bluegrass fiddle

Bluegrass fiddle

Bluegrass fiddle is one of the most exciting and challenging of styles that the fiddle player can attempt, requiring considerable technique and dedication. It is widely considered to have been the Creation of One Man- whether or not it took seven days is open to theological question! Bill Monroe (1911-96), a Kentucky mandolin player, took old-time Appalachian tunes and songs as his bedrock, added a touch of blues and gospel, and constructed a radical new sound quite different from anything heard before.

Bill Monroe

Crucial to the line-up of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys was the 5-string banjo of Earl Scruggs, playing a powerful machine-like 3-finger style. There was also acoustic guitar (from Lester Flatt), double bass and, of course, the fiddle, which Monroe himself described as "the most bluegrass of all the instruments." High pitched tenor harmony vocals were also a distinctive part of his style. These elements, along with short solo breaks from everyone except the bass player (thank heaven for small mercies!), and a breathtaking pace to many of the tunes, set bluegrass well apart from its old-time roots.

The bluegrass fiddlers of Bill Monroe
Monroe always considered the fiddle to be the key instrument of bluegrass; he would have learned it himself had not his brother got to it first. He always spent a lot of time tutoring his fiddle players, showing them on the mandolin what he wanted them to play. In a career of gigging and recording spanning over half a century, there was a host of fiddle players who got the call; some for just a few shows, some for over a decade. The function of the fiddle within the band evolved gradually. At first it was only expected to play fairly old-timey breakdowns. Howdy Forrester introduced the idea of playing variations, and Kenny Baker took the first real improvised breaks. As the years progressed Monroe sometimes added twin and triple fiddles. An ability to do double stops reduced the number of fiddlers required and became de rigeur. Vassar Clements introduced a strong blues influence which has also become an essential part of the bluegrass fiddle arsenal.

Here’s a brief roundup of some of some of the more noteable fiddle sidemen. (His Royal Highness Vassar Clements gets a Royal Box of his own!)

ART WOOTEN from North Carolina was the first fiddler hired by Monroe after splitting with his brother Charlie. He was a relatively “Old School” fiddler; Monroe said of him “On the old-time fiddle numbers, he was hard to beat”. He introduced Orange Blossom Special into the band, having learned it from the man who weas to be his successor, Tommy Magness Wooten went on to work with both Flatt and Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers in the late 40’s and 50’s,and produced two solo albums in the 70’s.

TOMMY MAGNESS
A champion hoedown fiddler from Tennessee, Magness was already a veteran by the time he joined the Bluegrass Boys, having worked with Reg Hall and his Blue Ridge Entertainers.. With Reg he made the first ever recording of Orange Blossom Special, beating even its author Ervin T Rouse to the count, though Rouse’s publisher prevented the release. He was hired in 1940; Monroe said of him “He had that fine old-time touch, rich and pure, but he was able to put a touch of blues to it.” Together they recorded Katy Hill, a fast but clean rendition which many regard as the prototype bluegrass fiddle tune (though notably, this recording shows the fiddle tune being played repeatedly with virtually no variation- something that would be unthinkable in later years). After leaving, Magness spent some years working with Country star Roy Acuff.

HOWDY FORRESTER
From West Tennessee, he began his professional career with singer Herald Goodman, and played twin fiddles with Georgia Slim. He moved down to Texas, where he encountered the technically advanced contest style of fiddling: “those fellows actually scared the dickens out of me because they were reaching up into the second position and getting notes I’d never seen before…if you’re in somebody’s backyard, you’d better get a hoe just like he’s got.”. He joined The Bluegrass Boys briefly in 1942, introducing some of the ideas he had picked up in Texas. Monroe said of him; “Howdy, now he’s the first man who played with me that played double stop, and Howdy knows that neck all the way, and he knows how to get that tone out, give the fiddle a chance. Forrester was a prolific writer of tunes, many of which have become widely played, including “Memory Waltz”, “Weeping Heart”, and the fiddle contest standard “Wild Fiddler’s Rag”.

CHUBBY WISE
From Lake City, Florida, Wise was with The Bluegrass Boys from 42 to 48,including the “golden years” when Flatt and Scruggs were with the band. Among the classics he recorded with Monroe were “Footprints in the Snow” and “Kentucky Waltz”. After leaving in 48 he had a long and successful career. He wrote the tune “Shenendoah Waltz” which was a hit for Clyde Moody. And appeared on the Western Swing classic, Bob Wills’ “Maiden’s Prayer”. In 1956 he recorded “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” with Flatt and Scruggs (even if you’ve never heard of bluegrass, you still know the foggy mountain breakdown!) He worked for many years with the “Singing Ranger” Hank Snow, and appeared on the best selling live Merle Haggard album “The fightin’ side of me” .Throughout his life the Orange Blossom Special was his trademark piece, which he claimed he had co-written.

