March 12 Trivia Question

Additional Bowden Comments

Thanks and congrats to all the players and winners! Good to see the group growing, slowly.

The correct answer was C. John Carlini. John is a well known all purpose musician, arranger, producer, etc around NYC and NJ. He’s a well known jazz guitarist but also plays roots music including bluegrass. There’s a very fine article in the new Bluegrass Unlimited magazine about John and his work with Tony. I submitted this Trivia question BEFORE the new BU arrived in my mailbox. I chuckled at the coincidence. Please read the article. John says he learned as much from Tony as Tony learned from him — particularly Tony’s concepts of “attack” on the guitar strings. I learned from the BU article that John was also the “music director” for the entire David Grisman Quintet!

Answer A about Charlie Christian was thrown in because Charlie was known as one of the first jazz guitarists to really get “chromatic” — using al 12 notes in the scale and throwing in lots of sharps and flats not part of the melody. He’s foundation to jazz guitar I understand.

Answer B is partially right that young Tony Rice knew and hung around a bit with the older Clarence White, and Tony did worship him. Tony was living in California when he was just a kid, and got to see all the West Coast bluegrassers early on.

Answer D about Woody Allen’s weekly jam/performances at a Manhattan club was a red herring. Tony never had anything to do with that as far as I know.

Answer E is correct in that Lawrence Welk employed an excellent jazz guitarist named Neil Levang. Again Tony had nothing to do with him as far as I know.

Answer F was what I thought at the time Tony made the jump to Grisman’s Quintet. I thought he was just genius and super-guitarman enough to do it all on his own. I thought that until I read about John Carlini (decades ago). It actually raised my respect for Tony in that he sought a Teacher.

Answer G was for the DeadHeads, in that Jerry Garcia originally wanted to play banjo with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys (but chickened out), was friends with David Grisman, lived in the San Fransisco area, and had a unique sort-of-jazz guitar style. No doubt Tony met and picked with him, but there is no record of Tony studying with Garcia.

Again thanks to all the contestants, and keep playing Bluegrass Trivia!