* Ricky Skaggs honors the sounds of bluegrass pioneers
DIANE SAMMS RUSH
* 02/14/99
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
(Copyright 1999)
Ricky Skaggs remembers hearing music in the wind while coon
hunting with his father back home in eastern Kentucky.
"The trees swaying would almost sound like a fiddle playing," he
said.
What he heard is the ancient tones, the music of life. Skaggs
celebrates that music in his latest CD, "Ancient Tones," on his own
Skaggs Family Records.
He took the phrase from a story that musician Peter Rowan tells
about standing beside the road one night beside the broken-down tour
bus of Bill Monroe. The old man was humming a tune to himself, then
sidled up to Rowan and asked, "Did you hear that?" "No, what is
it?" Rowan replied. "Those are the ancient tones," Monroe said, "
. . . don't ever forget them."
It is Skaggs' intent never to forget those tones that Monroe, the
* Stanley Brothers and other bluegrass pioneers heard.
"Those old sounds still grab your heart," Skaggs said in a phone
interview from his studio near Nashville, where he was working with
the band Blue Highway on a recording.
Skaggs chose such heart-tuggers as the Stanley Brothers' "Lonesome
Night" and "Carolina Mountain Home" and Monroe's version of "I
Believed in You Darlin' " for his CD. All have that high, lonesome
* sound that sets bluegrass music apart.
He also included "Coal Minin' Man," written by Jim Mills, who
plays banjo in Skaggs' Kentucky Thunder band. It has the same feel
as the classic music. His own instrumental, "Connemara," reflects
* the Celtic roots of bluegrass, which came from people of Scots-Irish
descent.
* Even when he was lured to country music in the 1980s, Skaggs
* "tipped his hat," as he puts it, to bluegrass with such songs as
"Uncle Pen" and "I Wouldn't Change You If I Could."
In the wake of the urban cowboy/disco phase of country, Skaggs
* reminded the industry and the public that country music came from
the people, not from a soundboard.
* His reward was the Country Music Association Entertainer of the
Year Award for 1985. He was only 21.
Even now, he says, he is introduced as a country star, even though
* most of his career has been in bluegrass and he has always paid
homage to that genre.
* "Bluegrass Rules!," the first CD on his label, enabled Skaggs to
* state, unmistakably, that he has returned to bluegrass. The album
took music from the masters and put it in the hands of his Kentucky
Thunder band. The resulting melding of old and new brought raves
from traditionalists and newgrassers alike.
* "Bluegrass Rules!" sold 150,000 units and is still moving off
shelves, Skaggs said. That's a remarkable number for the genre. Del
* McCoury, the International Bluegrass Music Association entertainer
of the year, sells fewer than 50,000, Skaggs said.
* It's even a remarkable number for today's country music, Skaggs
said; 90% of the new acts out of Nashville last year didn't sell
that well.
"Ancient Tones" has been out only a couple of weeks, but the buzz
is that Skaggs has again broken new ground.
Because the project is his own, Skaggs had the luxury of including
all of the verses he could find of the traditional "Little Bessie."
The song is more than 8 minutes long and tells of dying in a child's
voice. At first, the child is fearful, singing against a soundless
void. Then a glimpse of heaven gives her hope that her pain will
cease and she will be safe. That's when the music comes in. It
increases in tempo as the child grows in hope. The song ends with
children giggling and singing "Jesus Loves Me."
It's a sound picture that tugs the heart. Many mountain songs
were heavy with emotion as they portrayed life's struggles and the
closeness of death.
Some may consider "Little Bessie" too heavy, too depressing, but
Skaggs instead focuses on the hope in the song.
"I wanted to give some little AIDS kids, leukemia kids,
cancer-patient kids some hope," he said.
It is his way of sharing the ancient tones.
