BLUEGRASS


Jeff: What's the difference between OLD-TIME FIDDLING and, well, some other kind of fiddling?

Clyde: Well, there's a lot of difference between it and bluegrass. Bluegrass fiddlers, they don't play nothing. They just run around over it. They don't play a tune. The old-time fiddlers play the tune. And them old time fiddlers around through this part of the country could play a fiddle. And I used to be, I could play one.

Jeff: What do you mean, they run around it?

Clyde: Well, just kindly chord around, you know, run around over it. They don't play a tune. Many of them. Now, Bill Monroe mostly plays the tune, you know. Of course it's not a fiddle tune.

Jeff: What do you mean, it's not a fiddle tune?

Clyde: Well, it's just a song, you know. But he's about the only one you'll hear do that.

Jeff: Kenny Baker and the fiddle players who play for Bill Monroe?

Clyde: Mm.

Jeff: What about fiddling in country music?

Clyde: No difference. I don't like country music.

Jeff: Why not?

Clyde: Just don't like it.

Jeff: You must have your reasons.

Clyde: Well, I have. There's just nothing to it. I don't call it music. Just a big racket. A bunch of old guitars a-beating and a-thrashing. Not music.

CLYDE DAVENPORT makes a pretty strong statement when he dismisses bluegrass fiddlers and says that country music isn't music! WHAT IS MUSIC, anyhow? Bluegrass is an acoustic, concert music played with stringed instruments such as 5-string banjo, upright bass, guitar, fiddle, and mandolin. "Scruggs-style" banjo picking is characteristic of bluegrass and it involves up-picking with three fingers of the right hand. Clyde plays in the older "clawhammer" style (he usually calls it "clubfisting") which involves down-picking with only one of the fingers of the right hand. Bluegrass singingfeatures melodies harmonized closely in thirds, fourths, and fifths from above and sometimes additionally from below, usually pitched as high in the singers' ranges as possible. Bluegrass is a virtuoso concert music. Incidentally, Clyde CAN play bluegrass banjo and he sometimes does so for amusement.