Friday’s (4/25) edition of Blue Plate Special on WDVX promises a very special performance by The Road Scholars, a “one weekend only” band with some high octane vocal power. In addition to their live radio appearance, they will be performing at EarthFest 2008 on the East Tennessee State University Campus on April 26.

The group features both Charlie Sizemore and Dale Ann Bradley, two of the finest voices in modern bluegrass music, along with John Golden on banjo, Roscoe Morgan on mandolin and John Miller on bass.

Blue Plate Special airs at noon (EDT). The show originates from Knoxville, TN and is broadcast in that market at 102.9 FM - and via live streaming online.

John Pennell, bass player with The Charlie Sizemore Band, asked us to post this remembrance of his friend, Wayne Fields, who died on March 21.

Wayne played banjo with Sizemore, and is featured on his recent CD, Good News, released in 2007. Pennell is a member of Sizemore’s band as well, and is a noted songwriter in his own right.

Here is his heartfelt eulogy to Wayne:

Wayne Fields (1952-2008)

This letter is not only for Wayne Fields, and his family, it is just as much for me and anyone who knew him - and had so much more they wished to have said to him while he was here.

Wayne Fields was my friend and I loved him as did everyone who knew him. He was, of course, an incredible banjo player and musician. Being in a band with him is one of the greatest musical experiences I have had. He had that rare ability to make you feel so good about being on stage with him that it seemed to make you a better player. I recall looking over at him on stage and he’d give me that nod and wink to let me know he was enjoying my playing. This just made me feel like a million dollars. He always told me how much he enjoyed playing with us and how much he was looking forward to our next show.

And this from someone who was suffering physically about as much as a person could. When we cut our album “Good News”, Wayne was just a few weeks removed from chemotherapy and he told us he could barely feel his fingertips. Well, listen to that album and tell me if you think his playing sounds like a person struggling with a life threatening disease. He was the consummate pro. He played flawlessly on that album and was the spark that made us all want to do and play better. (more…)

Wayne Fields, most recently the banjo player with The Charlie Sizemore Band, passed away from complications associated with cancer on March 21.

The deminutive Fields was born in Hazard, Kentucky, and moved to the Lexington area at a young age. He started playing a guitar in his church at the age of eleven and grew up listening to Flatt and Scruggs on the radio.

Wayne and his brothers, Larry and Bill, plus a couple of friends put a band together and began performing all over Lexington. Although they performed all types of music, Field’s heart was always with bluegrass and the banjo.

Mostly self-taught, Fields had three lessons from a fellow employee at the local Holiday Inn, J.D. Crowe, who was playing there at the time along with Larry Rice, Tony Rice, and Bobby Sloan.

In 1977, he got his first job playing banjo for The Boys from Indiana, replacing Noah Crase. While he was a member of the band, they made an appearance on the Grand Ole Opry and on The Porter Wagoner Show.

Four years later Fields took a job with Renfro Valley regular John Cosby and the Bluegrass Drifters, with whom he won the first SPBGMA band contest in 1984.

Later that year, Wayne, his brother Bill, Ricky Wasson and Rick Johnson formed the group Southern Blend with whom he recorded and toured for 9 years. He also played with another Renfro Valley band Wilderness Trail. Other members included Dave Osborne & Jeff Parker (who played with Lonesome River Band and is now with Dailey & Vincent).

Later Fields joined J.D. Crowe, playing mandolin and singing tenor vocals for The New South.

During the last 10 years he has performed with various groups including the family band Driftwood, Gary Strong & Hardtimes, Rick Bartley & Blackwater, as well as with The Charlie Sizemore Band.

Fields is featured playing banjo and singing harmony on the stellar Charlie Sizemore album Good News that was released last year.

Wayne Fields leaves Tina, his wife, two daughters, Christina and Tiffany, and two sons Scott and Charles, both active bluegrass musicians. (more…)

In yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, the music section had a story featuring Tom T. Hall. The story was focused on Mr. Hall’s relationship to country radio stations and was appropriately headlined as…

Who Needs Country Radio? Not Tom T. Hall

The story spends a good deal of time discussing Hall’s growing alliance with the bluegrass music industry. The author suggests that the reason Hall has been pitching his tunes to bluegrass artists in recent years is that Hall felt the bluegrass artists would be true to the songs and not change them to make them commercially acceptable for country radio, thus preserving the integrity of his music.

Who would record them without changing them to make radio happy or forcing him into complicated business deals?

Bluegrass singers would.

Tom T. goes on to discuss his history of growing up in Appalachia, and made this great comment about writing bluegrass songs in collaboration with his wife, Miss Dixie.

