I just
completed a first draft of the book.
There is still
a lot of work to do. Editing. Putting my hands on some eccentric
documents. Checking and rechecking
sources, and verifying interview statements.
However, there is a first draft, and that’s always a good feeling.
I’ve tried in
the last several blogs to focus on things I learned in the course of the
research and writing work.
Today, I’m
going to dwell on what I was not able to learn: things I have not been able to
ferret out, sources I was not able to track to ground, information that
remained elusive . . . perhaps in the
hope that some FB reader might have a good idea they’d be willing to share.
So, here’s what
I was not able to learn, figure out, or put together enroute to this first
draft:
Serious Fun
Festival: The way I
understand it, the Red Clay Ramblers met Bill Irwin and David Shiner on the set
of Silent Tongue in New Mexico in
April 1992, and they appeared for two nights in the Serious Fun Festival in
Lincoln Center, New York City, in July 1992, with the evening gaining a title
and a Broadway run that opened February 1993.
That was a memorable post-“Diamond Studs” gig – but I was not able to find
people who could speak to their specific memories of that event.
Banjo
Contests: Tommy threw his
name into several banjo contests. I’ve
found info on the following contests, but I’m interested in any I may have
missed:
Ø Tommy
attended the 4th Annual Old Time Fiddlers and Bluegrass Convention
in Hillsville, Virginia, in June 1970, and entered the band contest with
fiddler Albert Hash.
Ø Tommy
won the ribbon in the Old Time Category for “World’s Champion Banjo” at the
47th Union Grove Fiddler’s Convention in 1971, the first time the fiddler
convention deployed the new set of “World’s Championship Winners” and contests
divisions that eliminated the “Modern Band” category.
There may have been other contests in which Tommy competed,
but vague and unspecific memories of fellow musicians, and scant records of the
contests at festivals that Tommy might have attended, left me with fewer rocks
to turn over in hope of finding a thread to pull on.
Festivals: Tommy,
between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, attended many festivals – beyond the
ones at which he competed in contests.
If, as some suggested, friends had photos at any of those that featured
Tommy, I was not able to shake any of those loose. Indeed, what I found was that collections of
these kind of memorabilia looked less and less like archived, filed, carefully
tended photos and more like stuff tossed in a box or a corner.
Later Theatrical Work: People who
were involved with Tommy in later theatrical stuff were often not in a position
to dredge up specific memories of those years.
Roundpeak,
Blanton Owen, Tom Carter and Other Stuff: If
there were two poles of banjo influence in Chapel Hill during the mid and late
1960s and early 1970s, Tommy might have been on one end, and Blanton might have
been on the other. I’ve not been able to discern the nature of Tommy and
Blanton’s relationship. Blanton was killed in a small plane crash in 1998. Some felt he was on his way to becoming a
very influential a figure in the old time banjo world.
Tommy, Playing Writing and Acting:
Tommy was drawn to both acting and play writing. I tried to follow that path to see how he got
there, and where it led him. Few were
prepared to venture anything in the way of good guesswork, theorizing, or seat
of the pants reasoning about what I’m calling the “pairing” of these talents
that might have helped me deepen my understanding of how he chose this creative
trajectory. In fact, perhaps the most
cogent answer to what drew Tommy and musicians like him to local theatre was
the confession from one contemporary that it was a good way to meet girls.
Durham and
Chapel Hill Music Scene in the 1970s: Many folks mentioned seeing the Red Clay
Ramblers (RCRs) at one of their earliest performances at the Endangered
Species. However, people with those
memories were never able to get specific about the Durham/Chapel Hill old time
music scene in the 1970s, and later. My
understanding of that scene still has a lot of holes in it. I looked for people who could speak to the interaction between Old Time and
Bluegrass music and musicians. I managed
to corral some of this, enough to give me a sense of what things looked like,
but there are and remain a number of gaps in the story – a story that is
probably worth a study itself.
And in the
1980s: I was not able to get a complete picture of the music scene
in Chapel Hill, especially the old time dimension of that scene, in the
1980s. There
were organized efforts by people including Cece Conway and George Holt, to set
up old time festivals at Duke, bringing musicians such as E.C. and Orna Ball to
the area in the 1960s or 1970s. Did that
continue in the 1980s? What festivals existed as annual events in the 1980s, and
to what extent were local colleges instrumental in promoting OTM?
Tommy’s
Banjo Playing:
It was somewhat difficult to get people to characterize or describe Tommy’s
banjo playing – what aspects of his banjoing were unique to him? Was he heavy on the right hand and rythmic,
or melodic? Few recalled him shifting
between styles – playing three or two finger up picking and clawhammer as well.
Red Clay Rambler – The Road Taken:
In some ways, the Red Clay Ramblers (RCRs) could have taken the route of
the Hollow Rock or the Fuzzy String Band, or the New Lost City Ramblers. They could have clung to old time music
orthodoxies and pursued revival work, or collecting, or recording
exclusively. But at some point,
inventing new music, inventing new lyrics, and pushing the performing envelop
in various directions – adding new and “unorthodox” instruments to the old time
mix, writing and recording ourageous and unconventional tunes became the RCR
hallmark, the RCR “thing.” Few could
venture views about how and that happened.
Not For Proffitt: John Haber
mentioned that Michael David and Michael Wilson might have some recollections
on Tommy’s play, “The Last Song of John Proffit.” My sense was they might have read one of the
original manuscripts, and talked to Tommy during the course of the development
of this project – he developed several versions of the play enroute to the one
that he staged and one that was staged by Rick Good. I was interested in people who saw
productions of the play might have remembered about it, and about Tommy’s plans
and intentions for writing future plays.
Some of that emerged in the Wilson Library’s Tommy Thompson Collection
at UNC.
The
“Other” Ramblers: I’ve
interviewed a bunch of people who could speak to Tommy’s link with the New Lost
City Ramblers - including John Cohen. I
was not able to speak to Tracy Schwartz.
Ben Paley relayed some of my questions to his father Tomy, who sadly
passed away during 2017. I had wanted to
talk to Tracy about the “influence” of various musical styles or genres on his
interests (Cajun and Irish music, for example).
Though I found other interesting and informed interviewees, I did not
get to speak to the remaining NLCRs.
Tommy’s Shepard: I tried to confirm to whom Sam Shepard turned to track
the band down when he decided he wanted the Red Clay Ramblers to score his play,
A Lie of the Mind, in 1985. I learned a lot from reading
through the archives at Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, where I
found that six-page recollection, written by Tommy about “Working with Sam.” My
sense is that Tommy was taken by Sam’s writing work, his theatrical adventures,
and that there was some level of compatibility between the way Tommy went about
inventing new musical forms, and the way Sam went about his writing work. I was hoping on nudging that from the realm
of speculation to something more concrete, but never quite found people willing
to speculate about that.
There’s probably a good deal more that I will stumble across
as I edit my way across every square inch of the first draft, but these were
the salient things that jumped out at me as being areas where I could stand to
have more information, more interviewees, as far as this first draft is
concerned.
Play hard,
Lew
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