|
 With
the assistance of Rick Starkey (guitar), Fletcher Bright (fiddle), Doc Cullis
(banjo), Mary Burdette (bass), Angus Gorman (guitar, 3 cuts), and Kim Holmes
(piano, one cut), mandolinist Skip Gorman serves up some tasty "old style
mandolin." Subtitled "Monroesque," Gorman draws heavily from the repertoire of
Bill Monroe. Thirteen of the 17 offerings were composed by Monroe. The other
four include Jerry Stuart's "Rocky Run," Tex Logan's "Come Along Jody," and the
traditional "Kansas City Railroad Blues" and "Smoky Mountain Schottische."
There's also a volume 1 in the series, dating back to a cassette tape release in
1991, that includes additional old-time and bluegrass instrumentals, as well as
several of Skip's originals.
For over four decades, Skip Gorman has been enchanted, even obsessed at times,
with Bill Monroe's style of mandolin playing which is built upon the oldtime
fiddle tradition and which defined bluegrass music. Gorman has resisted
influences of other genres of music that could have tainted the sentinence and
nuance with which he plays. "Monroesque" demonstrates that Gorman has a
proficient command of the instrument and that he has mastered the seminal style
of the Father of Bluegrass. Like Monroe's, Gorman's playing can be fairly
subdued in one tune, while intense in another. The backup playing uses a
powerful and percussive right-hand rhythm chop. The uptempo tunes are played
with incredible speed and dexterity, mostly with the standard alternating up-
and downstrokes. Gorman also incorporates blues notes and phrases, as well as
syncopated downstrokes, other key elements of Monroe's style to draw power from
his eight strings. Gorman's playing is clean, passionate and expressive. I
suspect that he also alternates his picking between the instrument's bridge and
fingerboard in order to produce timbral variation from bright and crisp treble
sounds to warm and mellow mid-range tones as Monroe did. On these particular
fiddle tunes and instrumentals, Gorman typically stays fairly close to the
melodies without too much improvisation.
Born in Rhode Island a little over fifty years ago, Skip Gorman got his first
guitar at age eight and met Bill Monroe by the time he was only twelve. Being
introduced to traditional music at the Newport Folk Festival were other
inspirational moments in his life. While attending Brown University, Gorman
played in various string bands. Gorman then traveled to Ireland to explore the
Celtic roots of American music. In 1973, he attended graduate school in Utah,
began collecting early recordings by cowboy singers, and performed with the
Deseret String Band.
Gorman's
first album of old-time cowboy songs and fiddle tunes, Powder River, dates to
1977. "Trail to Mexico" followed in 1983. While teaching high school Spanish
and history for twelve years, Gorman performed with Rick Starkey in a duo,
Rabbit in a Log. He also released a solo instrumental album, Old Style Mandolin.
Gorman's 1995 Rounder label debut, "A Greener Prairie," was one of the Boston
Globe's top ten folk recordings of the year. Gorman's music has been used in Ken
Burns' documentaries. Gorman's 1996 release, "Lonesome Prairie Love," was a
finalist for NAIRD Traditional Folk Recording of the Year award. In 1999, Gorman
released his third album on Rounder called "A Cowboy's Wild Song to His Herd,"
which was one of Amazon.com's Top Ten Folk CDs that year.
Besides being an excellent fiddler and singer, Skip Gorman is clearly a tune
carrier who feels a strong compulsion to preserve and promote an old style of
mandolin playing. He picks a nice variety of melodies that are not commonly
played except by the most erudite scholars of Bill Monroe's music. That day in
1961 that Monroe and Gorman first met was a fateful one. A photo on the CD's
back also shows Gorman jamming with Bill and James Monroe, Roland White, Kenny
Baker and Vic Jordan at Carlton Haney's seminal 1968 bluegrass festival in
Berryville, VA. It's nice to see some of these rarer tunes back in circulation.
I hope that mandolin players take note of them, and I'd like to see the music
and tablature for them more widely circulated also, perhaps on-line at sites
like mandocafe.com. (Joe Ross)
SKIP
GORMAN - The Old Style Mandolin, Volume Two
Old West 002
PO Box 307, Grafton, NH 03240
www.skipgorman.com
Playing Time - 43:53
Songs - 1) Trombolin / Jack Across The Way, 2) Chilly Winds Of Shannon, 3)
Kansas City Railroad Blues, 4) Land Of Lincoln, 5) Waltz In G, 6) Bill's Blues,
7) Come Along Jody, 8) Northern White Cloud, 9) Right, Right On, 10) Waltz In C,
11) Golden West, 12) Frog On A Lilypad, 13) The Lloyd Loar, 14) Up Front/Out
Back, 15) Smoky Mountain Schottische, 16) The Old Mountaineer, 17) Rocky Run
|
