Homespun Videos

Three important names in music passed away this past week, with two of them being big influences on my musical life.

First, let’s look at the passing of John Mayall. He was a student of the blues long before the British Invasion that gave us the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and the Yardbirds. He, along with Alexis Korner, brought Chicago-style blues to young Brits in the early 1960s. His proteges included Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie among many others. His 1966 album John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, often called the Beano album as it featured Clapton reading the Beano comic book on the cover, is considered legendary. He had many chances to gain great success in the US if he would dilute his strict blues style, but he refused. He became a cult hero among blues purists, and his original material was off kilter, not writing about usual blues subjects such as drinking and infidelity, but instead choosing political and environmental themes. He was active until very recently, passing away at the age of 90.

Next, we look at Abdul “Duke: Fakir, tenor singer and last original member of the Four Tops. Motown was a big part of my growing up, and much of that came from the smooth vocals from the talented groups on the label. The Supremes, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, and Martha & the Vandellas were all top notch, but my favorite of them all was the Four Tops. Lead singer Levi Stubbs was amazing to say the least, but the icing on the cake was the tight and timely harmonies provided by Lawrence Payton, Renaldo Benson, and Duke Fakir. Listen to classics such as “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch).” “Bernadette,” “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” and “It’s the Same Old Song.” These four guys were bridging doo-wop with R&B energy.

Then there was the look. The four members, especially Fakir, had absolute class and style in the way that they presented themselves. In the beginning, they wore tailored, matching suits that gave them a gentlemanly look. As the 60s progressed on into the 1970s, they began to make individual fashion statements. Even after leaving Motown, they still had hits with “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got)” on ABC and “When She Was My Girl” on Casablanca. One has to remember that these four performed together from 1953 to 1997, the longest tenure for any band with original members.

Fakir never left Detroit long-term, He owned much property in the city, and ran a successful restaurant on the Detroit River. He passed away on July 22 of heart failure at the age of 88.

My other big influence that we lost this past week as acoustic guitarist Harry Peter “Happy” Traum. Born in 1938 in the Bronx, he was part of the Washington Square/Greenwich Village scene during the early 1960s, where he would become friends with a young Bob Dylan. Along with Dylan, Pete Seeger, and the Freedom Singers, they recorded Broadside Ballads Volume 1 for Folkways Records. He actually cut the first version of Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind.”

However, Traum is best known by many, including my introduction to him, for his work in creating guitar instructional books, tapes, and videos through his Homespun Music company. As a guitar teacher in New York City, he first wrote the book Fingerpicking Styles for Guitar in 1965. He was soon making tapes for his students based on transcriptions in the book. Due to the popularity, he formed Homespun with his wife and began advertising in various music magazines. Soon he was releasing instructional tapes from fiddler Kenny Kosek and banjo whiz Bill Keith.

By 1983, Homespun was releasing VCR lessons, which was eventually followed by DVD and online downloads. In 1995, Hal Leonard Corporation took over the massive distribution job. Other artists that Traum recorded for lessons included Chet Atkins, Norman Blake, Rick Danko, Donald Fagen, Jerry Douglas, John Hartford, Bill Monroe, Sam Bush, Doc Watson, even musical comedians Steve Martin and Steve Allen. Each video was produced by Traum, starting off in his living room and eventually in a small studio. Many of these videos featured Traum interviewing the presenters, offering insightful questions that would pique the artist’s curiosity and make the student truly interested in the information beyond fingering and picking technique.

While Homespun was Traum’s main passion, he still continued to record his own material, releasing his final recording, “Just for the Love of It,” in 2015 and appearing on Dylan’s Another Self Portrait a year earlier. He passed away on July 17 at the age of 86.

All will be missed. Chew on it and comment.

Bluegrass Harmony Singing Part 2: You Gotta Work On It To Be Good!

Last week’s blog talked a bit about harmony vocals in bluegrass music. It truly is one of the best facets of bluegrass music, yet is the one that is worked on the least by amateur and semi-professional bluegrass musicians.

