I wanted to honor the memory of my banjo-picking friend Jim Fee a little bit more so here are some columns I wrote for Banjo Newsletter that feature him. I’m pretty sure Jimmy saw these (at least I tell myself that he did), and I hope that he knew how much I admired him and what he meant to me.
BNL May 1984
[This long column is entirely about Jimmy. I hope it gives you some idea of the person he was.]
The Wit and Wisdom of Jim Fee
You don’t know Jim Fee, do you? That’s all right, he probably doesn’t know you either. He’s only one of the best banjo players in the world. I mean, he’s right up there with J.D. Crowe and Sonny Osborne. His Scruggs-style lead is powerful and clean—every note is in the right place. He plays as well at the twenty-second fret as most good banjo players play in first position. His back-up, especially on slower numbers, is rich and full. Remember Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date”? You ought to hear Jimmy play that on the banjo. It seems like he uses all the chord positions in the world and I’ll bet he doesn’t know the names of any of them. Jim is also a prime example of a “good old boy” in the best sense of the phrase. He is straight-talking, hard-drinking, and forever cussing. I have censored most of his quotations—you may odd your own expletives. If you’re talking with him, you’d better be prepared to hear the unvarnished truth, with no apologies.
“Y’all are really sounding good, Murph,” he told me last year. “Best I’ve heard you sound. But why do you play that ‘Just Because’ capoed at the fifth fret?” “I thought it sounded good. I thought I could get more drive there—help support the rhythm more.” “You ought to play it in open C. That’s where the drive’s at.”
Jim was born in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1941, and was raised in a little coal mining camp called Yancey. His dad was a coal miner, and like everybody back then, the family also farmed to eat. Jim started playing at the age of ten, when his dad “came in and told me that I was either going to learn to play the banjo or he was going to whip the hell out of me.” So his dad, who played clawhammer banjo and guitar, taught him “Chickens Crowin’ on the Sourwood Mountain.”
Jim got out of the mountains “just as quick as I got old enough, which was about eighteen years old. I left Harlan and went to Cincinnati. I got up with a bunch called the Stoney Mountain Boys, which was Earl Taylor (mandolin), Jim McCall (guitar), Walter Hensley (banjo), and Vernon McIntyre, Sr., (bass) who was known as ‘Boatwhistle.’ ” Jim still remembers those boys as the best group he ever worked with. “Now, Hensley was the best banjo picker outside of Earl Scruggs that I ever listened to. I learned a lot from Walter Hensley, just from sitting and listening to him. All he ever sat down and showed me were two things: ‘Groundspeed’ and the kick-off to ‘I Know You’re Married but I Love You Still’.”
After a series of nefarious peregrinations and perilous misfortunes too numerous and sordid to recount here (that’s Red’s line), Jimmy wound up in Orlando, Florida, picking at Disney World with Nelson Young. They played six days a week for almost seven years. This included doing the famous (or infamous) “Bear Shows,” which required the boys to play music dressed like bears, in huge, heavy bear costumes. When the Disney World job ended, Chubby Anthony asked Jim to come and work with him.
“I jumped at the opportunity, because I’d watched him on TV when I was a kid, back when he was working with Carter and Ralph on WCYB Farm And Fun Time. We watched them everyday at noon on Channel 5 out of Bristol. I’d get out of school every day at twelve for dinner; it was about a half mile up there to the house, and I’d make it in about five minutes, straight up the mountain.” Me: “Bet you couldn’t do that now!” Jim: “G-d–, I wouldn’t even get the theme song on the end of it now. But Chubby was playing fiddle with them. And that fiddle made an impression on me, even at that young age. I still remember how exciting it was. And it was the same when I started playing with him, too. Still the same style; same sound.”
“Big Timber,” as the band came to be called, was simply one of the best bands ever. With Chubby on fiddle, and sometimes lead guitar; Jim on banjo; Bill Pruitt on guitar; Bill Lamarche on bass, they played music that would make your hair stand up. It was hardcore bluegrass at its best. “Fee-Fee, La-La, and Bert,” as Chubby called them–what a band! They were just beginning to get some national exposure when Chubby, who had been in poor health for some time, died in February, 1980. Jim took over the leadership of Big Timber and is still at the helm. Jim is the only original “Big” from the Big Timber that is left. After Chubby died, Bill Pruitt stayed a while then moved away, and Bill LaMarche simply doesn’t qualify as “big.” John Maultby, now on fiddle, well-Jim says it best when he introduces John on stage: “We call him the ‘Sapling.’ ”
I collected some of Jim’s wit and wisdom at a festival we played together last weekend. Said festival shall remain anonymous to protect the guilty. All in all, it was a rather typical small bluegrass festival. The M.C. was up on stage announcing future festivals from flyers presented to him by promoters: “I don’t think I’m gonna read this one.” he drawled. “They didn’t put no date on it.” He chuckled a bit and turned the flyer over. “Oh, here it is. They stuck it on the back as an aftermath.”