BENNY MARTIN
Nicknamed “The Big Tiger” by his friend Hank Williams, because of his size and ebullient personality, Martin joined Monroe in 1948, one of the first fiddlers to use sliding double stops. He went on to work with Flatt and Scruggs. He remained popular due to his fine singing and extravagant showmanship; he had a trick double fiddle which he could flip on its back and still carry on playing. His “country stomping “act was a successful opener for Elvis Presley at many shows in the 50’s.

KENNY BAKER
A sometime coal miner from east Kentucky, Baker was described by Bill Monroe as “the best fiddler in bluegrass”. He was in the band, on and off, between 1957 and 69, a longer tenure than any other player. He recorded classic fiddle tunes such as Jerusalem Ridge, Devil’s Dream and Salt Creek. He was the son of an old time fiddler, but grew up listening to Bob Wills, Stephane Grappelli and Glen Miller. He had a sweet, full tone with a strong jazz influence. In 1969 he released an album “portrait of a bluegrass fiddler” on County records. It was one of the first fiddle-led bluegrass albums, and proved highly influential in demonstrating “how it should be done”. Bill Monroe had always dreamed of doing an album of the fiddle tunes he had learned from his uncle Pen, but always felt he had to wait until the right fiddler came along; that man was Kenny Baker and the album “Bill Monroe’s Uncle Pen” was released in 1972.

RICHARD GREENE
The first of Monroe’s “city fiddlers”, Greene started out with a full classical training, moved into old time, and then on seeing Scotty Stoneman in LA, was turned on to bluegrass. He joined Monroe in 66 at a time when his career was once more in the ascendant. In 67 Greene moved on to form a pioneering bluegrass-country-rock (this was the Year of the Hyphen!) band Seatrain, in which he played electric violin. He played on some of the early newgrass albums with David “Dawg” Grisman, formed the Greene String Quartet and has done a mountain of session work. One of his most extravagant projects has been “What if Mozart had played with Bill Monroe; a concerto for violin and orchestra”. I’m not sure how you follow that.

BOBBY HICKS
From the “banjo State” of North Carolina, Hicks was with Bill Monroe from 1954-57. He was in the first of the ‘triple fiddle” line-ups, though when Monroe realised that Hicks could play perfect double stops, one of the other fiddlers was out on his ear!
He returned to the band in the 80’s, playing on the Grammy award-winning album “Southern Flavour”. In 2002 he was among the all-star cast of the post-“Brother Where art Thou” tour, “Down from The Mountain”

BYRON BERLINE
Brought up in the Texas contest fiddling tradition, Berline was a prodigy, entering his first contest at the age of five, and winning from the age of 10. He was greatly influenced by Benny Thomasson, pioneer and master of the contest style. He was turned on to bluegrass at university in Oklahoma, joining a local band called the Cleveland County Ramblers. In 1963 The Dillards played at his college, and he got to jamming with them afterwards. The band did not have a fiddler, and were knocked out by his playing; he was invited to LA the following year to record an album with them- a groundbreaking fusion of his Texas fiddling with their bluegrass backing.
Around the same time he both won Weiser (the nation’s top fiddle contest) and appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. In ’67 he joined the Bluegrass Boys, bringing with him his full armoury of intricate double stops, triplets, third position fingering, jazzy phrasing, faultless tone and intonation. He was with the band only a short time, but was able to record two classics; “Sally Goodin” and “Gold Rush”. He was called up to the army, and on his return found his place filled by Kenny Baker. Undaunted, he set off to LA to become a session man, quickly landing a job with the Rolling Stones (he appeared on the classic “Country Honk”. By 1971 he was playing with country rock outfit the Flying Burrito Brothers; the band were loud and heavy, playing to huge audiences, but introduced a bluegrass segment to the middle of the gig: “we could put Byron Berline on there and have him play the Orange Blossom Special; it’ll sound like they made the touchdown in the last 3 seconds”.
Hey, being a bluegrass fiddler is a dirty job, but someone has to do it!

