As far as I know, Hayseed Dixie was the first
to bring it the attention the mainstream, but
it seems that Bluegrass musicians have made
covers of a lot of Rock music. I thought there
might be a unifying theory about which songs
particularly lend themselves to Bluegrass
coverage. So, if you’re game, kindly post links
to your favorite (or even least favorite) covers
of non-bluegrass music by Bluegrass bands.
(Audio/video clips are great, but even just
track listings are fine. Enough to just collect
the song as a data point.)
To get you started, here’s a few I’ve come
across already:
Speaking of Floyd, A California band does the
whole album as a performance in Wizard of Oz
costumes. They call it “Dark Side of the Moon-
shine”. (good idea, but doesn’t come across as
well as I would’ve hoped) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKI9K0rcZbY
I win with Jim & Jesse (McReynolds) And the Virginia Boys’ fine LP Berry Pickin’ in the Country, their BG stroll through the Chuck Berry songbook. No idea what year, and only one website out there knows I’m not lying.
The used record store I bought it in stickered it " $6- RARE ".
Edited: found a shot of the cover!
And the site claims 1965.
~~
Apart from this, Earl Scruggs wife, Louise, who managed Flatt & Scruggs, had a policy of covering popular music, which lead to a few bad covers of Paul Simon and Bob Dylan tunes, but also to their participation in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s three disk Will the Circle.. project, in which a cast of Nashville veterans thoroughly upstage the country-rock upstarts.
Pink Floyd seems a popular target. Just a few weeks ago a friend loaned me Rebuild the Wall by Luther Wright and the Wrongs, where they redo The Wall track by track.
Butch Ross is performing in Charleston, WV tonight. He’s playing Led Zepplin on an upside down dulcimer strung like a guitar.
My boss handed me the clipping today during a statewide meeting of our entire program. She thought I might play the dulcimer (I don’t). I told her (in front of the whole group) that I wouldn’t have enough time to pick up pharmacueticals before the concert. Some folks laughed, do you think anyone offerred to save the day? Noooooooo! Just teasing. They knew I was teasing too.
Bill Monroe, true to form, refused because it wasn’t going to be about him, but everybody else (almost literally) showed up & had a blast. Doc Watson lead the band and cued the breaks. The between tracks chatter is as good as the picking.
The Rock/Bluegrass synthesis has been going on at least since the late 1960’s when I was first learning the bluegrass tradition. For many of us at that time it was a path of least resistence since we were familiar with the rock tunes but wanted to stretch out with the bluegrass instrumentation on material with which we were already familiar (and with which the audience was likewise familiar). Players like David Grisman, Sam Bush, Tony Trischka and many others played rock covers (oh, some banjo player named Garcia). The NGDB were part of that time and place. The Beatle’s songs were a favorite target. Our set list included several covers of Beatles songs - Ticket to Ride, I’ve just Seen a Face, etc. The crowd favorite though was something we called “Inner Geeter D’veeder”. Geeter is a Philly thing - the Big Boss with the Hot Sauce, etc.
The “Shine” video band did include Chris Thiele, Sara Watkins and Jerry Douglas (he’s everywhere!). There were a lot of players on the Little Sparrow CD including all the members of Altan. That CD also had Dolly’s bluegrass version of “Stairway to Heaven”.
The last time I saw Tony Trischka his Beatle’s medley included at least twenty quotes from various songs. He can make just about anything work on the banjo.
One thing I remember about playing bluegrass, particularly in the 1970’s, is that there were no apparent boundaries in the repertoire. The respect for the traditional bluegrass repertoire and players was present but most everyone drew from various sources and took the bluegrass style and instrumentation into different directions. The results were newgrass, psychograss, dawg music and so on. Just really interesting music. And it continues today.
