Trip to Pennsylvania canceled

Father - daughter problems. I'm pretty sad about it, but, I can't fix it. She's 12 and impossible.

Farther Than the Sun

Readers of this blog back some time ago might remember that the event that put me over the edge and drove me to try to learn cello was a Chieftains concert with Caroline Lavelle sitting in on cello as something of replacement for pianist/harpist Derek Bell. The six of them were having a great time on stage.

Most folks probably never heard of her, the Chieftains "discovered" her busking, someplace in London, I believe.

Here's a video of her in Monterrey with a guest cellist of her own on YouTube (If you'r confused at first, that's because it starts out with a BMW ad)

Farther Than the Sun

Snap went the Cello

My starter cello which served me for 3 years, and for which I paid a whopping $139 (plus $40 shipping, don't forget!), is now in two pieces. I'm sad.

I was in the last stages of proof-of-concept for my grand D-I-Y 5-string conversion scheme. I was gradually tuning the five strings up to pitch. The G string was still low. As I turned the G-string peg, the neck neatly snapped off. Foop. Oh well, for now it's a disproof-of-concept.

The break is nearly all on the glue boundary, only a little spot of wood separated. Maybe it can be glued back. But if it's glued back, can the joint be made substantially stronger? Should/can the old glue be removed?

I'm leaving on a week trip to PA soon, so it'll have to wait.

CTMS Summer Solstice Festival

Last Sunday, Mrs. and I drove up to the California Traditional Music Society's Summer Solstice Folk Music, Dance and Storytelling Festival. This year it was held at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills, CA.

In previous years it was held on the grounds of Soka University in Calabasas. Soka has moved to Orange County; those beautiful garden grounds now belong to the State of California. I don't like it in the hotel. As large as the hotel it is, it's too crowded. Too much overflow of sound from one group and workshop into another. I was playing in an outside jam session and a presenter came from around the corner and said the guitars and dulcimer and fiddle were OK, but the sound of the cello carried too much and interfered with their story telling. I moved further around the corner of the hotel building and tried to play quieter. Still a problem; I had to move inside to a different session. These darn, booming, excessively loud cellos! ;-) I was told that inside four walls the problem is reversed and it's the high fiddle notes that carry too much.

In the main lobby I participated in some of the scheduled jams. In the Blues Jam, I took an improvised solo chorus and I didn't do well. I rushed it and it came out sounding, well, dorky. A while later I tried again and the results were very different. Somehow, that one clicked. A fortuitous accident! When I finished I heard several compliments and at least one participant gave me a big thumbs up. One particpant later told my wife I done good. Move over, horns and git-tars, cello can play the blues, too!

For Maricello, who seems to be an East Coast counter-part: Absolutely, I have that book. Great stuff. I've worked on a few of the pieces. Maybe soon I'll play one in public. I also have the Ferintosh CD. Very different, in some ways more serious and artistic. The three make for some interesting chemistry. Let us know in your blog how it goes at Scottish Fiddle Camp.

The Lady that Brought Cello Back

In 1973, an upstate New York band named Putnam String County Band (Note that word order) was, to my knowledge, the first American band of its kind for generations to make significant use of cello. The young cellist was Abby Newton, next door neighbor to the fiddler, the now very well-known Jay Ungar.

Ms. Newton went on to play in over 70 recordings in the folk idiom with many well-known fiddlers and singers. Her recording featuring herself on cello, Crossing to Scotland, superbly demonstrates how cello can hold its own as a solo instrument.

On YouTube, here is a recent video of Ms. Newton with David Greeenberg on fiddle and Kim Robertson on harp: Celtic Colours

The role of cello in Serenaders

So what sort of parts did Henry Bogan play in the Serenaders? Bass notes. The standard one-and-five. Sometimes arco, sometimes pizz.

This was a time when fiddle was king. Out of 14 tracks, the fiddle is the only one that plays any sort of melody at all on 22 of them. The tenor banjo plays a short bit of melody on one track, and only tenor banjo (no fiddle at all) plays melody on one track: Before I Grew To Love You (I didn't detect any cello at all on Before I Grew to Love You, only tenor banjo and guitar).

The bass played, as played on the cello, does add an element that is distinctive. Bogan "propelled" the band by starting the arco notes just a smidgen ahead of the beat, yielding a "vRrruump vRrruump" sound that resembles tuba. Because tuba is slow to respond in the lower register, tubists need to stay on top of the beat. Bogan also stays on top of the beat, in keeping with the '20s style.

Another noteworthy item for me in listening to this recording is how the cello, guitar, and tenor banjo function together as a section. This ensemble knew their place, as accompaniment, and played tightly together. This style, of course, would become more emphasized in the Big Bands, where tightness as a section and as a full band became crucial in the quest for the driving but tightly-together rhythmic precision of Swing. It seems to me a contrasting style that would come a couple decades later is Bluegrass, where each individual plays a different and soloistic part, even when playing accompaniment.

A Texas String Band with Cello?

When we think of depression-era string bands, we typically don’t think of cello. However, one influential band, the East Texas Serenaders, did indeed include a cellist. The Serenders are considered by some as a prototype Western Swing band, setting off a departure from standard “old-time” fiddle repertoire with a smoother, more syncopated, and more modern style.

So I recently purchased a CD of their recorded works, from 1927 – 1937, off the Internet and have been trying to learn what I can about them.

The Serenaders lived and worked in and around Lindale and originally featured left-handed, long-bow style fiddler Daniel Huggins Williams with Cloet Hamman on guitar, John Munnerlyn on tenor banjo, and Henry Bogan on cello. Later, Shorty Lester replaced Munnerlyn, who had moved to Houston, and his brother Henry Lester was added to the group.

Bogan originally played bass fiddle, but switched to cello; the bass didn't travel well on top of the car in bad weather. Like most bassists prior to the 1920’s, Bogan played with just three strings on the instrument. Naturally, Bogan and the other band members were not full-time musicians. Bogan worked for a time on a ranch near Happy, Texas, in the Panhandle, served in the Navy during World War I, worked for Wells Fargo, and worked for the post office in Mineola.

The recorded pieces consist of waltzes and rags, or rag-like melodies; mostly composed by Williams, but some by Hamman. The influence of rag-time, jazz, and pop music is strong and clear. Some of the tunes can be found today in David Brody’s Fiddler Fake Book: The Three in One Two-Step, Ozark Rag, Mineola Rag, and Beaumont Rag. Their Shannon Waltz can be found in the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Country Music, annotated by Bill C. Malone (Washington, 1981).

The Serenaders' last recordings were made in 1937. By then, the era of Western Swing Big Bands like Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and Milton Brown and the Light Crust Doughboys was well underway. These highly poplar radio swing bands would go on to attract larger crowds in many parts of the country than the convential swing bands of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and the Dorsey brothers.

I'll have more on what the Serenader's sound like, including an opinion of the role of cello in the group, in a few days.