Fiddle technique in bluegrass
The fiddle gets plenty to do in a bluegrass band; it will often lead the melody in an instrumental or "breakdown"and it will share short improvised solos with the other instruments. When not soloing, the fiddle will provide accompaniment with simple shuffles or off-the beat chops, and if backing a song it may put short licks between the vocal phrases. It may also kick off the number with a
little one or two-bar phrase , usually with staccatto bowing, setting the tempo for the band. A similar phrase or "tag" may also wind up the tune.

The keys used may be quite adventurous; Monroe set a dangerous precedent by pitching many songs in E or even in B to suit his singing. Where sharps are concerned, two's company but five's a plague!

Like in old-time fiddling, bluegrass uses a lot of open string drones, but the double stopping tends to be a lot more sophisticated. It is common to change position, perhaps from first to third, whilst holding down a double stop, and position changes are integral to many licks.

Bill Monroe

Bluegrass bowing

Bowing is also quite advanced, using a variety of standard patterns including the Nashville Shuffle and the Georgia Bow. The most exciting is the double shuffle which uses 3-note patterns (borrowed from the 3-finger banjo style) stretched across two bars. When combined with double stops and string crossing this sounds most dramatic and is used to great effect in Back up and Push, and more particularly the Orange Blossom Special. This showpiece tune, where the fiddle imitates an accelerating express train, is aptly described by Stacy Phillips as "crowd manipulation and riot control for the bluegrass fiddle".

Soloing uses a lot of bluesey sounding notes-flattened thirds and sevenths and this, together with the frequent use of higher positions, gives the so-called "high lonesome sound".

One of the endearing features of bluegrass is the favoured mode of amplification, which is to use microphones rather than pickups on all the instruments; this means that when someone takes a solo he, (or, shockingly, she!) steps forward to the stand whilst the others step back to achieve the right sound balance. This is a throwback to the Grand Old Opry where many of the early bluegrass bands cut their teeth; at that time it was not easily possible to mix the sound between mics, so they made do with jus the one. In the 70's and 80's, when transducers, high quality PA speakers and mixing desks became widely available, many bands took the plunge and adopted the new technology. To some musicians however, what was good enough for Bill Monroe is good enough for them. When done well, the elegant choreography of working around a single mic looks and sounds great. When done not so well, it's a soundman's nightmare, and if you're stpping forward when you should be stepping back, you stand a good chance of being decked by the headstock of a guitar or banjo!

Hot Licks for Bluegrass Fiddle

Players usually draw on a large store of "hot licks"-flashy riffs which can be pulled out instantaneously when soloing. These will often have been painstakingly copied from records by the great players, but a huge selection is now available frozen and pre-packaged in various excellent bluegrass tutors and manuals.

My favourite is this one, by Stacy Phillips; amusingly written and full of great licks.

Classic Bluegrass songs
Bluegrass shares much of its repertoire with old time music; fiddle tunes such as Soldiers Joy, Bill Cheatem, Cripple Creek , Billy in the Low Ground and Arkansas Traveller lend themselves readily to either style; the roots of many of these are in turn inherited from English, Irish and Scots settlers. Many recent compositions are widely played, such as Jerusalem Ridge and Roxanna Waltz (Bill Monroe), Kissimmee Kid and Lonesome Fiddle Blues (Vassar Clements). The latter tune found itself embedded in Charlie Daniels' hit The Devil went down to Georgia. There are many classic bluegrass songs which work either as instrumental or vocal numbers, such as Roll in my Sweet Baby's Arms, Nine Pound Hammer and Don'tlet your Deal go Down.

Back to the roots
Bluegrass continues to thrive, with many festivals and fiddle contests throughout the USA; recently fiddler Alison Krauss has had great mainstream success, and it has become almost de rigeur for established country superstars to release a "back to the roots" bluegrass album. Since the 1970's bluegrass artists have been expanding the boundaries of the genre, most successfully in the "new acoustic" or "jazzgrass" movement where fiddler like Mark O'Connor, Sam Bush, Darrel Anger and Richard Greene have incorporated new textures and tune structures, jazzier chord sequences and longer, more elaborate solos into their work. First prize for going out on a limb must go to Richard Greene, who has a new has a new and adventurous classical/bluegrass fusion piece called What if Mozart had played with Bill Monroe; a concerto for violin and orchestra !

