Post by tal on Oct 9, 2008 1:30:24 GMT -5
Wonderful review of Jerry's work in the wall street Journal...
Jerry Douglas, Irreplaceable Instrumentalist
By BARRY MAZOR
Nashville
It's tempting to try to summarize dobro master Jerry Douglas's musical impact with numbers -- his 12 Grammy Awards, 11 Musician of the Year awards from the Academy of Country Music (and three more from the Country Music Association), eight instrumentalist awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association, and over 2,000 instrumental appearances on records by such artists as Paul Simon, Ray Charles, The Chieftains, Elvis Costello and Reba McEntire.
The leader of Alison Krauss and Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas (the band often abbreviated as AKUS) offers a pithier description: "He's irreplaceable," Ms. Krauss told me after a September performance with him at Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame. "He has this huge sound to bring to the band. When he plays in an ensemble -- that's what it's about. If you watch him while you're doing your part, you're never going to go the wrong way; you really ride on it. When he's on a session, what he plays is so emotive that it leads it. And you can't play like he does without being incredibly sensitive and tenderhearted; those choices Jerry makes in playing, they come from a place of deep experience and life."
Critics and envious dobro players often point to Mr. Douglas's cascading streams of notes and shifting rhythms as his trademark style contribution, but his duet-like playing with Ms. Krauss reveals the subtle, vocal-influenced qualities that are closer to the core of his art and intentions. "I'm a singer at heart," Mr. Douglas admitted during a recent interview in Nashville, "but when I started playing dobro, I stopped singing -- because it took that space in my head. At times I'll feel strongly about hitting a harmony note with Alison's voice, accenting the line, and it gives the illusion of there being a harmony singer."
Born in 1955, Jerry Douglas as a boy was playing in his dad's bluegrass band, which performed around Warren, Ohio. And in his early teens he was making a name for himself as a member of the Country Gentlemen modern bluegrass band. The dobro, the resonating guitar with the "hubcap" top, introduced in the late 1920s for playing oozing Hawaiian music, had had a very set, limited role in country, as heard in the fills and comedy novelty sounds brought to Roy Acuff's band by Bashful Brother Oswald (Pete Kirby) and the even-more-intricate playing of Uncle Josh Graves with Flatt & Scruggs. ("Dobro" is the trademarked name of one brand of resonator guitar marketed by Gibson, but the word is used as commonly and generically in everyday speech as "Kleenex.") Mr. Douglas would play a central role in extending the instrument's vocabulary.
There have been some traditionalists dubious about the "newgrass" generation's extension of the bluegrass genre into jazz-like territory since the movement's rise 25 to 30 years ago, but for Mr. Douglas -- who by age 20, along with Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice, was studying the acoustic jazz of Django Reinhart and Stefan Grappelli -- that direction was practically inevitable.
"That was a logical direction for acoustic music to go," he says. "Bluegrass is such a chops-oriented music. It builds stamina and strength in your hands because it's such a physical music, so hard-driving. And you have to stay up; you can't just play half the song. Sometimes it seems like it's an endurance test to see who can play fastest the longest! And with that training, you can go just about anywhere else, because you've already played all those notes in rapid succession."
Hear him improvise on George Gershwin's "Summertime" with Mr. Rice, as he did in a recent Artist-in-Residence performance at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and you wonder whether what Mr. Douglas is playing amounts to string jazz. His side-project Jerry Douglas Band's gig that begins tonight at the Blue Note jazz club in New York (through Oct. 12) will certainly spotlight the conundrum.
"It's part of what I do, but I don't think of myself as a jazz musician. If I had to say what I am, I guess I'm a country musician. . . . Blues, though, that's inherent to the dobro. Because it's a slide instrument, you can move notes around, like a jazz or blues singer; there are all of these attitudes you can bring into the music just by moving a note a certain way -- like a Billie Holiday."
A New Orleans jazz ensemble backs Mr. Douglas on "Sway Sur La Rue Royale," one track on his new, typically wide-ranging solo CD "Glide" (Koch Records) -- but Earl Scruggs joins him on "Home Sweet Home" on there as well, and singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell and soulful country singer Travis Tritt make prominent appearances.
"I thought that this was the most country record I'd ever made, all the way through. I thought, 'Finally I've made a focused record.' And then the record came out and immediately was getting reviews that said 'this thing is all over the map!' The solo records have all been about what I am -- but that's so many things at this point."
Mr. Douglas guided audiences around that map in four often-thrilling evenings at the Country Hall's Ford Theater in August and September, as this year's prestigious Artist-in-Residence -- the master of ceremonies role previously filled by Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall, and Mr. Scruggs, among others. He performed with friends from across the length and breadth of his career, ranging from classically trained "brainiacs" (as he calls them) Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer to pedal-steel ace Lloyd Green and Grand Ole Opry stars The Whites.
Some of those musical colleagues usually play clubs, some play concert halls, some bluegrass festivals, while others, like Garth Brooks, fill stadiums. Mr. Brooks has featured Mr. Douglas on sides he's cut going back 20 years, and he performed with him at the last of the Hall of Fame shows.
In a backstage interview, the country superstar was quite explicit about why he was there: "The difference between a good record and a great record is how many times you want to hear it over and over again; that's what Jerry brings. . . . I'm starting to wonder if God created the dobro for Jerry Douglas, or God created him for the dobro. Great players know when not to play; space is the difference between a good player and a great player. And the guy never plays that he's not tasteful. I don't know how he does it, but he's perfect."
Mr. Douglas just says: "I never set out to be some famous musician, but the instrument that I play helped me get here, because it's not a guitar that everyone plays. It's a hard instrument, but it fits the way my head works. I'm a minority!"
