an act named after the red headed stranger, The Little Willies....just to prove they were the real deal.
https://youtu.be/eg2jn-Ha1-0
Who knew so many jazz forumites were closet shit kickers..?
Here's some more Grady Martin ! I marvel at his seemingly inexhaustible catalogue of double stops and runs used in Marty's western numbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWufrOT_iOk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk5LtxpqlHw
Here's a more twangy Grady Martin from 1956, but re-issued in 1962.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWufrOT_iOk
Back in 1963 , I was in Nashville and on Saturday nights following the Opry close , many of the musicians would head over to Ernest Tubb's Record Store and play. It was all free and everyone was welcome. As the hour became late , a jam session would take place with all blowing off steam. Leon Rhodes was always there and would peel off dazzling runs at fast tempos that floored me ! Ernest Tubb insisted, I was told, his band members, "Keep it country" on tours and other live appearances , but allowed them absolute freedom afterwards. Great memories !Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
and another for the road. 1949 was indeed a good year. anyone know who plays guitar on this cut? i know he played with a number of folks over the years, not sure who this is. from before his years at King.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_HL6dD-oK0
and for contrast, eddy rockin out in his Dwight days on the same classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucYSSV3fDu0