In It for the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey

Into the Folk and Bluegrass Pool

20 GOING MY OWN WAY INTO THE FOLK AND BLUEGRASS POOL Towardtheendofmysenioryear,afolkmusicpromoternamedManny Greenhill came up from Boston. He wanted to put Odetta on in concert at the University of Massachusetts across town. He needed a campus organization to sponsor the concert, so he helped organize The Pioneer ValleyFolkloreSociety.AmongthefoundingmemberswereBillandme, fellowAmherststudentsRickLeeandJesseAuerbach(laternamedJosh Dunson),andUMassstudentsTajMahalandBuffySte.Marie.(TheSocietyisstillgoing !)MannyheardBillandmeplayatthattimeandlikedus wellenoughtoaskustoopenupforasingernamedCharlotteDanielsat aclubhehadopenedinBostonnexttoGeorgeWein’s“Storyville”called “The Ballad Room.” We’d get $15 a night for two nights, our first professional gig. We were excited. Our parents came, as well as Dick Curley, Larry Casson, and a few other friends. We wore ties and matching blue shirts and tried to look professional. We played our eclectic set to this select audience and were doing okay. Then, after one particular song, a voice boomed out from the back of the room, “I never heard it better!” It was Odetta. She’d gone out of her way to come and hear us and encourage us. I never forgot that. NextweheadedtoNewportfortheFolkFestival.Odettawasgoingto be on the show, as was Earl Scruggs. We had to go! Suddenly we found ourselvesinthemidstofthousandsofotherswho,likeus,hadbeendiscoveringfolkmusicforourselvesandhadstartedsingingandplayingon our own. We were no longer alone. All day long there were jam sessions on the green in the middle of town. After the shows, we all went to the beaches and played around campfires. We were welcome to play along and make ourselves heard from time to time. If we slept, we slept in Bill’s car or on the beach. I presume we ate from time to time. Nothing mattered but the music. At Newport, Roger Sprung invited us to join him on a trip down to Asheville, North Carolina, to a festival organized by a man named Bascom Lamar Lunsford, a local folk song collector. Following that was an old-time fiddler’s convention in Galax, Virginia. Here it was—1960; I’d been listening to and playing this southern music for eight years or so, but I’d never been south of Washington, D.C.! I’ll never forget crossing 21 IntotheFolkandBluegrassPool the Potomac River onto “The Lee Highway.” It was like going to another country—a country I’d wanted to go to for a long time. I thought I knew alotaboutit,but,ofcourse,Ididn’t.Everythingwasexotic—justtheway people spoke, inviting you to “come back,” wishing you “good mornin.’” Then there was the food—grits, biscuits and gravy, country ham, sweet icedtea.AswedroveoverhillanddaledowntheShenandoahValleyand upintotheBlueRidgeMountainshearingFlatt&ScruggsandBillMonroe on the radio, we were finally entering the world we had only imagined. When we arrived in Asheville, Roger took us over to the Municipal Auditorium where he introduced us to Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who wasalldressedupinawhitelinensuit,theveryimageofacourtlysouthern gentleman. He was very welcoming. If Roger said we were good enough to be on the show that was good enough for him. He obviously liked Roger, who’d been coming for several years. He introduced Roger to the audience as “a great big friendly Jew from New York,” which, of course,hewas.Therewasnomaliceintendedandnonetaken.Theshow wasn’tacountrymusicshow.Itwasfolkmusiciansfromthearea—balladsingers ,old-timefiddlers,banjoplayers,andclogdancers.Whenwe finally went on, we did “John Henry” at a pretty torrid pace. I let loose on the vocal, and Bill burned up the banjo. The crowd loved it. We were immediately accepted. Aftertheshoweverybodywentouttoashoppingmallparkinglotand pickeduntiltwoorthreeinthemorning.Westartedmeetingpeople—Ron and Don Norman, who were both good banjo players from Georgia, and a heartfelt country and bluegrass singer named Walter Butler. Bill had boughtashortneckbanjofromDonStoverandthiswasachanceforhim toreallygetintotheScruggsstyleandlearn.Allthepickingweweredoing was rubbing off on me as well. Walter Butler and the other bluegrass guitar players did these bass runs that seemed to be an important part of playing bluegrass guitar. I got someone to give me a thumbpick and startedtofigureouthowtodosomeoftheserunsupsidedown.Wewere playing all day and all night, so I started to get the hang of it pretty fast. The last night of the festival this old-time fiddler, Byard Ray, from Marshall in the mountains west of Asheville, invited us to come home with him. We met him on Monday afternoon and followed him on the paved highway, which ran along the French Broad River, and then on a dirt road up a long holler to the end where he lived in a small farmhouse 22 GOING MY OWN WAY withhisfamily.We’donlybeenintheSouthforaweekandnowwewere as deep into the mountains as you could go. The Southern hospitality was real. There was food on the table seemingly from morning to night, starting with eggs and biscuits, ham and gravy, molasses, grits, and applesauce . After dinner we...