VASSAR CLEMENTS

It was in the late 70’s when someone played me a copy of Old and in the Way. I had been making my stumbling waY as a jazz and rock fiddle player, and was only vaguely aware of the existence of bluegrass. From the very first notes I heard of Vassar Clements on this album , it was like Moses had come down from the mountain, bearing tablets of stone. Never mind the ten commandments, what I saw carved in stone was THOU SHALT LEARN THESE LICKS! Along with practically every other fiddle player who heard the album, I was in thrall to Vasser from then on, slavishly copying his every phrase. His style, unlike many of this predecessors in bluegrass, was not rooted in old time fiddle music, but in jazz; his playing soared and swooped like a bird of prey, aggressive, startling, effortless. He brought a unique blues element to what he played; not just playing flattened thirds, but flattened fifths and sevenths too, turning the chords inside out with consummate ease. Yet he was no musical intellectual; he did not read a note of music, and understood no theory- all of his bizarre chromatic twists and turns, his outlandish notes from Beyond the Chord were all instinctive, coming straight from the heart rather than from a calculating mind. He could shift position anywhere on the neck of the fiddle without batting an eyelid- indeed, when he played his eyes were closed, his calm square face like a granite-hewn socialist-realist statue; yet he was entirely self taught. This was The Man!

Vassar Clements was born in 1928 in Kinard, South Carolina, but lived most of his life in Kissimmee, Florida. At the age of seven he was teaching himself guitar and fiddle. When Bluegrass Boy Chubby Wise called round at the house one day (he was a friend of a man who was staying at the family home), he invited the young Vassar to jam with him, and a new world opened up ; “I had been listening to those people (the Bluegrass Boys) for years on our old battery-powered radio, and I idolised them. Let me tell you, that was quite an experience for a young man”.
Five years later he was invited to audition for Bill Monroe. Despite the fact that he had been mostly listening to jazz- Tommy Dorsey, Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli- Vassar had learned Chubby Wises’s parts note for note, and landed the job, at the age of just 14. His early work in bluegrass was very much in the standard mould, but as his playing and confidence developed he began to push the boundaries and developed a completely unique and highly distinctive style. He was with Monroe on and off until 1956, when he went to work with Jim and Jesse McReynolds. The next decade or so was a grim time, when drink got the better of him, and he found himself surviving on blue collar jobs. In 1967 he was back on form and moved to Nashville where he started getting session work. His big break came in 1972 when he was invited by the Nitty Gritty Dirtband to play on their legendary “Will the Circle be Unbroken” album. This was a symbolic moment in musical history- a joining of the circle between the new generation of commercial/country/rock/hippy musicians, and the “old guard” of revered/legendary/bluegrass/no longer commercial players such as Earl Scruggs, Doc Datson, Mother Maybelle Carter and so on. The album was an instant classic, and Vassar got more than his share of the limelight, with demon versions of his trademark composition “Lonesome Fiddle Blues” and the failsafe crowd-pleaser “Orange Blossom Special”.
From this point on all doors were open, and work poured in, with sessions for the Grateful Dead, Paul McCartney, Linda Ronstadt, BB King, the Monkees, the Allman Brothers-over 1000 albums in all. Arch DeadHead and sometime banjo player Jerry Garcia, together with Peter Rowan, David Grisman, and John Kahn on bass, put together a fun bluegrass band, with Vassar on fiddle. Playing a mixture of traditional bluegrass, rock covers (Wild Horses), and thinly disguised anthems to the drug culture (Panama Red), this was the perfect band for a student audience. The live album released in 1975, Old and In the Way, was the best selling bluegrass album for decades, and secured immortality for Vassar Clements.
From here on he could do no wrong, and to his growing mountain of album credits he added a long string of solo albums, focusing on his own brand of “Hillbilly Jazz”.

For many years he played a distinctive, ornate and slightly mysterious instrument given to him by his longtime friend John Hartford. In place of the scroll is a carved, bearded head, and on the back is a beautiful painting of Sappho holding a lute. Around the side are letters which no one has been able to translate. The fiddle may once have belonged to a Russian Prince, and may be the work of Gaspar Duiffoprugcar from the 16th century. If you take a look at the Vassar Clements official website you’ll see the carved head of his fiddle; since his death in 2005, tears drip slowly from the eyes.

Links:

Vassar Clements

International Bluegrass Music Association

Stacyphillips.com

Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine

Alison Krauss

Mark O'Connor

Richard Greene

bluegrass fiddle for beginners

Chris Haigh is a fiddle player based in London; he has a large repertoire of bluegrass, old time and Western Swing fiddle tunes, and performs either solo, with a singer/guitarist, with a larger country rock band, or with the barn-dance band QUICKSILVER. He has worked with Leon Hunt's Southern Exposure and The Daily Planet, The Coal Porters, Orange Blossom Sound and the Charlie Boston band. He gives lessons and workshops on jazz and bluegrass fiddle, and has published a book "Any fool can write fiddle tunes!"

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