World of Slide Guitar: Featuring John Fahey, Bob Brozman. Mike Auldridge Martin Simpson Debashish Bhattacharya
World of Slide Guitar: Featuring John Fahey, Bob Brozman. Mike Auldridge Martin Simpson Debashish Bhattacharya
World of Slide Guitar: Featuring John Fahey, Bob Brozman. Mike Auldridge Martin Simpson Debashish Bhattacharya
Slide Guitar
featuring
featuring
John Fahey,
John Fahey,
Bob Brozman.
Bob Brozman.
Mike Auldridge
Mike Auldridge
Martin Simpson
Martin Simpson
Debashish Bhattacharya
Debashish Bhattacharya
WORLD OF SLIDE GUITAR
by Mark Humphrey
Bob Brozman
9
Debashish Bhattacharya
13
Mike Auldridge
Never underestimate
the power of bloodlines.
In Febr uar y 1928,
Ellswor th T. Cozzens
became the first Hawai-
ian guitarist to accom-
pany the vaunted ‘fa-
ther of country music,’
Jimmie Rodgers, on
record. Cozzens played
several instr uments
(standard and Hawaiian
guitars, mandolin and
banjo) and wrote songs
besides. Rodgers waxed
two of his songs, in-
cluding one destined to
become a sentimental
countr y standard,
“Treasures Untold.” Ten
years after Cozzens’
session with Rodgers, his nephew, Mike Auldridge, was
born. As a child, Auldridge heard his uncle play at family
gatherings and was rather unimpressed by the old man’s
music. In time, of course, that changed, and this brilliant
Dobroist would eventually title one of his albums TREA-
SURES UNTOLD.
Uncle Ellsworth’s were the first of many recordings
Rodgers would make with Hawaiian style guitarists; the
mildly risque “Everybody Does It in Hawaii” is said to have
been quite popular in India! Rodgers’ familiarity with Ha-
waiian music predates his recording career: a 1925 photo
shows the future ‘Blue Yodeler’ as part of a ‘Hawaiian Show
& Carnival’ (complete with Hawaiian style guitarist) which
toured the Midwest in 1925. His recordings with Hawaiian
guitar accompanists helped ingrain their sound into the
music we now call country. It would be hard to imagine it
without the presence of some sort of slide guitar, be it
acoustic or a pedal steel.
The Dobro is a kind of ‘missing link’ between the two.
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Like the National, it is a resonator guitar invented by the
Dopyera Brothers in Los Angeles. The Dobro appeared late
in 1928, selling for $27.50. Cheaper than Nationals, Dobros
quickly became widely popular, and by 1937 the company
was making as many as 55 guitars a day. The rise of elec-
tric lap steels and the advent of metal shortages as America
tooled up for World War II ended Dobro production little
over a decade after it began. The ‘missing link’ instrument
might have been largely forgotten if it weren’t for its sig-
nature presence in Roy Acuff’s Smoky Mountain Boys;
Bashful Brother Oswald’s crying Dobro lines were promi-
nently featured on record and radio by Acuff, who was at
the height of his popularity during World War II. Oswald
kept the Dobro sound alive in traditional country music
and influenced its subsequent use in bluegrass.
Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, Mike
Auldridge heard lots of traditional country and bluegrass
in the 1950s. He was enthralled by the Dobro playing of
Josh Graves, best known for his work in Flatt & Scruggs
Foggy Mountain Boys but working with Wilma Lee and
Stoney Cooper on Richmond, Virginia radio station WRVA
when Auldridge first heard him. Auldridge had been play-
ing guitar since age 13, but finding a Dobro was another
matter: when he began searching for one at age 16, they
were nearly 20 years out of production. Auldridge’s first
resonator instrument was an old National, but he preferred
the sound of a Gibson J-45 which he played Hawaiian style
with a raised nut. Finally, a letter to Graves led him to buy
a Dobro from his idol in 1961.
Drafted that same year, Auldridge’s professional mu-
sical career didn’t begin in earnest until 1969, when he
joined Emerson and Waldron and began to find his own
distinct Dobro sound. “The only reason I have a style,”
Auldridge told Bobby Wolfe (“Mike Auldridge: Mr. Smooth
& Tasteful,” BLUEGRASS UNLIMITED, April 1992), “is that
until I joined a band in 1969, I had tried to play like Buck
Graves but I knew I wasn’t quite getting it. We were in the
studio cutting our first Emerson and Waldron album and I
had to come up with a break. I asked myself what Josh
would do and it dawned on me that I had no idea what
Josh would do. So, I then said, ‘What am I going to do?’
That was the beginning of my style. It just happened. If I
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had to describe my style, I’d have to say that tone and
smoothness are the important things to me. Tone is ev-
erything.”
