Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir PDF
Preview Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir
BLUEGR ASS BLUESMAN Josh Graves A Memoir Edited by Fred Bartenstein Foreword by Neil Rosenberg Bluegrass Bluesman music in american life A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book. Bluegrass Bluesman Josh Graves a memoir Edited by Fred Bartenstein Foreword by Neil Rosenberg university of illinois press Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield Frontispiece: Courtesy of Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum. The 1994 interviews are used by permission of Barry Willis and Mike Dow. Quotes from Bobby G. Wolfe’s 1990 serial, “Josh Graves: Father of Bluegrass Dobro,” are used by permission of the author and Bluegrass Unlimited magazine. Quotes from Stacy Phillips’s 1993 interview, originally published in Complete Dobro Player, are used by permission of the author and Mel Bay Publications. A number of the testimonials in Chapter 9 are used by permission of Betty Wheeler, who originally compiled them in 2001 for A Tribute to Josh Graves, an unpublished work. Photographs are used by permission of the photographers or their owners (when photographers are unknown). © 2012 by Fred Bartenstein All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America p 5 4 3 2 1 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Graves, Josh. Bluegrass bluesman : a memoir / Josh Graves; edited by Fred Bartenstein; foreword by Neil Rosenberg. pages cm — (Music in American life) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-252-07864-4 (pbk.) 1. Graves, Josh. 2. Guitarists—United States—Biography. 3. Bluegrass musicians—United States—Biography. I. Bartenstein, Fred. II. Title. ml418.g73a3 2012 787.87'1642092—dc23 [B] 2012011210 Contents Foreword Neil V. Rosenberg vii Editor’s Introduction Fred Bartenstein ix Author’s Introduction xiii 1 1927–1942, A Tennessee Childhood 1 2 1942–1955, A Musical Apprenticeship 12 3 1955–1969, Part 1, Foggy Mountain Boy 22 4 1955–1969, Part 2, Life on the Road and the Breakup 34 5 1969–1994, King of the Dobro 45 6 A Man of Many Talents 58 7 Reflections on Bluegrass Old and New 69 8 A Family Musical Legacy 79 9 Testimony from Josh Graves’s Contemporaries and Those He Influenced 89 appendix a: Josh, “Julie,” and “Cliff” (with the Seahorse Inlay), the Two Main Instruments Played by Josh Graves between 1956 and 2006 by Bobby Wolfe 113 appendix b: Josh’s Repertoire: Tunes and Songs He Featured While a Member of the Foggy Mountain Boys, 1955–1969 by Stacy Phillips 115 Notes 117 Index 127 Illustrations follow p. 44. Foreword The Dobro master In 1955 Burkett Howard “Uncle Josh” Graves changed the sound of blue- grass music when he added a new instrumental voice, that of the Dobro,1 to the five instruments—fiddle, guitar, mandolin, bass, and banjo—first heard together in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys of the mid-1940s. Graves’s Dobro became part of bluegrass music when he joined Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’s band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. Subsequently he participated in all of their Columbia recording sessions except one, more than any other band member. Lester and Earl hired him to work as bassist and as a comedian in the role of “Uncle Josh.” At first he played Dobro only at their recording sessions and on a few pieces in shows. But Uncle Josh’s picking was so well received that Lester and Earl quickly moved him to Dobro full time and hired a sec- ond comedian, E. P. “Cousin Jake” Tullock, to play bass. Thereafter, Josh and Jake’s wonderful comedy routines and singing were part of every Flatt and Scruggs show. Josh’s Dobro became an integral part of the instrumental signature of bluegrass music’s most successful band—not just on their chart-topping records but on radio and television and in personal appearances as well. Soon other bands began adding the Dobro to their sound. Graves not only introduced a new voice to this music, he also devel- oped a multifaceted musical vocabulary for it. He had studied the sounds and techniques introduced by the masters of early country music steel guitar—players like Brother Oswald of Roy Acuff’s Smoky Mountain Boys and Cliff Carlisle, who recorded with Jimmie Rodgers. To this he added his own upbeat bluegrass-style picking developed from Earl Scruggs’s right- hand banjo technique, which Scruggs personally taught him when they were