Mandolin & News
The American Mandolin: Part 5
Sam Bush, The ‘Florida’ and Festivals
I had been thinking about this article
for a long time because I couldn’t
really find a connection for Sam
Bush, who not only plays mandolin,
but also fiddle and guitar. He didn’t
seem to fit in with mandolin players
of the previous generation in a way
that could explain
a continuation and
development in
musical terms. Then
co-author Henry
Girvan told me about
Sam Bush being
known for having
removed the ‘florida’
from his 1937 Gibson
F5 mandolin, which
he called ‘Hoss’. The
‘florida’ (which gets its name because
it looks a bit like the shape of the
state of Florida when you look at it
on the map) is that little bit at the
end of the fretboard which has no
frets on it and is therefore, useless!
It can also cause an unwanted sound
which the Amercians call ‘pick click’
when the plectrum hits the ‘florida’.
Henry Girvan offers the following
background information which might
explain why Sam Bush did this: He
(Sam Bush) also owns Jethro Burns’
‘Old Red’ custom made Gibson A5
model which had a round hole and no
fretboard extension, so he may have
been trying to get better sound from
a combination of the two models,
which he now has in his ‘Telluride’!
Eddie Smith & Henry Girvan
Then I saw that Gibson had given
Sam Bush a custom made mandolin,
without the ‘florida’ to mark his
annual appearance at the festival in
Telluride, Colorado. Thus I had my
connection – Sam Bush emerged
from the bluegrass music festivals
which happen all
over the USA.
Sam
Bush was born in
Kentucky in 1952
and was exposed
to bluegrass by
his father’s record
collection and
later by the Flatt &
Scruggs TV show.
He began playing
mandolin at the age of 11 and
attended his first bluegrass festival
in Roanoke Virginia in 1965. As I
said earlier Sam also plays fiddle and
won first place three times in the
junior division of the National Oldtime
Fiddler’s Contest as a teenager. His
recording debut was on fiddle on an
album called ‘Poor Richard’s Almanac’
in 1969, aged just 17. In 1970 he
attended the Fiddlers Convention
and was inspired by the rock style
progressive bluegrass music of the
‘New Deal String Band’ and went on
to form a band called ‘New Grass
Revival’ and he is credited with
being the originator of this style
of bluegrass music. Sam toured
with this band for a couple of years
and was the only
permanent band
member, as other
musicians came
and went. By 1989
he was leader of the
all-star bluegrass
band ‘Strength in
Numbers’ which
appeared at
Telluride Bluegrass
Festival in Colorado,
an event to which Sam has returned
many times, even releasing an album
in 2000 called ‘Ice Caps: Peaks of
Telluride’. In 2007 he was chosen
to host the International Bluegrass
Music Association Awards, which
was of course a great honour. In
March 2010 he received another
great honour in that the Kentucky
Senate passed legislation declaring
Bowling Green (his home town) as
the birthplace of Newgrass, and Sam
Bush the father of Newgrass.
He is an accomplished bluegrass
vocalist and player of fiddle, mandolin
and guitar, who has been called a
’modern day Bill Monroe’. Sam would
say “If Bill was the father of Bluegrass
then I could be the mother”, because
Bill would say “Here comes that
mother now!”. Sam tours extensively,
appearing at many small and large
festivals. He is affectionately known
as ‘King of Telluride’ for his perennial
appearances there and now has a
Gibson mandolin called the ‘Telluride’.
Silver Medal Awarded to Keith Harris
Within the framework of the recent
eurofestival zupfmusik in Bruchsal,
Keith Harris was awarded the Silver
Medal of the German Plucked String
Federation (BDZ) for services to
plucked string music. He is one of only
five recipients of this rare award. The
presentation took place at a ceremony
attended by leading officials of the
16
German organisation, which is by far
the largest of its kind in the world, in
a reception held in the baroque castle
of Bruchsal. The laudation was given
by Christian Weyhofen, Vice President
of the BDZ, who emphasised the
wide range of Harris’ international
contribution to plucked string music
– artistically, as performer, conductor
and composer, but
also as author, teacher
and active participant
in the ongoing and
lively discourse on the
mandolin. Pictured
here, L to R, are
Thomas Kronenberger,
newly elected president
of BDZ, Keith Harris,
Christian Weyhofen
and Dominick Hackner
– both vice presidents
of BDZ.
16th Midland Banjo Fest
Date: Sat 11th October 2014
Venue: Hilton House Hotel,
Lane, Hilton,
1 Mill
Derbyshire DE65 5GP
Tel: 01283 732304
MBF is a gathering of all styles of Banjo
Music from the amateur to professional,
with enthusiasts and players meeting up,
chatting, buying, selling, relaxing and
enjoying good company. The concert, in
which anyone can play, will run from late
afternoon through to early evening with a
short break around 6pm and concluding
in the evening with the free Raffle
Draw sponsored by Clifford Essex Music
Company Ltd and the ‘Grand Finale’
community session. For latest news see
www.midlandbanjofest.com