Okay, folks, this is where it’s at! The Country Gentlemen– Charlie, Doyle, Bill, and Bill– show us how it’s done:
These guys were masters not only of playing but also of performing through a sound system, and here, they show everybody how to do it. They only had a few mikes, but they used the ones they had to achieve precisely the sound they wanted the audience to hear!
Consider this: there’s NOT a banjo rattling away all the time in a mike, to drown out the vocals. Bill Emerson hardly plays at all, in fact, on the choruses. There’s NOT any “Carolina Slam” on the guitar, just Charlie Waller’s incredibly tasteful, well-done rhythm (and he doesn’t push it into the mike to drown himself out with it, either). Bill Yates is never trying to be noticed (beyond just playing perfect bass). On the mandolin, there’s NOT any fancy, syncopated backup messing around with 6th chords and 7th chords, or any pentatonic lead or other showoff stuff– there’s just Doyle Lawson playing MASTERFUL mandolin, exactly in time. So any time Charlie is singing, there’s simply PERFECT rhythm and MINIMAL backup from the guitar, mandolin, banjo, and bass. And any time he’s not singing, the whole band is focusing the audience’s attention on whoever’s playing lead.
These guys used their voices and instruments to put EXACTLY what they wanted to through the mikes at EXACTLY the right times, and they gave the audience a beautiful performance (in spite of what sounds like spotty work on the sound board)!
Not many bands can do this, presenting their best sound to the audience in a way that compels listening. I wish some bands out there would LISTEN to this and LEARN!
Tags: country gentlemen
This is truly how it is done. I only wish I had realized this years ago when I last played in a bluegrass group. We all just banged away with everything we had…NOT good. Now that I realize how bluegrass is really supposed to be played you might know bluegrass musicians are a rare breed in the area where I live. It doesn’t get any better than Charlie, Doyle, Bill, and Bill.
i think Red is exactly right about the way the other musicians should hold back when either the singer or a solo instrument is playing. I hear bluegrass groups when the banjo is playing loud rolls and a few licks thrown in for good measure while the singer is trying to sing. The resulting sound is just chaos. It is imnpossible to hear the words of the singer due to the banjo and sometimes the mandolin. It would be nice if all the banjo players of the world would follow this rule.