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13007PDFbooklet PDF
13007PDFbooklet PDF
Dave Evans
John Renbourn
London-born and nurtured on American folk music via skiffle,
Renbourn became deeply entrenched in the vibrant London music
scene of the 60s. Inspired
by Ramblin Jack Elliott, Big
Bill Broonzy, and other
seminal American influences, Renbourn played
Jimmy Reed songs with English R&B bands before absorbing the eclectic music
of Davey Graham and the
jazz-and-blues-tinged traditionalism of Bert Jansch.
Renbourns friendship with
flat-mate Jansch produced
some legendary guitar duets (Bert & John/After The
Dance, Shanachie Records),
and provided the core for
the uniquely adventurous
folk baroque ensemble,
Pentangle. Since the dissolution of Pentangle in 1973,
Renbourn has maintained an active solo career as well as performing and recording duets with Stefan Grossman (Snap A Little Owl,
Shanachie Records). Readers of his writings in Guitar Player and
elsewhere know he is also a passionate scholar of guitar music from
varied genres and eras. Dick Weissman wrote of Renbourn in Acoustic
Guitar: He always has a clear vision of what can and cannot be
done on the steel-string guitar, and he can coax an almost classical
sound out of the instrument, with all the subtle gradations of tone
that the best classical players can create.
Renbourns two performances here illustrate both his classical
facility and his range of influences (hints of Mississippi John Hurt
waft through Rosslyn). I think the most enjoyable approach to the
guitar, Renbourn told Stefan Grossman in a Frets magazine interview, is to regard it, if you can, as something like a keyboard instrument, with the possibility of playing the separate parts, rather than
embracing a style of music which you then have to fit all the music
into...My concern is playing the type of music I like. How it actually
sounds is an accident.
6
Stefan Grossman
A remarkable career in teaching and
performing began for
Brooklyn-born Grossman as teenaged pupil
of the legendary Rev.
Gary Davis. I was absolutely enamored by
him, Grossman recalled in a Guitar Player
feature, and he spent as
much time as possible
with Davis, documenting one of the most extraordinary repertoires
in American folk music.
This was the era of
blues rediscoveries, and
soon Grossman was
meeting (and learning
from) the likes of John Hurt, Skip James, and Son House. By 1965,
his knack for transmitting what he had absorbed was manifest in an
instructional album, How to Play Blues Guitar, for the Elektra label.
A few years later, Grossman wrote an influential series of books documenting varied blues and ragtime guitar styles for Oak Publications.
By then he lived in England, where he soaked up the music of everyone from Eric Clapton to John Renbourn, with whom he has performed more recently. With the formation of his Kicking Mule label
in 1973, Grossman became the nexus of an international crop of
fingerstyle guitarists who offered vital and varied music (as well as
instructional material).
7
John Knowles
A self-styled serious
pop or light classical guitarist, Texas-born Knowles
began his exploration of the
guitar with a Chet Atkins
album, Fingerstyle Guitar, in
1956. Two decades later, he
was performing with Atkins
in the Nashville Guitar
Quartet. His musical odyssey began with piano and
accordion, which taught
him fundamentals he then
applied to his first stringed
instrument, a plastic ukulele. By high school,
Knowles was playing Hawaiian music in a band
called the Surf Riders, but
yearned for the subtler sounds of the classical guitar. He applied to
the music department of Texas Christian University, but was told
that the guitar was not a legitimate instrument. (In more recent and
enlightened times, Knowles has taught at Nashvilles Blair School of
8
Pat Donohue
If Minnesota evokes stereotyped visions of Garrison Keillors
Lake Woebegon rustics, it also seems to have nurtured more than its
share of imaginative fingerstyle guitarists. For example, theres Pat
Donohue,
who
switched from drums
to his sisters guitar at
age 12, and soon
picked out some
Beatles' tunes. Later,
the appearance of such
bluesmen as Lightnin
Hopkins and Big Joe
Williams at the University of Minnesota
fueled his interest in
rootsier music, and
Donohues discovery
of Blind Blakes recorded oeuvre sent
him off exploring jazz
and ragtime. His explorations have faced the challenges of bop
(Charlie Parkers Yardbird Suite and Thelonious Monks Blue Monk),
9
but Donohue feels the basics of blues and ragtime were an important grounding in everything hes done since.
Donohue took home the National Fingerpicking Championship
from Winfield, Kansas in 1983, and has to date recorded four albums. What Id like to do, Donohue told Russell Letson for Acoustic
Guitar, is improvise while fingerpicking, to take all those folk influences and improvise like a jazz musician, only on the folk and
crossover repertoire. Donohues performances here illustrate how a
keen mind can overcome the seeming limitations of solo guitar
athwart music intended for a jazz band, such as the Ellington jungle
band classic, The Mooch. With right-hand flutters replicating the
sustain of Ellingtons horns, Donohues realization is a sly tour de
force which ought to inspire anyone tackling a foreboding arranging
chore. (It helps, of course, to have Donohues rich chord vocabulary!)