Auldridge’s signature tone was a cornerstone of the
Seldom Scene’s sound for more than 20 years (he joined
the band in 1971). In 1992, he formed Chesapeake, the
group he performs with in this video. Bassist T. Michael
Coleman, singer/guitarist Moondi Klein are also Seldom
Scene alumni; mandolinist Jimmy Gaudreau was long as-
sociated with the Tony Rice Unit. “In this band I never stop
thinking, and that’s why I love this band,” Auldridge told
Rick Henry ( “Chesapeake,” BLUEGRASS UNLIMITED,
December 1994). “The arrangements are so complex that
you can’t let your mind wander for a second or you’re lost.”
Auldridge and Chesapeake open their per formances
with a Western Swing standard, “Deep Water,” written by
Fred Rose and recorded by Bob Wills & His Texas Play-
boys in 1947. “It’s a song I’ve known for years and played
on pedal steel and I just put it over on the Dobro,” says
Auldridge. He performs on an eight-string Dobro made by
R.Q. Jones and uses a C6th tuning (bottom to top: A-C-E-
G-A-E-D). The medley, “House of the Rising Sun/Walk
Don’t Run,” is performed on a six string made by Ivan
Guernsey and is in standard Dobro G tuning: G-B-D-G-B-
D, called ‘high bass’ tuning in old Hawaiian method books.
“I’ve been doing that as a medley onstage for years,” says
Auldridge. “‘House of the Rising Sun’ is on my first album
in 1971. When I did that first album, (fiddler) Vassar
Clements and Josh Graves were on that album with me. I
think we were in the studio kicking around ideas, and that
came up: ‘Let’s do that.’ We were looking for that type of
song. ‘Walk Don’t Run’ I think was on my second album
on Takoma. It dawned on me one night that we could run
‘em together, and we’ve been doing it ever since. I don’t
know if I could play one without the other now. ‘Walk Don’t
Run’ I got from a jazz guitar player named Johnny Smith,
but it was really a hit for the Ventures. I had first heard it
by Johnny Smith before the Ventures did it, though I kind
of did it like the Ventures.”
If Auldridge’s eclectic forays afar of bluegrass leave
any doubts about his roots, he brings it home with “Span-
ish Grass,” an Auldridge original which has become a stan
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dard among bluegrass Dobro players and which finds him
again picking the six string in open G. “‘Spanish Grass’
I’ve recorded a couple of times,” says Auldridge, “first when
I was with Emerson & Waldron in the late 1960s. It was
one of the first instrumentals I ever wrote or recorded, prob-
ably about 1969. That’s another one I’ve been playing ever
since, the kind of tune that fits the bluegrass field.” By
contrast, “Wave” (on the eight string in C6th tuning) washed
up from the bossa nova field. “‘Wave’ is a song that’s on
‘The Dobro Sessions’ album that was a Grammy winner
last year,” says Auldridge. “As far as I know that’s the only
recording on Dobro of that song, an Antonio Carlos Jobim
jazz standard from the 1960s.” The second half of
Chesapeake’s second medley, “Little Rock Getaway,” is a
swing era standard composed in 1933 by pianist Joe
Sullivan and popularized by the Bob Crosby Orchestra.
“I first heard it done by Jim and Jesse as a bluegrass in-
strumental,” says Auldridge, who performs it with his char-
acteristic relaxed drive on his C6th eight-string.
Martin Simpson
“The great thing
about the slide is
that it emulates the
voice so well,” says
Mar tin Simpson.
“That’s what makes
it so appealing, as
far as I’m con-
cerned. It was origi-
nally the blues,
that’s where I first
heard it. But its re-
lationship to the hu-
man voice is what
has always drawn
me in and kept me
coming back to it.
Now, the mor e I
play slide the less
like anybody else
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I sound and the more I do it the more I find in it. I’m still as
fascinated by the sound as I was when I first heard it.”
What were the first slide sounds Simpson heard?
“Probably Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson on Sam
Charters’s COUNTRY BLUES,” he says, “so the first two
slide tunes I ever heard were ‘You’re Gonna Need Some-
body On Your Bond’ and ‘Preachin’ Blues,’ which is a fairly
heavy way to start. I was 12 or something.” Simpson was
first exposed to traditional music in Scunthorpe,
Lincolnshire, England: “When I was seven years old,” he
told interviewer Paul Hostetter, “we learned ‘Barbara Allen’
in a music class and I think at that point I was lost.”
Simpson’s passion for the British (and Anglo-American)
ballad tradition is still evident in his music, as is his equal
passion for American blues.
Simpson began playing guitar at 12 and was kicking
around the English folk pub circuit while still in his teens.