both working at WVLK near Lexington, Kentucky. vii Josh grew up listening to African American musicians in his home com- munity in East Tennessee as well as through radio and records. Still, in those segregated times it was not always easy to meet with, listen to, or play with musicians across color lines. To do this took determination and social grace, and Josh had those qualities. Throughout his life he sang and played the blues, collected blues recordings, and counted famous blues- men like Lightnin’ Hopkins among his personal friends. To me his signal contribution came as he added the rhythms and licks of this music he loved and believed in to the bluegrass sound. Starting in the mid-1950s, each new Flatt and Scruggs single had Josh’s picking front and center. Pieces like “Big Black Train,” with its bluesy Dobro opening, drew even teenage fans with a taste for rhythm and blues and the era’s new rockabilly sounds into this new music. His blues feeling transformed the Foggy Mountain Boys sound. This can be heard clearly by comparing their 1952 recording of “If I Should Wander Back Tonight” (made before he joined the band) with their 1961 version. There are other examples of this kind of transformation with Josh in the band: compare Flatt and Scruggs’s 1950 Columbia recording of “I’m Head Over Heels in Love” with Lester’s 1971 version on RCA. Graves worked with other top acts besides Flatt and Scruggs. Before joining them he’d played with Esco Hankins, Mac Wiseman, and Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper. After Lester and Earl split up in 1969, Josh was a member in each of their bands. In 1974 he began performing and recording as a featured soloist. He collaborated with many other leading perform- ers, like longtime partner Kenny Baker, the Masters (Eddie and Martha Adcock, Kenny Baker, Jesse McReynolds, and Missy Raines), and Red Taylor, to name but a few. Josh inspired hundreds of musicians to pick up the steel bar and slide it over the strings of the Dobro. Befriending many of them, he encouraged Dobroists to develop their own music, and sometimes even graciously per- formed with them on their recordings and at their personal appearances. Josh Graves died on September 30, 2006, three days after his seventy- ninth birthday. It’s good and fitting that the story of this talented and influential musician is being preserved in his own words. Neil V. Rosenberg St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada viii Foreword eDiTor’s inTroDuCTion This book began in an unexpectedly twenty-first-century way. In late 2008 my grandson Zachary had just set up a Facebook account for me. In one of my first posts, I mentioned that I was looking for some new projects. Barry Willis, author and compiler of America’s Music: Bluegrass (Pine Valley Music, 1989), who saw the post, knew of my sideline career— as a bluegrass historian, journalist, and broadcaster—pursued in fits and starts since 1965 when I attended the first multiday bluegrass festival at Fincastle, Virginia, at the age of fourteen. Willis asked if I’d like to take up an endeavor he had begun years ago and never been able to finish. Over eight days in November of 1994, he had conducted extensive interviews with Josh Graves1 at Graves’s home in suburban Nashville. Their intention was to work these materials into an “as told to” Josh Graves autobiography. At the time, Barry Willis was a commercial airplane pilot based in Colorado. Mike Dow, a business associ- ate there, had offered the services of his assistant to transcribe the tapes. The assistant was familiar with neither bluegrass nor the southern dialect and expressions used by Graves, but nevertheless she produced, to the best of her ability, a 113–page, single-spaced transcript.2 I agreed to review the material, and Barry Willis shipped from his pres- ent home in Hawaii a notebook containing the transcript and a handwrit- ten cover note: “To whom it may concern: I, Josh Graves, hereby give my permission to Barry R. Willis and Mike Dow to write my official biography. Josh Graves 3/25/95.” It was clear to me that the material would offer inter- esting insights into the life of Graves and the history of bluegrass music, so I took on the responsibility of editing and preparing it for publication. Willis and Dow transferred their rights to the project; it had been a labor of love for them and would be the same for me. Willis and Dow searched ix
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