Doug Hutchens Bill Monroe

Tex Logan's Party August 1971
Bill Keith, Joe Stuart partially hidden, Tex Logan, Marc Horowitz, Bill Monroe, Doug Hutchens, David Grissman. Photo courtesy Ron Petronko

Doug Hutchens, Mark Hembre, Bill Monroe. Lousiville, Kentucky September 1982
Photo courtesy Jim Silliman

Grady Nutt

Its hard to beleive that it has been so long.....

29 years ago this afternoon Grady Nutt spoke to a youth group then to a banquet in Cullman Alabama. Grady's plane crashed soon after takeoff on the trip back to Louisville.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grady_Nutt

Two weeks to the night before this, He and I sat in the dining hall at Alice Lloyd College where we talked of an instrument he wanted me to build him. Basically a tipple with a banjo body.

I sure miss that man, but will never forget him.

Haze Hall

This tape was given to me by some wonderful friends Janie and Troy Brammer. Troy being a legendary banjo player himself and knew Haze Hall well. The person doing the interviewing is a nephew I think and was done on Haze's front porch with his banjo on July 21, 1979. 

Haze does not refer to the as a specific model number that we all throw around these days to him it was just one of the many banjos he owned over the years.  They were Mastertones' or they weren't.
I have searched the archives of Roanoke and Rocky Mount newspapers and no advertising appears for a Bill Monroe or Tommy Magness Show in Rocky Mount between June of 1946 and August of 1947 . {According to my research Earl said that the plastic from the his banjo fingerboard (Style 11) began coming off at Blytheville Ark on July 4, 1946}.
This site is still very much "Under Construction" and if you have an ongoing interest in the banjo and its lore, feel free to stop by and see what I have uncovered.


Interviewer:
That there was a good write up they gave you in the Martinsville paper, when was it in 74. I’ve done forgot,
Mother gave me a copy of it and I Xeroxed it at work and made about 8 copies of it.

Haze:There were two girls come up here and wrote up a bunch of junk and sent a photographer up here the next day and I sat out there in my shop door and they took two or three pictures of me. I think they took a picture of me on an old boring machine, first one thing and another.
They wrote up two write-ups on me in the Martinsville paper one me and one in the Bassett paper I think.

Interviewer: 
How come you didn’t never go off and play like Scruggs and them other boys?

Haze: Wasn’t able.

You liked it here too good to didn't you.

I wasn’t struck on this place, but I had wife and two kids to look after, they had no way to make a living, so I was the main dependent.
It takes money to make money, course everybody don’t know that, but they’ll find it out late in life. If they don’t know it to start with, they’ll learn it before they die.
You can’t 50 cents and make dollar out of it. Never could.

Did you work over at Bassett Furniture.

Yea, I worked down there for the biggest part of my life, I worked down there pretty close to 50 years.

And you just played for square dances and all around here.

I was just out for good entertainment. I liked it and I never didn't never make too much money at it. Of course I expect that all the money I ever made since I been making music might be ten thousand dollars I don‘t know. I never did take care of none of it. It come easy and went easy.

Did you ever play any on the radio with a band?

Radio and Television both.

Where did you play on Television, over at Roanoke?

I never did play over at Roanoke but one time on television but I could have played all the time if I'd a wanted too. You can't afford to drive to Roanoke or Greensboro or somewhere just to get to play for nothing.

Whats the name of some of the bands you played with?
Well I was playing with, now lets see I was playing with, what was there names…I believe the Blue Sky Boys, or Blue Star Boys something like that I've done forgot what the name of the band was that was a long time ago.

Yea…..

I played over at the Radio Station at Martinsville, we played over there.  We'd go on Monday night and played for a live program and made a tape for two or three other nights of the week and one for Saturday evening.  We stayed over about there til about twelve o'clock once a week. Didn’t get a thing out of it. I finally got fed up on publicity and I just quit.

Publicity don't put no groceries on the table do they.
Never have put a sop of gravy on my plate or crumb of bread either

Yea…..

Did you ever meet Reno, Don Reno.

Ya, I've met them all.  Mighty good friends of mine.  Don Reno he's got my banjo now that I let Earl Scruggs have.  He sent me word a while back he had it put up, he wanted to take care of it,  he had another banjo he was playing and he had that one put up,  he was afraid of it getting lost or somebody stealing it or it getting torn up or something, he wanted to keep it. 

Somebody told me said he told them wouldn't take ten thousand dollars for it. Ah its just a keep sake banjo it an't no better banjo than this one.(he was sitting on his porch with a Vega Earl Scruggs Model) I've owned them both and played them both.