Jerry Douglas, Irreplaceable Instrumentalist
By BARRY MAZOR
Nashville
It's tempting to try to summarize dobro master Jerry Douglas's musical impact with numbers -- his 12 Grammy Awards, 11 Musician of the Year awards from the Academy of Country Music (and three more from the Country Music Association), eight instrumentalist awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association, and over 2,000 instrumental appearances on records by such artists as Paul Simon, Ray Charles, The Chieftains, Elvis Costello and Reba McEntire.
The leader of Alison Krauss and Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas (the band often abbreviated as AKUS) offers a pithier description: "He's irreplaceable," Ms. Krauss told me after a September performance with him at Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame. "He has this huge sound to bring to the band. When he plays in an ensemble -- that's what it's about. If you watch him while you're doing your part, you're never going to go the wrong way; you really ride on it. When he's on a session, what he plays is so emotive that it leads it. And you can't play like he does without being incredibly sensitive and tenderhearted; those choices Jerry makes in playing, they come from a place of deep experience and life."
Critics and envious dobro players often point to Mr. Douglas's cascading streams of notes and shifting rhythms as his trademark style contribution, but his duet-like playing with Ms. Krauss reveals the subtle, vocal-influenced qualities that are closer to the core of his art and intentions. "I'm a singer at heart," Mr. Douglas admitted during a recent interview in Nashville, "but when I started playing dobro, I stopped singing -- because it took that space in my head. At times I'll feel strongly about hitting a harmony note with Alison's voice, accenting the line, and it gives the illusion of there being a harmony singer."
Born in 1955, Jerry Douglas as a boy was playing in his dad's bluegrass band, which performed around Warren, Ohio. And in his early teens he was making a name for himself as a member of the Country Gentlemen modern bluegrass band. The dobro, the resonating guitar with the "hubcap" top, introduced in the late 1920s for playing oozing Hawaiian music, had had a very set, limited role in country, as heard in the fills and comedy novelty sounds brought to Roy Acuff's band by Bashful Brother Oswald (Pete Kirby) and the even-more-intricate playing of Uncle Josh Graves with Flatt & Scruggs. ("Dobro" is the trademarked name of one brand of resonator guitar marketed by Gibson, but the word is used as commonly and generically in everyday speech as "Kleenex.") Mr. Douglas would play a central role in extending the instrument's vocabulary.
There have been some traditionalists dubious about the "newgrass" generation's extension of the bluegrass genre into jazz-like territory since the movement's rise 25 to 30 years ago, but for Mr. Douglas -- who by age 20, along with Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice, was studying the acoustic jazz of Django Reinhart and Stefan Grappelli -- that direction was practically inevitable.
"That was a logical direction for acoustic music to go," he says. "Bluegrass is such a chops-oriented music. It builds stamina and strength in your hands because it's such a physical music, so hard-driving. And you have to stay up; you can't just play half the song. Sometimes it seems like it's an endurance test to see who can play fastest the longest! And with that training, you can go just about anywhere else, because you've already played all those notes in rapid succession."
Hear him improvise on George Gershwin's "Summertime" with Mr. Rice, as he did in a recent Artist-in-Residence performance at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and you wonder whether what Mr. Douglas is playing amounts to string jazz. His side-project Jerry Douglas Band's gig that begins tonight at the Blue Note jazz club in New York (through Oct. 12) will certainly spotlight the conundrum.
"It's part of what I do, but I don't think of myself as a jazz musician. If I had to say what I am, I guess I'm a country musician. . . . Blues, though, that's inherent to the dobro. Because it's a slide instrument, you can move notes around, like a jazz or blues singer; there are all of these attitudes you can bring into the music just by moving a note a certain way -- like a Billie Holiday."
A New Orleans jazz ensemble backs Mr. Douglas on "Sway Sur La Rue Royale," one track on his new, typically wide-ranging solo CD "Glide" (Koch Records) -- but Earl Scruggs joins him on "Home Sweet Home" on there as well, and singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell and soulful country singer Travis Tritt make prominent appearances.
"I thought that this was the most country record I'd ever made, all the way through. I thought, 'Finally I've made a focused record.' And then the record came out and immediately was getting reviews that said 'this thing is all over the map!' The solo records have all been about what I am -- but that's so many things at this point."
Mr. Douglas guided audiences around that map in four often-thrilling evenings at the Country Hall's Ford Theater in August and September, as this year's prestigious Artist-in-Residence -- the master of ceremonies role previously filled by Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall, and Mr. Scruggs, among others. He performed with friends from across the length and breadth of his career, ranging from classically trained "brainiacs" (as he calls them) Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer to pedal-steel ace Lloyd Green and Grand Ole Opry stars The Whites.
Some of those musical colleagues usually play clubs, some play concert halls, some bluegrass festivals, while others, like Garth Brooks, fill stadiums. Mr. Brooks has featured Mr. Douglas on sides he's cut going back 20 years, and he performed with him at the last of the Hall of Fame shows.
In a backstage interview, the country superstar was quite explicit about why he was there: "The difference between a good record and a great record is how many times you want to hear it over and over again; that's what Jerry brings. . . . I'm starting to wonder if God created the dobro for Jerry Douglas, or God created him for the dobro. Great players know when not to play; space is the difference between a good player and a great player. And the guy never plays that he's not tasteful. I don't know how he does it, but he's perfect."
Mr. Douglas just says: "I never set out to be some famous musician, but the instrument that I play helped me get here, because it's not a guitar that everyone plays. It's a hard instrument, but it fits the way my head works. I'm a minority!"