Maybe our bluegrass songwriting works so well because we have such different views of Appalachia. As an outsider Miss Dixie sees these people as the hard-working, family-loving salt of the earth. As a member of the clan I see them as just the neighbors. She can see the trees, while all I can see is the forest.

The article is a fairly length piece, at a solid two pages, and worth the read. Four streaming audio files are also included featuring Tom T. and Charlie Sizemore.

Our UK correspondent, Richard F Thompson, shares this review of a CD he found to be especially worthy.

Charlie Sizemore recently released Good News, his debut album for Rounder Records (0591) and the first of any kind for five years. For a lot of people it is indeed very good news, even if the CD’s title is a bit convenient. But that’s not really important. What is important is the quality of the music found thereon.

It is exceedingly difficult to pick highlights, favourites, call them what you may, as this is a uniformly excellent album. The songs are all very strong, regardless of source. Sizemore and co-producer Buddy Cannon penned Alison’s Band, I Won’t Be Far From Here and The Less I Drink. The former expresses a wishful desire to play with you know who. Paul Craft wrote Mama Turns Aloosa My Soul and I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up, the driving opener that features some sparkling banjo from Wayne Fields. Both are top quality songs. The tempo changes with the two following songs, I Won’t Be Far From Here and Hard Rock Bottom Of Your Heart, both excellent observations of relationship issues, as is The Less I Drink.

Friends of Sizemore’s, and providers of the recording studio for the sessions which produced these recordings, Dixie and Tom T Hall, wrote Whiskey Willie, and the collaboration with Sizemore, Silver Bugle, a haunting account of another horrific episode in the War between the States. Barnes’s clawhammer banjo playing gives this story an additional atavistic touch.

Other songs are no less enjoyable; Blame It On Vern (co-written by Jeff Barbra and Steve G Jones) eulogizes Vern Gosdin. Doesn’t Sizemore’s singing sound so much like ‘The Voice’ in his prime? Yes, very much so! Upright bass player John Pennell co-wrote Devil On A Plow with Harley Allen, wherein a deceased farmer’s offspring speaks of a hard working existence and the possibilities in afterlife. Providing a little more variation, Matt DeSpain sings lead vocals on Hey Moon, a jaunty request for the moon to shine down on two lovers. DeSpain’s lighter tone is just right for this Ron Workman song.

I suspect that Cannon brought the country numbers Eddie Noack’s No News Is Good News and Hank Cochran’s My Dying Day to the studio. Irrespective of the source, these are very much in keeping with the rest of the package.

Some titles might suggest a low, even funereal, mood, but these are rendered in a matter of fact way with a large dose of dry humour, soul and sensitive consideration of the subject. Sizemore puts all of that into his singing and the listener is very aware of that throughout.

I have already mentioned Wayne Fields and John Pennell, but this album is noted as being by The Charlie Sizemore Band, and Sizemore has gathered together a worthy troupe with two others in Danny Barnes (mandolin, banjo and vocals) and Matt DeSpain (Dobro ®, Hawaiian guitar and vocals). They all combine to support the vocals and enhance Sizemore’s wonderfully expressive voice. The harmony vocals, whether two-part or a trio, admirably underscore Sizemore’s mellow tones.

This is a consistently top quality CD and Rounder Records did very well to pick it up and release it when it was on offer.

Rounder Records has posted an interview with Charlie Sizemore on their web site. The occasion for the interview is his recent Rounder CD, Good News, but Charlie also talks about the influence of Ralph Stanley and The Stanley Brothers on his music.

In the interview, Sizemore recalls how he came to join Stanley as a member of The Clinch Mountain Boys.

It was 1977…I was playing with with Melvin and Ray – the Goins Brothers. I played lead guitar. During this time, I became fairly well acquainted with Keith Whitley. In September of that year, Renfro Profit, who was playing guitar with Ralph, left the band. Keith wanted to get me into the band playing lead guitar, so he asked me to come down and play the shows with Ralph at Ralph’s festival. Ralph liked what he heard and everybody seemed happy, and Keith said he’d give me a call. I left there thinking – and I think virtually everyone around was thinking – that I was going to work with Ralph playing lead guitar. It didn’t turn out that way because Danny Marshall, who had previously played with Ralph, ended up getting the job.

Then Keith left the band in November of 1977. Ralph asked me to sing a few songs with him, and I did. And then he asked me if I would come on stage with him and sing a few songs, and I did. And he said I’ll call you on Monday. And guess what? He called me on Monday. That’s how it began and lasted for the next nine years…

You can read the entire interview on the Rounder site.