When we rolled into the festival Friday evening, the Big Timber bus was already there. We pulled the van up nose-to-nose with it, and in the twilight we could see Jim Fee, stripped to the waist, standing in the kitchen, peeling a raw onion with a paring knife. Beside him on the counter was a slow-cooker full of soup beans and fatback. (You might think it more in keeping with his character as a “good old boy” if he had been cooking the beans in a big iron kettle hung over a wood fire. If so, you don’t understand the term “good old boy.” A “good old boy” is not a back-to-nature freak. Son, he grew up with nature and he darn sure wants to put as many conveniences between himself and nature as possible.) When we boarded the bus, Jim was just heating up the skillet to fry himself a pone of cornbread. I was sorry I had already eaten.
I later related this incident to a friend of Jim’s who was at the festival. “Jack,” I said, “when we got here, what do you think the first thing we saw was?”
“I don’t know, Honey. What was it?” (Jack calls everybody “Honey.”)
“Jim Fee, standing in the front of the bus, stripped to the waist. He was half neck-ed.”
“Honey,” said Jack, “if he was stripped to the waist, he was more than half neck-ed. Haw! Haw! He must have been two-thirds neck-ed! Haw! Haw!”
Jack later related my comments about Jim to Jim while I stood helplessly by, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me whole. “Haw, haw,” laughed Jim. “I guess I was two-thirds neck-ed!” You can’t embarrass Jim Fee. But buddy, he sure can embarrass you. I was basking in the glow of a compliment from another good old boy—Ron Smith, to be precise—bass fishermen and conoisseur of Jack Daniel’s finest Black Label: “Me and a buddy was a-talking about you, Murph. He was a-wanting to know how old you was. I said you was about twenty-six.”
“Why, thank you, Ron.” I said, sucking in my stomach. “I guess I am about twenty-six.”
“G-d-,” said Jim Fee. “She’s thirty if she’s a day!” [I was, in fact, 32!]
* * * * * *
“Have you hyeared my new banjer?” said Jim. (Jim Fee can talk as well as anybody when he wants to; only, most of the time, he doesn’t want to.)
He asks us that almost every time we see him. Jim changes banjos like other people change oil–every six thousand miles or six months, whichever comes first. I can’t keep track of them all. One thing for sure. Every banjo he plays is “the best one I’ve ever hyeared.” And the thing about it is that all of them are good sounding banjos—especially when Jim plays them.
The last banjo he had was a Stelling—sort of. Actually, it had started off as a Stelling. Then some Slack Jawed Bimbo chiseled out about an eighth of an inch of wood around the inside of the rim, and then cut the top of the rim down and installed a flat-head tone ring. (I am truly sorry, Geoff—I know it’s like chiseling your heart.) But, in the hands of Jim Fee, this banjo could go head-to-head with any of them.
Even when I play Jim’s banjos, they sound good. Jim has a knack for building good-sounding banjos (and guitars), and setting them up so that they just “crack.” Jimmy was telling me one day about a “very crude five-string neck” he built and put on an old Gibson 10-inch tenor trap-door banjo.
Me: “Was that the first neck you ever made?”
Jim: “No, the first one I ever made was when I was a kid; whittled it out of hickory with broken fruit jars.”
Me: “Jimmy, are you telling the truth?”
Jim: “I am telling the truth. I took a hatchet and chopped out a rough outline, then took a pocketknife and broken fruit jars and cut it on down.”
Me: “Well, what did that neck go on?”
Jim: “It didn’t ever go on anything because it wasn’t ever good enough to go on anything.”
* * * * * *
Jimmy and I were sitting at the sound board Friday night, listening to a young guitar picker take a lead break. I thought he was doing rather well-it was in a Tony Rice vein, but with deep bluegrass roots.
