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Oh-lay, Norman! The Three Pickers with Alison, that's some mighty mighty fine singing there.
That song's an old favourite. I first heard it from Michael Cooney (the great American folksinger, not the great Irish piper). Michael was my upstairs neighbour in a house in Toronto for a year or two around 1980. We used to hear each other practising - I was learning the Villa-Lobos etudes amongst other things, and he was picking and singing his way through his vast repertoire. He did some gigs in town and also shared the stage with Pete Seeger when Pete came here.
(Upon further memory scraping consideration, I might have first heard that one when I saw Doc Watson a few years earlier, along with the one about "Mama don't want no washboard pickin' here" but...)
Anyway, here's a bit of fun stuff, with a different aire and some nice soniquete here and there:
Well, how-dee and yee-haw to you, Estevan. Looks like the fiddler in your video is going to bite something or someone when he takes a solo!
quote:
that's some mighty mighty fine singing there.
Yeah, the video as a whole is a nice tribute, although Earl and Doc are far past their prime. Ricky Skaggs appears to be a very good singer and musician, and the same goes for Alison Krauss. I still don’t know much about either of them, aside from her and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin making an acclaimed album of which I still haven’t heard even a snippet. Earl Scruggs not only created bluegrass and revolutionized banjo but was a fine fingerstyle guitarist and a pretty cool dude. He was receptive to and even sympathetic toward the ways youth and their music were changing in the 60s and 70s. I’ve heard it was what caused him and Lester Flatt to end their friendship on bad terms (estranged until Earl visited Lester on his deathbed). But long before things took a wrong turn, they formed an amazing musical alliance for many years, of which most guys my age have only heard through the theme music of The Beverly Hillbillies. That one earned them awards and lasting fame, but they made a lot of other music that still sounds good today. On YouTube, there many old videos of them with other musicians on a 1950s television show, with instrumentals that are virtuosic and crazy fun, along with other stuff I don’t care for. But hoo-whee he was an exciting picker and an outstanding performer. Say his name loud: Earl Scruggs!!!
Although I was joking about “American martinete” (hope that was obvious), at the same time, there’s a kind of intention in Doc’s rendition of that hymn that reminds me of Joselero’s martinete, recorded on one of those albums he did with son Diego. It’s not a real martinete, and I think Joselero pretty much made it up, taking bits and pieces of romances and other cantes and singing some pretty funny letras (several related ones, like a romance) about a grandfather trying to get his grandson to fall asleep. Excellent music and artistic creation, IMO. I was going to link to it, but I'm not seeing it on YouTube.
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