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Nice tribute in Vanity Fair w/ tweets from "friends, fans, and collaborators"
Bluegrass Guitarist Tony Rice Dies at Age 69 | Vanity Fair
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12-27-2020 11:19 PM
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End of an era.
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Tony, in his prime, does an interesting Q&A. What a kind and generous guy to spend an hour answering questions from fans.
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A remarkable musician. His inventiveness was deep, with new directions in every recording.
He hadn't been able to sing for quite some time due to muscle tension dysphonia, and lateral epicondylitis ended his guitar-playing career before 2014. But until it stopped his singing was assured and pleasing, and his guitar mastery was breath-taking.
What a gift to the world of music his life turned out to be. We are fortunate to have so much of his artistry recorded.
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Here's a full concert, if that interests. But you only need to hear the first two numbers to get Tony at his best.
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Very sad to hear. RIP
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Tony is gone from this Earth, hopefully he's some place enjoyable and not resting in peace in nothingness...
Last edited by BFrench; 12-31-2020 at 08:56 AM.
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I am sorry to hear Tony Rice passed. I dont know of anyone better who ever lived. I was just checking YT and saw him playing with Mark O Conner. I got to meet Mark once and I asked him if he used any charts when he played with The Dixie Dregs and said no he did not need any. The Nashville Cats album with Brent Mason is also very good pickin. Mountain View Arkansas is a Bluegrass center. In the warm weather they have lots of really good players on the court house lawn on weekends. Anyone serious about this style would enjoy it. There is also a Folk Music center which has national caliber acts. It is beautiful Ozark Hill country! Yall show up when you are ready to pick some Bluegrass. Old Martins extra welcome!
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A beautiful and moving essay by Richard Hoover of Santa Cruz guitars.
Prodigious at four, incredible at 12 and... - Santa Cruz Guitar | Facebook
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Tony is my guitar hero. I was privileged to see him play several times. His Homepsun instructional tapes continue to provide inspiration and joy.
Here are some live performances:
Error 400 (Bad Request)!!1
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A great loss. Tony Rice is one of my top five guitar players of all times. I had the pleasure of running sound and recording him live in a small listening room setting on a a couple of occasions in Charlottesville, VA in the late-90s/early-00s. On the first occasion he was with Norman Blake and the other with his brother Wyatt. Tony had incredible jazz chops (chord voicings, lines, etc.). During one of the sounds checks, we had a long talk about Wes Montgomery. That night he did an incredible version of Four on Six. If you've never heard it, it's on his album Acoustics. Here's a link:
Also, when you think of iconic guitars - Stevie Ray's "SRV" Strat, Clapton's 335, BB King's Lucile, etc., you have to put Tony's (formerly Clarence White's) Martin D-28 (#58957) on that list.
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Originally Posted by steve burchfield
Originally Posted by SkipBurz
BTW Norman Blake grew up and currently lives about 30 minutes away from my mother. My old neighbor occasionally plays bass with him when there are music get-togethers in the area. He is one of my favorite players and singers, and is one of the best flatpickers in the old traditional style. He had a stroke a year or 2 ago which slowed him down some.
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This afternoon at 12:00 PST / 3:00p EST ArtistWorks is doing a tribute to Tony Rice on FaceBook Live. Bryan Sutton and others will host. Included in the line-up is Chris "Critter" Eldridge. If you don't know his work, I highly recommend you listen to one of the duet albums he did with Julian Lage - especially their first, Avalon.
ArtistWorks
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Great version of Four on Six, Skip. Glad to have heard it.
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Here's a wonderful eulogy for Tony Rice by Chris Eldridge published in Variety magazine. About halfway through, he discusses Rice's love and appreciation for jazz.
Punch Brother Chris Eldridge Salutes Bluegrass Guitar Hero Tony Rice - Variety
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Of all that's been written about Tony since Christmas day, this remembrance by Chris Eldridge is my favorite.
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Originally Posted by AndyV
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Here's a nice piece by Béla Fleck.
https://tidal.com/magazine/article/t...1-2020/1-76154
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Originally Posted by CarlD
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A little Tony Rice inspired noodling on my Single 0
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'Cheering-up' required, so:
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I never heard Tony play on Round Midnight until today. This is from Mike Marshall's album Gator Strut.
Great solo and great comping.
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Originally Posted by Cunamara
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Yeah, I really liked the slight bluegrass-ish/swing-grass groove they played, not as suicidally mournful as is often the case. Monk's music seems to sometimes get encased in amber with a tendency to not deviate from orthodoxy when approaching it, which is ironic considering how much his music deviated from orthodoxy!
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Originally Posted by SkipBurz
Rice was my original guitar hero. I discovered him as a freshman in college when I was hitting an Americana music phase, listening to him along with Doc Watson, Clarence White and Norman Blake. I caught him originally just as the first David Grisman Quintet albums were coming out, and got to see a few of the first original lineups of the band when Rice (and later Mark O'Connor) were in them. First time I saw them is still one of my most memorable shows.
He never made a bad and rarely even an average album, and his variety of styles and singing kept it all very interesting. Once in an interview I read that it all came down to tone, timing, and intonation for him, and yeah, that describes it pretty well. Such a rich tone from an acoustic guitar, only Doc Watson and Clarence White were in the same neighborhood in bluegrass.
Later, Tony and the DGQ led me into discovering more swing, bebop, and cool jazz among others, which I migrated towards, and guitar remained my favorite instrument as I focused more on jazz and classical, and less on folk, blues, and bluegrass. Still listen to and love them all though.
One quote from Tony in that article that I like follows:
"As a musician, you need to LOVE music: the sound of it, the flow of it, the humanity of it — everything about it. You should be able to listen to one note — one single long sustained note — and have it be a complete musical experience. It’s all in that one note if we’re open to it: timbre, dynamics, harmony… even rhythm! If you can hear the music in and truly love that one note, then just imagine how engrossing actual music can be.
This sort of reminded me of a quote by Jerry Garcia that I read once. He said Django Reinhardt was his favorite guitarist. Because every note he played had its own "specific personality".
Thoughtful stuff. As I moved on to liking a lot of jazz guitarists, some took over from Tony in my pantheon of favorites. But I always come back semi-regularly and play Tony's stuff, rotating among his many phases and styles. Definitely had a richness in his own homegrown soul.
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