“I don’t like guitar picking like that.” said Jim. “You don’t?” I said. “No. You know the only guitar picker I ever liked?” “George Shuffler?” I asked. “No. Chubby Anthony.” (I should have known.) “Don’t you like Doc Watson’s playing?” “Yeah, but he’s not bluegrass.”
Later on, we got to talking about other things.
Jim: “He’s a good fiddler, but he ain’t no musician.” Me: “What do you mean?” Jim: “You put him in a parking lot with a guitar player and he’s fine, but when you work up an arrangement with the band, he can’t remember when to come in or when to get out. He’s been drinking so long . . . he’s rum dumb.”
Sunday morning found Red and me and the rest of the band gathered around at the side of the stage, waiting to do our gospel show. Jim Fee was there, looking mighty cheerful and spry for a Sunday morning, drinking a Mountain Dew. I figured it was as good a time as any to start harassing Tuck, our dobro player, who looked like he had stayed up all night-he still had on his dark glasses.
Me: “Who’d you pick with last night, Tuck?”
Tuck: “I don’t know. All I could see was their knees.”
Me: “Aw, come on. Tuck. Who’d you pick with?”
Tuck: “Jim’s guitar player was there.”
Jim: “Yeah, he’s new. He wants to pick all the time. (Pause.) G- D-, he’ll get over that!”
Jim had told me Friday about his new guitar player. “He’s a good singer.” said Fee. “But he ain’t no guitar picker. I been working on him, though.”
Later on the new guitar player was talking to me about joining up with Big Timber. He said he had gone to Orlando, and, more or less, auditioned for Jimmy. They sat around and picked some, and finally he said. “Tell me what you think.”
“I like your singing fine,” said Jim Fee, “but I can’t handle that guitar playing.”
“I play this way because I like the way it sounds. But I reckon I could change. How do you want me to play?”
Jimmy showed him and I guess it worked out because he was now in the band. Later I saw Jim Fee again and said, “Your new guitar player has been telling me how you wanted him to play guitar. How did you want him to play?”
So Jim took me over to the side of the stage, where he had his guitar and banjo leaned up against the wall. He picked up the guitar and hit a powerful lick.
“See,” he said. “Most people just play a bass string and a strum, like this-boom, chuck; boom, chuck. But if you play like this—” and here he hit a particular series of upstrokes and downstrokes to go with the bass strings “—you can really put a lot of drive into a song. A lot of people mistake speed for drive. Speed ain’t drive. Speed ain’t got anything to do with drive. You can put drive in a waltz. Sometimes you can slow things down and get more drive.”
“I learnt that from Jim McCall,” he said, “when he was playing with us at Disney in 1975. I knew he was doing something different, so I made it my goal to learn what he was doing. I’d watch him real close while we were playing, and then I’d go get my guitar and practice it during our breaks.” I tried the licks a few times myself, but never did get it. I guess I’ll just stick to my boom-chucks. But for a while, at least, I know I’ll be thinking, “I wonder if I should try to do it like Jimmy showed me?”
As this last conversation drew towards a close, I said to Jim, “Do you mind if I quote you on a few things you said this week-end?” “No, Honey, you just go ahead. You can quote me on just about anything. You might tell your students that if your strings get rough and scratchy, just get a little grease off your face and rub it on the strings. It’s just like WD-40. I do it with my picks. too. Just rub them on your face.”
By this time, his whole band had gathered around, preparatory to going on stage.
“Murph can’t do that. She might get powder on her picks. Haw! Haw!”
Me: “And all this time I thought you were wiping sweat off your face, Jim.”
Jim: “Nope, I’m just going through puberty. I got a lot of grease. I expect I’ll dry up next year.”
On this witticism I had to leave. Red and I had to get back home, relieve the babysitter, and peel the kids off the ceiling. Jim and Big Timber got on stage to do the last set of the weekend. We heard Jimmy kicking off “Why Don’t You Tell Me So” as we cranked up the van. He had told me some time before that he had never cared for the way Earl played that (I fell over, because I love it), and, true to form, Jimmy was playing it out of open “F” in his very own style, getting the melody his very own way. At the end of the break. we heard him yell “Bye, Red!” over the sound system, as we pulled out.
So, Jim, here are two fellow pickers who hope you never dry up, and that you continue to inspire us, not only with your picking but also with your wit and wisdom.
Here’s Jimmy picking a little “Beer Barrel Polka”.