During one of the workshops Dwight Diller held at our what
was then our home in Arlington, VA, sometime in the early 1990s, he decided
that I should tackle Lee Hammon's Calloway while the rest of the class, mostly
newcomers to the blood sport of clawhammer banjo, drilled the rhythms that
Dwight was always focused on communicating to students.
He played the tune for me and for another student, a young
lady who was a very accomplished banjo player, and then sent us to a back room
to listen closely to a track of Hammons playing the tune, and to play away at
parts and pieces of Calloway until we could put it all together.
We'd emerge after an hour, sit down again, and he'd take
either fiddle or banjo in hand, play it again, and send us back to the rear room. He did this repeatedly, without really
listening to whatever we had managed to catch of the tunes, making the case in
his laconic way that we ought to be listening to the tune, not to what we were
playing.
Dwight posted a video of him playing this tune on 8
September 2013, (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1sn3U26bzI)
and I thought I ought to take the opportunity revisit that great tune.
Using an A scale banjo (Fawley neck, Vega Little Wonder
Style S pot) tuned to gEBEF -- two frets up from eCGCD, just because that was
the first banjo I grabbed.
I hope Dwight sees this, I hope he understands that even 20
years later he's still an inspiration, and I hope he might offer as he always
does "some pointers" to make my playing right.
Play hard,
Lew
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