Roland came out of the Monroe tradition but always had an identifiable voice all his own.īob Black writes at some length about Roland’s time as Bill Monroe’s guitarist (1967-69) and how Monroe had his band build the stage at Bean Blossom, Brown County Jamboree, in 1968. As a mandolin player, Roland benefited from long road trips with Monroe, driving the bus while encouraging his boss to play mandolin nearby. Interestingly, Monroe echoed that when praising Roland for his always appropriate G-run. He got the job because he was adept from the start at playing a Lester Flatt G-run, something Clarence joked about when he himself contemplated and didn’t join Monroe on the road. The end of the Kentucky Colonels and Clarence’s prominence as an LA studio player and a Byrd, led Roland to move to Nashville in 1967, playing guitar with Monroe (he, like others, pronounced it, “Mon’-roe”). Photo by Jim Marshall.Ĭlarence’s stint with the Byrds began in 1968 as a high school kid in Pasadena I saw one of his first shows with the band at the Rose Bowl, an all-day festival that ended with Big Brother & the Holding Company. Roland White, Bill Ray Latham, Clarence White, Roger Bush. The Kentucky Colonels at the Newport Folk Festival, 1964. They became part of the larger national folk revival, knocking people out at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, touring the East Coast with an extended stay in Boston. They were on television, especially with the Maphises on Town Hall Party. Los Angeles is vast-they must have put a lot of miles on LA freeways, from the Valley to Oceanside and later on, up and back to Bakersfield. The White brothers were part of the vibrant country scene in early 1960s Los Angeles, mentored themselves by people like Joe and Rose Lee Maphis and Rose Maddox. There’s also a wonderful picture of Roland standing next to the very tall Stringbean (David Akeman, whose height was accentuated by his overalls with exaggerated low waistline). They met and visited with Flatt & Scruggs backstage at the Opry there’s a picture of a young Roland standing between Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, 14 years before he joined Lester’s band. He and the Kentucky Colonels’ dobro player, LeRoy McNees, took their first trip to Nashville for the 1959 DJ Convention as bluegrass tourists. And Roland was always a student, absorbing so much from whatever environments he sought. At the IBMA in Nashville in 2008, Roland told me about how he had been exploring, using bass notes to move chord changes in his comping with Nashville Bluegrass Band-a subtlety his then bandmate Stuart Duncan noticed and encouraged. Besides his distinctive lead playing, which was markedly different from and complementary to brother Clarence’s much imitated guitar style, he was a great rhythm player. Roland’s playing reflects who he was: generous, lyrical, and modest. White at the Grand Ole Opry with Stringbean, 1960. There he met and was shown around town by Roland in addition to working with prominent bands such as Buck White & the Down Home Folks and, of course, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. Black’s biography and his approach, which details the well-known phases of Roland’s life and those he touched, is also part personal recollection of the author himself, a noted banjo player who moved to Nashville in 1974. Mandolin Man, the Bluegrass Life of Roland White is a thoughtful, knowledgeable and immediate chronicle of Roland’s life and impact. Roland’s own life, moving as a teenager from rural Maine to sprawling Los Angeles, is much the story of how urban musicians moved into almost entirely white music played by rural musicians. This is a wonderful read, a chronicle not only of Roland’s amazing and varied life but also a reflection of the history of the development of bluegrass at a particular time-from the 1950s through the 1970s and beyond-times that changed the music and who played it. Roland died on April 1 of this year, at age 83, so he never got to see his biography out in the public. I bought it right away, though delivery was scheduled for June (it arrived in late May). Notice of Bob Black’s biography of Roland White, Mandolin Man, the Bluegrass Life of Roland White, came by email back in February.
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