I never realized that song could be so cool until I heard Art. Like in Alice in Wonderland, those two nights and that tune made me feel like I went through some kind of door into another world. I’d never heard of Art, went to a couple of those shows, recorded them on a little cassette recorder, and was blown away! Someone asked Art to play Caravan, but he said he was too incapacitated and that he’d rather play Ode to Billie Joe-a simpler tune with only three chords to keep track of. One night he told me he was playing in a little club in Monterey with an alto player named Art Pepper, and that I should go hear his playing. He knew and played with everyone in jazz, and was Charlie Parker’s roommate in Kansas City before Parker rose to fame. He’d retired from playing in the CBS Orchestra and moved to Carmel Valley to raise horses. Thanks! In my first bluegrass band, the Coast Ridge Boys (Big Sur, 1974), we had a veteran musician playing bass with us by the name of Buddy (“Burger”) Jones. I love your treatment of Ode to Billie Joe. I got past it by just practicing more, which wasn’t hard because I’ve always enjoyed practicing. I now realize it was just nervousness, which still comes up from time to time, but in a much more manageable form. I had a moment of thinking, maybe there’s some kind of medical issue preventing me from playing. But it felt like most of the time my fingers just wouldn’t cooperate. I lived in the dorms at Sonoma State and would go over to Mark Hogan’s dorm and tried to play what I’d been working on. Yes, I remember around age 18-19 when I switched from guitar to mandolin. Was there ever a point when you thought to yourself this just isn’t going to work? If so, how did you get past that? When I turned 50 it was “now or never”…a better way to handle my midlife crisis than others I guess. I’d always had an interest in jazz but only dabbled in it for years. In the old days, we used to slow things down by playing vinyl LPs at 16 instead of 33 rpm, which would also bring things down about an octave. Finding players that excite you can provide a lot of motivation to reverse engineer what you’re hearing, and it helps to have slow down software. Moving forward from there, you have to approach it as learning another language-which requires the same thing that learning bluegrass does-lots of learning of the vocabulary that defines the style. And, if you improvise, you already have something in common with the spirit of jazz. The first step is realizing that if you play bluegrass mandolin, you already have some vocabulary that’s related to early jazz language (trad jazz). How does the average Joe go about moving from bluegrass to jazz? Yes-Greg Reginato guitar, Gerry Kennett drums, Craig Griffeath bass. How about your jazz lineup, is that still active?
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