Is that the one you got from Martin?..
No, I got that banjo from Edmund Jones down next to Danville. Jim Tuggle bought the banjo new, it was practically a new banjo when ever I got it. Edmund went to army and stayed a spell and when he come back he’d kind of lost out on playing a banjo.
 I had one these here cheap Gibson banjos, and I sold it for 75 dollars and I believe I gave him a hundred dollars that one, Yeah, I know I did, I paid him 75 dollars down on it and come back to the house and got the rest of the money and went back the next day and got the banjo, I didn't have the money with me the night I went down there to see it.
I went down there one time aiming to trade him another banjo for it, it had old strings on it and wouldn’t chord nowhere, I wouldn’t give him fifty cents for it. So the next time I went back it had good strings on it and it corded good everywhere and played good .
So I went back again and asked him what he wanted for it and he said he really didn’t want to sell it, but would take a hundred dollars for it. I gave him a hundred dollars for it and sold it for a hundred fifty. I thought I made money on it. Course I spent ten dollars on a head on it. I had a hundred and ten dollars in it.

How did Earl Scruggs get up with you

I went up here to Rocky Mount one day. He and Bill Monroe was supposed to be flying up there to play with Tommy Magness and the Hall Twins. They got in up there that evening about dark, I had done played there all day, I‘d done give out. I told Earl I had me a Mastertone Banjo, and I reckoned that Saeford and Clayton told him so too…. He come down here that night about 10:30 to buy it. I sold it to him. My wife begged and cried for me not to sell it but I'm an old hard head and sold it anyway.

He probably made ten thousand dollars with it.

Ten Thousand Dollars……..Well he didn’t make too much money with that banjo, he didn’t keep it long. The one he traded for, he made a lot of money with that. It was a good banjo too, he’s still got it. He got it from Don Reno, it was an old gold plated banjo, but the gold was done sheaded off of it, it looked worst than all but it sounded good.

So he traded the banjo the banjo he got from you to Don Reno and Don Reno's still got it?
He traded it to Don for that old Mastertone and a new Martin Guitar too.
Don wanted it.
The conversation continues about Clayton and Saeford the Hall Twins..


According to the Hatch Show Print ledgers this is the only date that Bill worked near Bassett Virginia in 1946,  They worked Alta Vista on the 17th, Martinsville on the 18th, Lynchburg on the 19th and back to Nashville for the 20th.  I'm thinking that since Alta Vista is near Rocky Mount, this just might have been the date that Earl purchased the banjo.

July 4, 1946	Thursday		Blytheville, Ark
July 5, 1946	Friday	Ball Park	Union City, Tn
July 6, 1946	Saturday
July 7, 1946	Sunday		Macon, Ga
July 8, 1946	Monday		Columbus, Ga
July 9, 1946	Tuesday
July 10, 1946	Wednesday	Ball Park	Waycross, Ga
July 11, 1946	Thursday	Baseball Stadium	Thomasville, Ga
July 12, 1946	Friday	Baseball Park	Moultrie, Ba
July 13, 1946	Saturday
July 14, 1946	Sunday	Amusement Park	Huntington, W. Va.
July 15, 1946	Monday	Memorial Auditorium	Beckley, W.Va
July 16, 1946	Tuesday	Memorial Auditorium	Beckley, W, Va
July 17, 1946	Wednesday	High School Auditorium	Alta Vista, Va
July 18, 1946	Thursday	High School	Martinsville, Va
July 19, 1946	Friday	Lynchburg City Armory	Lynchburg, Va
July 20, 1946	Saturday
July 21, 1946	Sunday	Sunset Park	West Grove, Pa	West Grove, Pa
July 22, 1946	Monday	Tent Show	Pa
July 23, 1946	Tuesday	Tent Show	Pa
July 24, 1946	Wednesday	Tent Show	Pa
July 25, 1946	Thursday	Tent Show	Pa

As you can see the 18th was the only time that Bill and The Blue Grass Boys came into the area during this time...   Other dates and locations that year don't fit either ...  So this just might have been when Earl got the banjo...

Lester Flatt

Its hard to beleive that it has been 32 years since Lester Flatt passed away.

I was working at Alice Lloyd College and had just came in and turned on the evening news. I think it was Roger Mudd who said "Today in Nashville Tennessee, Country Music Entertainer Lester Flatt died". I sat and tears flooded my eyes. I had been working with Bill Monroe when he and Lester "Buried the Hatchet" after a long time feud.
As I sat there I remembered all the times that he and Bill got together on June 20, 1971 after they walked on stage at Bean Blossom, shook hands and sang Little Cabin Home on the Hill. While Bill was taking a mandolin break, Lester looked over and said "Its been a long time, Bill", Bill was in mid break and nodded. Few heard this because its not on the tape of that reunion, but I was sitting at the corner of the stage and heard it.