Two Hand Band (Blue Sky)
Life Stories (Blue Sky)
Pat Donohue (Red House Records)
Rags To Rock/Advanced Fingerpicking Guitar (Video Lesson GW 925)
Marcel Dadi
Paris is an unlikely environ to spawn an exceptional exponent
of Travis picking, but thats where Marcel Dadi honed his country
craft. (Like fellow French fingerstylist extraordinaire, Pierre Bensusan,
Dadi was born in North Africa.) A friend played a Chet Atkins record,
for Dadi and effectively
changed his life. The
guitar had already entered it at age 10, when
Dadi, like much of Europe, was in the thrall
of Hank Marvin and the
Shadows, often likened
to the English equivalent of the Ventures.
Soon he was neglecting
his studies to twang
along with Hank, and
the alarmed pere et mere
Dadi sent Marcels Telecaster packing. No matter. An old Gibson and a Chet Atkins record
awaited him. Later, Chet would pen words of praise in the liner of
Dadis Guitar (Guitar World 3), thanking the young Frenchman for
10
reviving his reputation Over There: I had just about decided that
no one in France had ever heard of me or my style of picking, wrote
Chet. Marcel Dadi completely debunks that idea.
Dadis performance of the Travis classic, Saturday Night Shuffle,
has all the bright bounce characteristic of the Kentucky-born style,
while his original Je Te Veux projects the mature warmth of Atkinss
electric style, proving Dadi both an adroit disciple and a creative
stylist in his own right. I think its important to play the tune and
try to bring something personal to it, he once told Stefan Grossman
in a Guitar Player feature. It shouldnt always have to be played
exactly like whats on the album.
The Guitar of Dadi (Guitar World)
Dadis Guitar (Guitar World)
Country Show! Dadi and Friends (Guitar World)
Nashville Rendez-vous (EPM Musique)
Fingers Crossing (EPM Musique)
Guitar Legend (EPM Musique)
The Guitar Of Merle Travis (Video Lesson GW 918)
Duck Baker
up the flamenco guitar, though the music hes played on it has been
swing rather than soleares, along with a potpourri of folk and jazz
from Appalachia to Manhattan (and a few foreign ports besides).
Baker was 15 when the guitar, as it had for John Knowles, replaced
the ukulele in his life. This was the mid-60s, and he was among the
legion of aspiring fingerstylists attempting to master Doc Watsons
arrangement of the Delmore Brothers Deep River Blues. But the influence of Richmond ragtime pianist Buck Evans soon plunged Baker
into a lifetime of arranging keyboard music, principally jazz, for
guitar. The way you learn to compose, Baker told Michael Crane
in an Acoustic Guitar feature, is to learn to arrange...The instrument will teach you what you can and cant do when it comes to
arranging. Go out there and try it. Here Baker presents arrangements of a Pentecostal hymn, Blood of the Lamb, and the introspective Monk masterpiece, Round Midnight. The former features Bakers
imaginative application of gospel-funk chords to a foursquare hymn,
further enlivened by fleet supported stroke arpeggios. The latter is a
faithful rendition of a deceptively simple jazz standard. I play some
Monk tunes, Baker told Crane, and they are very difficult. I approach them with a lot of respect, with apprehension really...I get
that feeling, Can I really bring this off? because its very heavy, deep
stuff.
Opening the Eyes of Love (Shanachie)
The Art of Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar (Shanachie)
Fingerpicking Guitar Delights (Shanachie)
The Music Of O'Carolan (Shanachie)
Irish Reels, Jigs, Airs & Hornpipes (Shanachie)
A Thousand Words (Acoustic Music)
Celtic Airs, Jigs, Reels & Hornpipes (Video Lesson GW 909)
Guitar Aerobics (Video Lesson GW 910)
Classic American Folk Blues Themes (Video Lesson GW 919)
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar/Swing To Bop (Video Lesson GW 920)
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar/Bop To Modern (Video Lesson GW 921)
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar/Improvisation (Video Lesson GW 922)
The Music Of Turlough O'Carolan (Video Lesson GW 926)
Chris Proctor
Salt Lake Tribune critic John Paul Brophy characterizes Proctor
as a gifted storyteller whose voice is his guitar. As such things go,
Proctor found his voice late: he was already 20 when the guitar bug
bit. It was one of those quasi-religious experiences that I read about
all the time, Proctor told Jon Sievert in a Guitar Player feature. You
just hear something, and it sounds like the thing you want to do.
The thing, surprisingly, was fingerstyle blues and ragtime. One
12
13
El McMeen
For an attorney whose repertoire is based largely on sacred songs
and Irish airs, McMeen points to a surprising early inspiration: Sixties protest singer-songwriter Phil Ochs. To McMeen, however, it
was Ochss medium as much as his message that rang true: The
alternating bass really appealed to me, he told
Patrick S. Grant in an
Acoustic Guitar feature,
because although you are
playing by yourself, you
have a complete sound
you can play melody and
have a little bass backup.
