Review of Twin Picking by Dan Crary. This was written by flatpicking great Dan Crary on the occasion of the reissue--onto CD--of Dudley Murphy's and my 1978 album, Twin Picking. It's the kind of recognition a musician lives for.
© Adam Granger
My, my, how time flies when you’re having, er… complications! It seems a long time and several battles ago that I first listened to this compilation of guitar tunes played elegantly and gracefully by Dudley and Adam. I associate the recording with the earlier days of the Winfield Festival, and that part of the world, the Kansas/Missouri world that is my old home territory. So a bit of water has progressed over the dam since its release, and I wondered how this album from back then would sound today. Happily, it’s beautiful.
Giving it a new listen this week, it turns out that this music easily transcends the passage of time and sounds strong and true and beautiful, just as it did decades ago. It’s not so surprising: you can’t miss with great repertoire and players who have both the material and their instruments in hand. Something about old time tunes: they have a kind of organic, living & breathing quality about them. When I was 11 I got interested in the fact that traditional music had been composed by somebody way back in time, now unknown, but his or her song or tune still sings on, and as it passes through generations it accumulates the influences of more unknown people who have played it and passed it on again. “Timeless” is a cliché, I guess, but this album has it, and it’s beautiful to hear. But it’s not just because of great tunes chosen carefully; it's also because Dudley and Adam are masters at traditional music adapted to the steel-string guitar. They nailed it ‘way back then, and it stayed nailed, right down to today in 2007.
This music has something else: care. This is not just a jam session, thrown together haphazardly, but a carefully planned concert, a performance of two major guitar players working as an ensemble. There’s a myth about traditional music that says it has to be off-handed and sloppy to be real. But it’s false: some of our greatest traditional artists play precise, memorized, rehearsed versions of tunes in order to show them the respect they deserve: here Dudley and Adam play much of the album in harmony, and it’s beautiful, right-feeling, ensemble harmony that adds a layer of something beautiful to the tune as it passes through this generation and on to the next.
And speaking of the next generation, this is the perfect album to mine for ideas if you’re a player: The tunes are classics, the ornamentations are pretty and appropriate, and the arrangements and adaptations to the guitar are mostly free of the cliché-ridden approach to instrumentals that much of contemporary flatpicking has taken recently. The versions are textbook-perfect examples of how you should treat this material: solidly within the fiddle tradition, and nicely adapted to the guitar.
But lastly, forget about all the how-you-can-steal-ideas-from-these-great-players for a moment… this is an album that is beautiful and enjoyable to listen to, to get lost in the tunes, to feel those ancient “roots-vibes” that give you a cold chill when you realize you’re hearing a version of an old tune where the ghost of the old guy who thought it up is humming along happily in the background. This is the real thing, and it’s also chamber-guitar music, my friends… meant to be listened to for fun, and also carrying a wallop of a real musical and traditional experience.
It reminds us that the really fine and tasty players like Dudley and Adam play stuff that lasts and comes roaring back as fresh and beautiful as it was 30 years ago. Of course, not everything that was recorded in 1978 is worth re-releasing. A re-mastered ho-hum record is like a well-aged bottle of bad wine, sorta’ not worth the trouble. But this album is worthy of a whole new life in the 21st century; and Dudley and Adam had better be prepared to go on tour… I don’t know if Jay Leno will call, but somebody’s going to. And I intend to be there with the rest of the crowd because I want to know if these two guys can still play like this 30 years later… they (and I) may have to sit down.
© Adam Granger
My, my, how time flies when you’re having, er… complications! It seems a long time and several battles ago that I first listened to this compilation of guitar tunes played elegantly and gracefully by Dudley and Adam. I associate the recording with the earlier days of the Winfield Festival, and that part of the world, the Kansas/Missouri world that is my old home territory. So a bit of water has progressed over the dam since its release, and I wondered how this album from back then would sound today. Happily, it’s beautiful.
Giving it a new listen this week, it turns out that this music easily transcends the passage of time and sounds strong and true and beautiful, just as it did decades ago. It’s not so surprising: you can’t miss with great repertoire and players who have both the material and their instruments in hand. Something about old time tunes: they have a kind of organic, living & breathing quality about them. When I was 11 I got interested in the fact that traditional music had been composed by somebody way back in time, now unknown, but his or her song or tune still sings on, and as it passes through generations it accumulates the influences of more unknown people who have played it and passed it on again. “Timeless” is a cliché, I guess, but this album has it, and it’s beautiful to hear. But it’s not just because of great tunes chosen carefully; it's also because Dudley and Adam are masters at traditional music adapted to the steel-string guitar. They nailed it ‘way back then, and it stayed nailed, right down to today in 2007.
This music has something else: care. This is not just a jam session, thrown together haphazardly, but a carefully planned concert, a performance of two major guitar players working as an ensemble. There’s a myth about traditional music that says it has to be off-handed and sloppy to be real. But it’s false: some of our greatest traditional artists play precise, memorized, rehearsed versions of tunes in order to show them the respect they deserve: here Dudley and Adam play much of the album in harmony, and it’s beautiful, right-feeling, ensemble harmony that adds a layer of something beautiful to the tune as it passes through this generation and on to the next.
And speaking of the next generation, this is the perfect album to mine for ideas if you’re a player: The tunes are classics, the ornamentations are pretty and appropriate, and the arrangements and adaptations to the guitar are mostly free of the cliché-ridden approach to instrumentals that much of contemporary flatpicking has taken recently. The versions are textbook-perfect examples of how you should treat this material: solidly within the fiddle tradition, and nicely adapted to the guitar.
But lastly, forget about all the how-you-can-steal-ideas-from-these-great-players for a moment… this is an album that is beautiful and enjoyable to listen to, to get lost in the tunes, to feel those ancient “roots-vibes” that give you a cold chill when you realize you’re hearing a version of an old tune where the ghost of the old guy who thought it up is humming along happily in the background. This is the real thing, and it’s also chamber-guitar music, my friends… meant to be listened to for fun, and also carrying a wallop of a real musical and traditional experience.
It reminds us that the really fine and tasty players like Dudley and Adam play stuff that lasts and comes roaring back as fresh and beautiful as it was 30 years ago. Of course, not everything that was recorded in 1978 is worth re-releasing. A re-mastered ho-hum record is like a well-aged bottle of bad wine, sorta’ not worth the trouble. But this album is worthy of a whole new life in the 21st century; and Dudley and Adam had better be prepared to go on tour… I don’t know if Jay Leno will call, but somebody’s going to. And I intend to be there with the rest of the crowd because I want to know if these two guys can still play like this 30 years later… they (and I) may have to sit down.
- Dan Crary
Placerville, California