In the fall of 1971 after returning to college, I attended a show at Sandy Ridge School when Lester appeared there. I was sitting in the 3rd or 4th row and when they took an intermission Roland White came out and told me that Lester wanted to see me. I went down the hallway to the classroom where they were and Lester was talking to someone, I spoke to Haskel McCormick and when Lester finished his conversation he kinda nodded his head sideways for me to come over as if he wanted to say something that he didn't want others to hear. He ask me how I was doing and after I said things were fine, he asked "Did you and Bill have words?" I said no that I had left the band to go back to school to which he said "Well, I'm glad to hear that" and that "me and Bill had worked a date a couple of weeks ago and I saw that you weren't with him".
It was so nice to have someone like Lester to even care.

I sure miss you Lester.

Carlton Haney: In tune with the Universe

I’ve visited Carlton's resting place regularly since his services.
Its a very peaceful place where birds sing sweetly and soar on the breeze; toward the east there is a beautiful view of the rolling Carolina Piedmont.

In life Carlton enjoyed the spotlight occasionally as he arranged entertainment for the masses. It was fitting that on the day of his services that the Heavens honored him, March 19, 2011 the Full Moon was the closest to the Earth that it will be until 2016.

In Carlton’s later years he talked of Bill Monroe’s timing, the teachings of Pythagoras and mathematical connections to music.

Today He rest at Latitude: 36.425962 and ,Longitude -79.723535;

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.426291,-79.723684&spn=0.00202,0.004292&t=f&z=17&ecpose=36.42548814,-79.7236836,618.02,0,13.184,0&lci=com.panoramio.all and

Where continues to travel, he makes a trip around the sun one time each year,
now being truly in tune with the Universe.

Early Festivals

Jamming with some of the featured bands was very prominent back in the early days of festivals. I can remember the first Jam sessions I was in back in 68 or 69. It was at the Union Grove Old Time Fiddlers Convention. Joe Greene was there to enter the contest and Kenny Baker had just come down for the weekend to visit with Mr.Tommy Jarrell and just fiddle around.
This was a short time after Joe and Kenny did the twin fiddle recording for County Records. The little Firehouse at Union Grove was packed with Pickers...I can't remember who all of them were, I do remember Butch Robins and Roger Sprung were in the group and that I was definately the most novice banjo player there. What impressed me was Baker and Joe would fiddle a while and then nod to each picker to take a break, they didn't care how good you were, just give what you had. Then at Bean Blossom in 70 I would get with Eddie and Peanut Bush from Louisville and we would jam every night. "Peanut" I never knew her name, she was always called "Peanut" was a wonderful lady singer and Eddie was a great mandolin player with "The right timing" Bill would come by every night and take Eddie's mandolin and play and sing a few with us. Then he would then go on to the other camp sites and do the same thing until he had covered a good amount of the grounds. Those were wonderful days.
When I was working for Gibson from 86 to 93 I walked the grounds at alot of festivals and was very depressed at the amount of jamming that was there. At this point I was looking at things with diffent eyes. I was doing my own research as to potential future instrument sales and I didn't think that jamming scene looked that healthy. The only place I really saw major amounts of jamming was Grass Valley Calif. I was used to the Bean Blossom's and McClure's of the 70's where you would see the likes of Dale Whitcomb and Grant Boatwright come and play for 4 days almost non stop.
It was not uncommon to hear Bill mention on stage as he did in Cosby Tennessee in 71 "I think Joe (Stuart) and Kenny have played non stop since we landed in here on thursday, I don't think they have even been to sleep".
After a fair amount of studying I realized why I was not seeing as much jamming back east. First many of the big time jammers had made thier way to the stage and were in performing bands and there were more listeners than pickers at the time and secondly and most important: bands were not being booked in the same festival for 2 or 3 days. In the early days of festivals, late 60's and until 71 or 72, usually bands were hired for all 3 days and most of the times stayed on the grounds from the beginning until the end of the festival. The first major groups I remember that began working one day or two was at Myrtle Beach either 71 or 72 when the Osborne Brothers and Lester Flatt either left out and went somewhere else or came in after working another date. Prior to this time there were not nearly as many festivals scattered around the country so you really didn't have anywhere else to go unless you had an individual date at a fair or auditorium anyway.
Until that point it had been common to work two or three days for a better price (per day)than just one day. I guess we could go back and check out some ads in old BU's and other publications from the period to verify when this began on a larger scale. As promoters realized that they could put more names on the flyers to create bigger lineups for the weekend the entertainers began to travel from date to date and make more money, lets say working 3 different locations for $500.00 or $600.00 per day rather than one place for 2 or 3 days and get $1,200. At this point also, most bands did not have drivers that were not in the band. When Danny Jones and I joined the Blue Grass Boys, Joe and Kenny wasted no time in putting both of us to driving the coach. Danny had been in transportation in the service and I was off the farm used to driving farm equipment so it wasn't a big leap for either of us.

Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys Summer 1971

On June 26, 1971 I stepped on stage with Bill Monroe to play bass for one tune, Bill ask me an hour or so before the show if I "had ever played any bass" to which I replied 'no not really', then he said "Go out there and let Joe Stuart show you how to play "Tallahassee". (a tune which was on his latest single record) Tonight you can play that number, then go set up the record table". Joe was very happy to show me the notes on the bass because that would mean that he would play twin fiddles with Kenny Baker and Joe loved to play fiddle.

It was "Shindig at Cripple Creek", Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Dan Jones first show on guitar, Jack Hicks was on the banjo, Kenny Baker on Fiddle and Joe Stuart had been playing bass for several months since Skip Payne's departure from the band. Bill had invited me on the previous Monday at Bean Blossom to travel around with the band for the summer, "sell records, and keep gas in the air conditioner generator".

photo borrowed from CardCow.com


Bill had asked me the previous fall to work with him for the summer and I had been at Bean Blossom Indiana since mid May helping Birch and Bertha, Bill's brother and sister in getting the Park ready for the week long festival that was held the 3rd week in June. After the week long festival we spent a couple of days cleaning up the cans, bottles and bags of trash left at camp sites. It was then Bill had asked me what it would cost me to go to school for the next year. (I had just finished my freshman year at Berea College) I told him it would be about 8 or $900.00. He counted out 9 one hundred dollar bills and said "take this home and put it in the bank and meet at the truck stop on 11W South of Roanoke on Friday afternoon". The plan was for them to call me as they came thru Bristol in order to give me time to get there.

After "Tallahassee" I started to take Joe's fiddle, give him the bass and go set up the records, Bill said "just stay with us". After a second tune; Footprints in the Snow, (Joe had slipped over near me to show me encouragement on the bass) again I started to take Joe's fiddle and give him the bass when Bill turned around and said "are you determined to leave us" I said "well no not really", he said "You stay right here until I tell you to go". This was only the second time I had ever played bass with a group on stage, up until this time I thought I was a banjo player .

In the March 1972 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Robert Cantwell wrote a piece called "Believing in Bluegrass." He was impressed with the performance of a young group "The Brown County Boys" who had won the band contest at Bean Blossom and how they paid tribute to Bill Monroe when someone in the audience called out one of his popular instrumentals by saying "lets leave that one for the master".



Well as Paul Harvey says, here is the rest of the story.

Three of the Brown County Boys were brothers and as brothers tend to do, a couple of hours prior to the performance, for some reason one of them along with another of the band members left and went home, leaving the group with out a mandolin or bass player. Darrell Sanson was a very good young mandolin player from Ohio so they asked Darrell to play mandolin but couldn't find a bass player.

They were discussing the situation at Calvin Robins camp site along the fence of the wooded area of the park and Calvin suggested that I play bass with them. I had literally never played bass but they convinced me to give it a shot. We borrowed a bass from Buck White and the girls who were camped right beside us, the boys were going to play "Mention her name" that they had written and recorded and was later recorded by the Bluegrass Alliance, then"Love Come Home was next. Like I said earlier I was not a bass player anyway, sure I could play simple G positions but only simple tunes. Calvin suggested that I use a Bill Russell guitar capo and told me to put it on backward so I could slide it to the appropriate position on the neck of the bass and continue to play in simple G notes and all I had to do was just keep time, smile allot and ease through it.

Things were going well, we had played 2 or 3 tunes then someone called "Rawhide". Rawhide was one of Bill's signature mandolin instruments that I had played on the banjo countless times but I had no ideas of the bass lines for "Rawhide" so I told the boys "Lets leave that one for the Master" as Bill and The Blue Grass Boys were following us. I had no idea that anyone would remember those words.

I guess all this just goes to show that doing something that I wasn't comfortable at all, lead to a great opportunity. In later years I've often wondered if Bill had seen me on stage that night as he walked toward the stage and the idea was possibly planted that lead to be becoming the bass man for Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys from June 26 until August 28th 1971.

There are lessons in everything we do, opportunities are all around us, all we have to do is be open and accepting to new and exciting possibilities.