Each week, I receive a request for a chapter in an autobiography that my daughter arranged. There will be a book at the end of a year. https://www.storyworth.com
This week's assignment: Which musicians or bands have you most liked seeing live? Here is my chapter.
With only rare exceptions, it is better to see somebody live than listen to him on a CD or even watch him on a DVD. I don’t know what the difference is, but it is palpable.
When the individual or the band uses a sound system, which they all do, the effect of being in the crowd enjoying the music has an emotional effect. It’s like humor. If there is a large audience, laughter is contagious. If the audience is sparse, the same presentation with the same jokes will have very little effect.
On the bluegrass circuit, and also on the Celtic music circuit, the performers make most of their money by selling CDs. I have never bought a CD that I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed the original concert that led me to buy the CD. Even when the CDs are produced in a studio under ideal conditions, they are never emotionally as effective as seeing the same individual or band perform live.
I have found over the years the same criteria applied to lecturers. An effective public speaker is always more effective in person than he is on a CD, even when you hear the same speech. I recorded speakers at my conferences, but the effect of the recording was not nearly so great.
In the spring of 1960, I was a freshman at the University of California, Riverside. I got to see Pete Seeger in a live performance. I had been buying his records since 1957. I had first heard the Weavers in 1950. He was a member. I loved his work on the 12-string guitar. But seeing him in person made a big difference. He had a remarkable gift. He could get people to sing along as he sang. I never saw any other folk performer who had this ability. People just liked to sing with Pete. It was a great evening.
A year later, I attended a Joan Baez concert at Pomona College. That was fun. She was good. She sang a duet with her kid sister Mimi. I had been a fan of hers for over a year. I loved her album on Vanguard, Joan Baez. But she was better in person. I even got to go to the post-concert gathering. My date, whose parents knew her parents, introduced us. I do not recall what I said or she said. "Hello," I suppose.
I had been listening to Flatt and Scruggs since 1959. When I was a sophomore at UCR in 1960, they appeared at a folk music club in Hollywood: The Ash Grove. It was their first trip to the West Coast. This was two years before their theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies made them famous, and seven years before the soundtrack for Bonnie and Clyde. I drove from Riverside to see them. I had always been impressed by the sound of the dobro, but I didn’t know what it was. That night, I got to see Burkett “Buck” Graves, known as Uncle Josh, play his instrumental riffs. I loved it. Example:
Sharon and I saw Scruggs play at the Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival in 2003. Backing him up was legendary studio guitarist Albert Lee. She liked it.
In the fall of 1961, I brought Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry to UCR when I was the president of the Associated Men’s Students. They had been folk singers since the early 1940's. Brownie was crippled, and Sonny was blind. Brownie played guitar. Sonny played the harmonica. Sonny did the actual harmonica playing for the movie Crossroads. That was in 1984.
In the spring of 1962, I got to hear a band like no other: Jesse Fuller, the Lone Cat. He was the band. He played an 11-string guitar. He played a harmonica to which a kazoo was attached. With his left foot, he played a pair of vertical cymbals on a spring. With his right foot’s big toe, he played a seven-string bass device hit by piano keys. He called it a fodella, short for foot diller. I had two of his albums. He came to The Ash Grove. I sat in the front row. Six years later, someone got him on film. He sang his most famous song, “San Francisco Bay Blues.”
High culture! Think I’m wrong? Watch Eric Clapton’s rendition. Caleb, my late son, who was a fan of Clapton and the blues, would have loved this.
I became a fan of Ravi Shankar in 1957. The manager of the Manhattan House of Music had a collection of sitar music. One of them was “The Music of India,” Volume 2, published by Angel Records, which was a division of EMI in Britain. I remember it. I looked it up today. I bought more of his records in the mid-1960's. But what I remember with remarkable clarity was when I saw him live at UCR. I think that was in January 1965, but it may have been in February. I had returned to UCR from UCLA. I was walking past the theater. I noticed a poster announcing a Shankar concert that evening. I made sure I got there at least an hour before the concert. The room was empty. It probably held 500 people. I sat in the front row in the middle. I waited patiently. It was worth the wait. The theater filled. He was playing that night with the tabla master, Alla Rakha. I have remembered his name for well over 50 years. This is from 1967.
I saw him later that year at in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, which held 3,000 people. It was filled. The effect was less impressive than sitting in the front row in a smaller auditorium.
I drove into Hollywood in 1965 to see the Dillards and Mason Williams. This was three years before Williams became famous for “Classical Gas.” They played separate sets. That was the best three hours of music I ever heard. I saw the Dillards on several occasions. Once, they came to UCR. I went to the small party where they also came. Of all the bluegrass bands I ever heard, they were the most fun. Mitch Jayne, who did the patter, was a funny man.