“There isn’t really anybody else of my generation that came
through as a guitar player the way I did,” the 43 year old
Simpson told Hostetter (“Traveling Man,” ACOUSTIC GUI-
TAR, September/October 1994).” The previous generation,
in performing terms, is Nic Jones and Dick Gaughan and
Martin Carthy and those people. Then there’s a little space,
and then there’s me. I do feel somewhat like I’m holding a
torch for the English guitar.”
As the Young Turk of the English folk scene in the late
1970s, Simpson was much in demand as an accompanist,
and worked for nearly seven years with the superb singer
June Tabor. He also worked in the Albion Band with Ashley
Hutchings, the central figure in English folk-rock. “I love
accompanying,” says Simpson, “It’s an incredible art.” The
ace accompanist wed singer Jessica Ruby Simpson; the
couple moved to the U.S. in the late 1980s.
Since then, the Simpsons have been busy fronting their
Band of Angels while the venturesome guitarist of the family
has done everything from an album of airs (LEAVES OF
LIFE, Shanachie) to one of blues (SMOKE AND MIRRORS,
Thunderbird). “I’ve always been quite possibly too eclec-
tic for my own good,” he admits, “although I think I’m man-
aging to make more sense of all the different threads that
I have.” Following Martin’s metaphor, Michael Parrish
writes: “The thread that runs through all of Martin Simp-
18
son’s work is a passion to ferret out the emotional core
that makes traditional music so compelling—difficult to
intellectualize, but immediately recognizable on a visceral
level.” (“Martin Simpson: From Scunthorpe to Santa Cruz
in Search of One Really Good Note,” SING OUT!).
Simpson’s segment of this dvd opens with “Greenfields
of Canada,” which he describes as “one of those exquisite,
sinuous Irish tunes. It’s really a vocal tune. I’ve been play-
ing it for 20 years. It’s in C minor tuning, which is C-G-C-
G-C-Eb. That’s played on a Bourgeois Blues made by Dana
Bourgoise. It’s a ladder-braced koa guitar.” Simpson uses
the same instrument to play “Great Change Since I’ve Been
Born.” He says, “That’s in open D major, D-A-D-F#-A-D.
It’s actually a tune that Gary Davis recorded in the 1930s
in absolutely typical Rev. Gary Davis style; standard tun-
ing with a lot of chord changes. But it has that wonderful
gospel feel and melody to it. All I did was try to emulate
Blind Willie Johnson a little bit.”
Simpson calls his final entry, the Fred McDowell-in-
fluenced “Masco Blues,” “just an improvisation in G tun-
ing, D-G-D-G-B-D.” The sole exponent here of the bottle-
neck slide style offers an anecdote about his slide which,
if not quite on a par with the Joseph Kekeku yarns, is at
least illustrative of an inventive Southern spirit.
“That particular one was made by a friend of a friend,
David Sheppard in Greensboro, North Carolina,” says
Simpson. “He and I were talking about slides one day, and
a guy sitting there listening to our conversation said, ‘Let
me see that; I could do that.’ This guy works on motor-
cycles and turns engine blocks. He went away and he
started to experiment with stainless steel slides. He sent
the first one and then another one. We started to refer to it
as ‘the slide of the month club.’ The one that I used on that
is one of my absolute favorites that the guy made. It has
parallel side on the outside, but on the inside it really fits
your finger beautifully. It’s heavier at the playing end than
at your hand end. Actually, I tried to get (slide makers)
Latch Lake to make some like it, but for them to tool up to
make something like it in stainless steel, the end result
would have cost something like a hundred bucks!” Leave
it to the shade tree mechanics, Martin.
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John Fahey
John Fahey
Martin Simpson
Greenfields Of Canada
Great Change Since I've Been Born
Masco Blues
John Fahey
Steel Guitar Rag
Discarded
Mike Auldridge
Spanish Grass
Medley: Wave
Little Rock Getaway
This dvd reveals a world of sounds – Ameri-
Martin Simpson
can, Hawaiian, Indian, English – vibrant with
emotional nuances conjured from a cold piece
of steel. The sound of slide guitar evokes audi-
tory landscapes: the drowsy expanses of Paris,
Texas or the heated intensity of the Mississippi
Delta. But as the 14 superb performances here
demonstrate, it can also paint India’s Assamese highlands, Hawaiian beaches
or the “Greenfields of Canada”.
Bob Brozman’s mastery of vintage acoustic
Hawaiian guitar styles offers a lively history les-
son in sounds popularized after World War I and
influential for decades thereafter. Debashish
Bhattacharya showcases the relatively recent in-
tegration of slide guitar into Indian classical and
Debashish Bhattacharya