There are a few video resources available for purchase out there. One of the first videos that concentrated on bluegrass harmonies is The Nashville Bluegrass Band: Vocal Harmony Workshop, available through Homespun Video (www.homespun.com). While it is great to hear and “see” (via the included booklet and if you can read music) the harmonies from this fantastic bluegrass vocal group. The downside is that there is not real instruction on “how” to get to those harmony notes.

Homespun also puts out two videos on bluegrass singing by the best in the field, Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent (Bluegrass and Gospel Duet Singing and Dailey & Vincent Teach Bluegrass and Gospel Quartet Singing). I have not seen either of these videos, so I cannot critique them as yet. Unfortunately, Homespun has made most of its videos as download-only. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to have the DVD so that I can play it on my TV with the bigger speakers and not on my laptop.

Of course, YouTube has its share of videos covering harmony vocals. Likewise, most of them seem to talk about what to sing without discussing “how” to get there. One recent video put out by bluegrass producer/engineer Stephen Mougin comes about the closest to good instruction for harmony singing in bluegrass. He talks about having to know the melody before attempting a harmony (good point!), and he has the harmony singers (actually himself cut into three images on the screen) to move their fingers up and down to the melody so that the harmony follows the same pattern. However, this video, along with all of the others that I have seen on YT, take for granted that the harmony singer has a good enough ear to immediately follow along in whatever key the song is played. Still, this one is worth watching for some pointers.

There are also a number of book/CD/audio download resources available as well. I have not checked out many of them, so I cannot be a judge to their pros and cons. I guess what I can suggest is that, if you can afford to purchase one or two of these resources, go ahead. I do have tons of instructional books and videos at my house covering various musical instruments and such. My logic has always been affordability-meets-availability. That is to say, many of the videos that I have secured I got on the cheap either through clearance or used. Yeah, I have a few heavy metal guitar videos that I got for a buck. I probably watched them once and never again. But I figured that for the cost, I may actually pick up a pointer or two to transfer to my regular guitar playing. You can never learn too much.

Getting back to bluegrass harmonies, there is a need for video instruction to show ALL aspects of the learning process. Along with knowing the melody and paralleling the melodic pattern, the instruction should also cover some bit of actual theory. I covered this a bit in the last blog, but here it is again. If singing in the key of G, one should know the three notes that make up that tonic chord (in this case, G, B, and D). If the song has more than one chord (as it most likely will), one should know the three notes of each of those chords. Moreover, one should also know the diatonic notes for the key that the song is in. In the case of the key of G, the seven notes that will work with the song with that G chord are G, A, B, C, D, E, and F#. Same goes for the other chords within the song. And this is not even going near the variations of those chords, like 7ths, diminished, major 7ths, and so on (way too much to throw in here!).

One concept that is rarely covered (do I dare say, never?) is the idea of vocalizing hard consonants while singing harmony. You may hit the right note when harmonizing the vowel “ah,” but if that word ends with a T, and all of the singers come down on that consonant at different times, even milliseconds apart, it will sound like an accident instead of an artistic moment. For singers working together years and years, that technique of coming down on that consonant at the same time becomes natural. But it takes time, lots of it, to get there. In the meantime, I always suggest that harmony singers allow the lead singer to stress the hard consonants (B, D, G, K, P, Q, T). If harmony-singing a word with one of those consonants, perhaps approaching it softly, or not enunciating it at all (instead of singing “darling,” sing “arlin” and let the lead singer hit the D and G) may come across better to the audiences’ ears.

The best way to fully get to know how to sing harmonies is practice, practice, practice! In videos discussing bluegrass harmonies, they will say that there are the lead, baritone, and tenor singers. Concepts like that are not as important as having a good ear, knowing what note to hit, and where to go with the next note. Find a recording of a song with a lead singer, learn the key and what notes to work with as a harmony, and record yourself singing along to that recording to analyze the results. Sweet harmonies take a lot of work, but the audience will appreciate it.

Chew on it and comment.