McMeen picked and sang
informally while pursuing
an A.B. at Harvard and a
law degree at the University of Pennsylvania. It was
not until the mid-80s that
McMeen, a partner in the New York City law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb,
Leiby & McRae, began a deeper involvement with the guitar. The
impetus in part came from a surge of self-education: I must have
bought 40 or 50 cassette lessons, recalls McMeen, who found in
them new worlds of music (specifically, British and Irish folk tunes)
and approaches to guitar, such as open tunings (McMeens favorite
is CGDGAD). McMeens performances here are far more than carefully-copied cassette lessons. His arrangements of an Irish air, My
Mary of the Curling Hair, and Christmas standard, Angels We have
Heard on High, evince a rich contrapuntal sense and exceptionally
clean articulation. My phrasing, McMeen told Grant, is very much
like the phrasing of an a capella choir. I discovered the power of a
cappella singing at secondary school. Theres a certain flow and expansion and contraction of crescendo, diminuendo, accelerating, and
decelerating, just a breathing and organic quality to the music that I
think seeped into my being and comes out in my guitar playing.
Of Soul and Spirit (Shanachie)
Irish Guitar Encores (Shanachie)
Sacred Music For Fingerstyle Guitar (Video Lesson GW 911)
Irish Guitar Encores (Video Lesson GW 916)
Christmas Carols & Songs For Fingerstyle Guitar (Video Lesson GW 923)
14
Joe Miller
The Smothers Brothers arent often cited as seminal influences
by virtuoso guitarists, but as a kid Miller enjoyed the fun he saw
them having and followed Toms example. But the guitar wasnt the
only instrument he explored: Growing up in
Toronto, which has a
large Indian community,
Miller studied sitar with
Shambhu Das, a student
of Ravi Shankars. It had
a big effect on me,
Miller recalls of his sitar
lessons, learning about
rhythms and the way I
think about scales.
Mandolin, classical guitar, electric bass, and
even viola da gamba
were among the succession of stringed instruments Miller explored
before devoting himself
to the acoustic steel-string guitar. His move to Berkeley in 1978 put
him in the midst of what locals regard as the music capital of the
West, and opportunities to play with the likes of mandolin virtuoso
David Grisman and to teach Country Joe McDonald. Miller has also
performed duets with two other artists featured on this collection,
Duck Baker and Pat Donohue. Following Donohues example, he
took home the gold from the Olympics of fingerpicking at Winfield,
Kansas in 1987. Active on the American folk festival circuit, Miller
has made two albums on his Rising Sleeves label, which inspired
Englands Folk Roots to marvel at his rare combination of technique, humor, and panache. With its animated bass line theme,
Millers performance here, Ivory Coast, is the sort of articulate and
energetic playing that prompted Guitar Player to call his work an
avalanche of awesome solo acoustic.
West Coast Music for Guitar (Rising Sleeves)
Semi-Traditional Guitar Solos (Rising Sleeves)
15
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ISBN: 1-57940-970-9
1 1 6 7 1 30079
El McMeen
Vestapol 13007
Duck Baker
Dave Evans
1. Stagefright
John Renbourn
2. Rosslyn
Stefan Grossman
3. Tightrope
John Knowles
4. Coastin
Pat Donohue
5. The Mooch
Marcel Dadi
6. Saturday Night Shuffle
Duck Baker
7. Blood Of The Lamb
Chris Proctor
8. Interstate
John Renbourn
9. Little Niles
Stefan Grossman
10. Bermuda Triangle Exit
El McMeen
11. My Mary Of The
Curling Hair
Joe Miller
12. Ivory Coast
John Knowles
13. Waltz Forever
The performances in this DVD series present two
Pat Donohue
generations of artists who have advanced the
acoustic guitars cause with formidable boldness.
14. High Society
We clearly hear their folk, blues and country roots
Duck Baker
15. Round Midnight even as they develop other distinctly personal harmonic and melodic pathways. Thinking, coupled
Chris Proctor
with the 90% perspiration, 10% inspiration for16. Morning Thunder mula, is evident in the performances here, no less
El McMeen
than in the artful arrangements in the original
17. Angels We Have compositions.There are English guitarists playing
original music tinged by American blues, and AmeriHeard On High
can guitarists picking with English accents. There
Marcel Dadi
are guitarists from everywhere bringing music from
18. Je Te Veux
the keyboard and other sources to the guitar. There
Bonus Instructional is an apparent user-friendly adaptability happening around the instrument: the example of these
Tracks:
players encourages the rest of us to tinker with arStefan Grossman
19. Diddie Wa Diddie rangements, explore open tunings, try varied techniques of picking. The means, they demonstrate,
Pat Donohue
are flexible. And the ends? Endless. As the redoubt20. High Society
able Claw, Jerry Reed, once remarked, I dont go