About the same time, the Dillards and Theodore Bikel had a joint concert in L.A. Bikel was a great singer in multiple languages. He played Col. Von Trapp in the original 1959 Broadway production of The Sound of Music. He was best known as a folk singer. They were playing in a large theater in the round in the San Fernando Valley. A friend of mine and I went. The theater was empty except for three people talking in the distance. We looked at our ticket seat numbers. We started walking toward the aisle. We got closer to the little group. Finally, we found our seats. They were the seats where the three were chatting. One of them was Bikel. We told them that we had been assigned these seats. He apologized, and they left. We did not ask for his autograph.
In 1966, I saw Steve Gillette play solo at a concert at UCR. This was a year after he wrote “Darcy Farrow.” That was a wonderful evening. He was a good raconteur. He was funny. I had no idea how good he had become since the time I saw him at UCLA in the spring of 1962 playing banjo with a trio. He was always better in person than he was on records. Even though he had great sidemen on his records, he was best as a solo performer. Sometime around 1967 or 1968, I saw him play at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach. On stage with him in between sets was an unknown comedian named Steve Martin. Martin carried a banjo, but he never played it. He tried to be funny. I didn’t get his humor at the time. I don’t think it was fully developed yet. He worked on it.
Another great performer in person was Hoyt Axton. I saw him at the Golden Bear several times. I saw him at a concert at UCR. He just stood with his guitar and played. That’s all he needed. His album, My Griffin Is Gone (1968), is one of my favorites. I have two copies on vinyl and a CD. He was backed up by an orchestra. But he was always better in person. He was a great songwriter. He was a pretty good actor. He is most famous as the father in Gremlins, but he also had a good role as the father in The Black Stallion.
In the mid-1960's, a bluegrass band recorded an album of Beatles songs. It was an odd concept, but it worked. When I first heard “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” I thought it would be a good bluegrass song. The Charles River Valley Boys proved it in 1966.
The band came to L.A. at about that time. For some reason, I knew that Jo Ann T’s typewriter repairman in the Boston area was the leader of the group. She and Bob were in L.A. for a visit when the band played in Hollywood. So, we all went. It was a great evening.
I saw the Everly Brothers twice. That was because Bob Warford invited me. I got to go backstage both times. That was in 1970. They put on a great show. They sang the old classics from the mid-1950's, but all of their material was good. It was a tremendous backup band.
Leo Kottke is a great performer. He talks a little too much in between songs, but when he plays, he’s good. The problem is that he cannot match what he did when he first started out in the late 1960's. He developed tendinitis in the early 1980's. He can no longer use finger picks. From that time on, he was very good, but he was no longer spectacular. I have seen him play live twice: once in Ft. Worth and once in Fayetteville. I never heard him play live in his finger-picking days. His “armadillo” album is unmatched. His rendition of “Living in the Country” is incredible. I had loved Pete Seeger’s version when I first heard it on a 1962 album.
Kottke’s version blows it away.
This is the recorded version.
I never got over it. I dream of being able to play it. Of the Celtic bands, I enjoyed Brother most of all, but I also liked Seven Nations. The crowds were small, and the bagpipes were loud. Who can beat that?
Most of the family saw them at the Scottish festival in Arlington, Texas several times. These are fond memories.
There were a lot of great fiddle players in the Celtic circuit. Brian McNeil was one. Alastair Fraser was one. John Taylor was one, and he is memorable not only for his repertoire, which was enormous, but because his hair looked like Doc Brown’s in Back to the Future.
Another tremendous performer is Sleepy LaBeef. I saw him twice. He played at the old music house in West Fork, Arkansas. He was 6 feet six and weighed a lot. He was known as the human jukebox. His repertoire was in the thousands of songs. He could play the songs in the original styles. He played the guitar. His voice was overpowering. When I saw him, he was in his late 60's. He was unbelievable. I spoke to one of the band members after a performance. He told me that they never knew which song was coming next. They just had to come in once they heard it. Here, at age 76, he proved his remarkable durability. Behind him is the great Nashville studio guitarist Kenny Vaughan, who plays with Marty Stewart’s band, the Fabulous Superlatives.
The best live performer I ever saw was Tommy Emmanuel. I saw him twice at the Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival. He was no bluegrass picker, but the audience loved him. I never saw anybody more enthusiastic. His guitar work was spectacular. I would certainly pay to see him again.
There was one exception to the “live beats recorded performance” rule: Kris Kristofferson. He played in Tyler sometime in the early 1990's. He is not that good a singer. He is not that good a guitarist. He writes great songs. With a good band, his records are pretty good. But as a live performer, he leaves something to be desired.
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