The new CD from Charlie Sizemore, Good News, is out today (8/14) on Rounder. It’s been five years since there was a new studio project from this soulful bluegrass balladeer, songwriter and former Clinch Mountain Boy, and his many fans are not likely to be disappointed by this new release.

For more details on Good News, read this earlier post on the CD than was published on The Bluegrass Blog in June.

As of this morning, neither Rounder’s nor Charlie’s sites offer audio samples from Good News, but you can hear short clips from each song in iTunes. There is also a single song (I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up) on Charlie’s MySpace page. Samples should be available elsewhere soon.

Update 8/27: Samples are now available on Rounder’s site.

Charlie has put together a short video that highlights his career in bluegrass - from the early days with Ralph Stanley to the present - plus highlights and discussion about the new release.

Watch it on Charlie’s web site, or click the player below.

We lost another bluegrass pioneer this week when banjo player and singer Ray Goins passed away on Monday, July 2, 2007. Ray had been ill for some time, and was hospitalized in Pikeville, KY when he died.

He was a member of the legendary Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, formed by Ray and Charlie Cline in 1938. This group has been regarded by many early bluegrass historians as providing a “missing link” in the development of what became bluegrass music from the old time string bands and popular brother duets of the 1930s. Other members of Lonesome Pine Fiddlers during their nearly 30 year run included future bluegrass luminaries like Bobby Osborne and Paul Williams.

Ray joined the group with his brother Melvin in 1951, and they remained members until The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers disbanded temporarily in 1955, resurfacing in 1961 with the Goins brothers and Curly Ray and Ezra Cline. The band had a major brush with bluegrass history in 1954 when they turned down the Martha White sponsorship that then went to Flatt & Scruggs.

After the Fiddlers broke up in 1963, Ray and Melvin performed together as The Goins Brothers until Ray’s heart attack in 1994 slowed him down. Ray retired in 1997, while Melvin continued as Melvin Goins & Windy Mountain. Ray would share the stage with his brother on occasion, mostly close to home in eastern Kentucky.

There are a few more details, including funeral arrangements, in a piece published today in The Appalachian News-Express.

Charlie Sizemore had this to say about his departed friend:

I’ve known Ray Goins for over thirty years and known of him ever since I can remember. He and Melvin gave me my first job when I was a kid and I traveled with them for the better part of a year.

So I know what I’m talking about when I say this: On the day of Curly Ray Cline’s funeral, Ray and I were talking outside the church and the conversation turned to some of the inflated egos we’d seen over the years. Ray said, “Charlie, I’ve never thought I was better than anyone.”

He was wrong on this point. I’ve never known a better man. He was, to quote Curly Ray, “solid.” And also, I’ll add, a sorely underrated musician. Not that he would mind.

I’m among many who has lost a friend. I’ll miss him. (more…)

This post comes from our semi-regular correspondent, Richard F. Thompson. He writes from England, where he is also a longstanding contributor to British Bluegrass News, a quarterly print publication where he also briefly served as editor.

Although the actual signing took place a few months ago, Rounder Records has recently announced the signing of revered bluegrass singer, band leader and attorney Charlie Sizemore.

At the same time, Rounder has announced the August 14th release of Sizemore’s first album for the label, Good News (ROU 0591). The 14-track CD is the first new studio album from Sizemore in five years. As of today (6/19), there are no audio samples on the Rounder site, but one track from the new CD, I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up, can be previewed on Charlie’s MySpace page.

A powerful songwriter whose songs have been recorded by Ralph Stanley, Jimmy Martin, Doyle Lawson and Dry Branch Fire Squad to name a few, Charlie Sizemore contributes four new original songs to Good News. Among them the tongue-in-cheek Alison’s Band, reflecting Sizemore’s dry sense of humour that fans have to come to love. Other highlights include songs by Dixie and Tom T. Hall, Harley Allen, and veteran songwriter Hank Cochran. While Sizemore considers the record a bit “rough around the edges,” this is only in the sense that the record was recorded pretty much straight-ahead and live in the studio. With Good News Sizemore and co-producer Buddy Cannon shared the common goal of wanting to make a record that feels like and sounds like the records Charlie heard and liked while he was growing up.

Sizemore’s vocals are as restrainedly powerful and as unique as ever, and he considers co-producer Buddy Cannon to be his equal as the moving force behind the record and its making. Though it was done “live and quick,” Silver Bugle is a song the idea for which, Sizemore has carried around with him for the last fifteen years. (more…)