Porter Wagoner

Dolly Parton RIP (I Will Always Love You)

By the time that this gets posted, the news of the passing of country music legend Dolly Parton is well known. To say that she was an icon is cutting it lightly. Her voice, talent, good looks, and business sense made her loved by millions of people, whether they were music fans or not.

Her life story is posted throughout the internet, so I won’t go into it here. What I will talk about is my early experience of her music and her love and respect for bluegrass music.

Growing up, our family vacations consisted of two weeks during the summer staying at an uncle’s cottage at Higgins Lake, Michigan. Back in the 1970s, the area was still backwoods, despite a building up of tourist motels for those flocking to swim in the beautiful lake. It always seemed to rain at least one Saturday of the time there. Television was a black-and-white tube set with rabbit ears that barely picked up two stations from the Traverse City area. If stuck in the cottage on a rainy Saturday afternoon, we would watch the grainy syndicated The Porter Wagoner Show. His duet partner at the time was Dolly. My uncle used to make fun of her, but my dad loved her. I could see that she had that Southern Belle charm that any man would fall for. Unfortunately, the show was never available in the Detroit area, so that was the only time I got to see this angel with the powerful voice.

Of course, she would eventually leave the show, go off on her own, and create an amazing solo career, along with recording the Trio sessions with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Her talent was not only in music, but was showcased also in a number of television shows and movies. As she became more wealthy, instead of just buying tons of cars and houses, she invested in a number of business dealings, most notably the Dollywood amusement part in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. She also started many charitable organizations, among them the Imagination Library, which gave books to pre-school kids so that they had reading skills when starting their education.

Dolly loved all kinds of music, and because of her growing up in Tennessee, bluegrass music was in her heart and soul. Many of her country music albums, as well as the Trio recordings, had an acoustic bluegrass feel to them. However, in the early 2000s, she decided to record a trilogy of more strict bluegrass albums. It started with 1999’s The Grass is Blue, followed by Little Sparrow (2001) and Halos & Horns (2002). Some of the best bluegrass musicians in the industry were on these recordings, and along with original material, she recorded some non-bluegrass songs (“Shine” from Collective Soul and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven). “Shine” won her a Best Female Country Vocal Performance the following year.

Bluegrass fans and artists have always loved her back. Her compositions “Jolene” and “Coat of Many Colors” have been recorded and performed live by numerous bluegrass bands, as they so perfectly fit into the genre.

It is hard to accept that Dolly is no longer with us. Perhaps because she had such a long and successful career, we all thought that she would be with us forever. Fortunately, her music will always be with us. And we can pretty much guarantee that she is singing with the Angel Band right now.

Chew on it and comment.

Bobby Hicks RIP

Yesterday, we lost one of the great and influential bluegrass fiddlers. Bobby Hicks passed away early Friday morning from complications of a heart attack earlier in the week at the age of 91. I do not think that there is a bluegrass fiddler alive today that does not know who he was, let alone view him as a big influence.

Hicks was born in North Carolina in 1933, and first learned guitar and mandolin. He later picked up the fiddle, and won his first fiddle contest at age 12. He would first play with Jim Eanes band, and did a short stint playing bass for Bill Monroe until Monroe saw how good he was on the fiddle and moved him to that position full time.

After a two-year service in the Army, Hicks returned to the Blue Grass Boys and moved to Nashville. With them he recorded Monroe classics “Big Mon,” “Scotland,” and “Wheel Hoss.” He often recorded twin and triple fiddles with the band alongside Vassar Clemens, Kenny Baker, and Charlie Cline. He later joined Port Wagoner’s band, but soon moved to Las Vegas where he was getting paid much better. It is there that he created his homemade five-string fiddle.

After seven years in Vegas, he returned to NC to care for his ailing mother. While home, he played with some local bands and held private lessons. In 1981, Ricky Skaggs asked Hicks to join his touring band. At the same time, he participated in the first five albums of the legendary Bluegrass Album Band, which included Tony Rice, Doyle Lawson, J.D. Crowe and Todd Phillips.

He retired from Skaggs’ band and touring in 2004 at the age of 71. He continued playing locally in NC and giving occasional lessons. He was inducted into the Fiddlers Hall of Fame in 2002, the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2017, and was also a member of the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. He has 10 Grammy Awards to his credit, and performed for over 50 years on the Grand Ole Opry.

Monroe once dubbed Hicks “the truest fiddler he had ever heard.” I had the honor of meeting Mr. Hicks back around 2011 at the IBMA World of Bluegrass Conference when it was in Nashville. In the Exhibit Hall, he was trying out a number of fiddles at a luthier’s booth. Strangely, there was not that big of a crowd standing around watching this legend test-drive the fiddles. He actually asked me what I thought of one of them once he was finished playing. We chatted for a few minutes, I explained that I was not a fiddler but enjoyed fine playing. I felt honored that he would ask someone he didn’t know an opinion of an instrument.

The masters of bluegrass are disappearing at a sadly fast rate, and with Bobby Hicks now gone, there is not many left for our younger artists to show respect to. He will be sorely missed int eh bluegrass community for not only his talent, but his knowledge that he passed on to many others.

Chew on it and comment.