Bill Runkle

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Bill Runkle Interview by Tom Mindte, Introduction by Tom Adams

"He'd say, 'Play it like that. Nobody else plays it that way."' Well, if you've heard any recordings from the 1970s by

Bluegrass Hall of Farner Del McCoury-classic hard-driving bluegrass hits such as High On A Mountain, Rain Please Go Away, and I've Endured-you've already been introduced to the banjo playing of Bill Runkle. As a member of McCoury's Dixie Pals, Bill toured and recorded with Del for the better part of a

decade. Only Del's son Robbie Bii/RunkleandDe/McCoury.l975

has held down the banjo player spot for a longer time.

Born in 1939, Bill still lives in the tiny community of Brogue, Pennsylvania, just about a mile from his family's home place. Bill's grandfather played the 5-string banjo-not in the clawharnmer or 3-finger style, but by using a flat pick "the way you'd pick a guitar," Bill says.

Bill's introduction to bluegrass banjo couldn't have come from a better source. Listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio in his dad's '46 Ford, Bill was captivated by the sound of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys featuring a twenty-something Earl Scruggs on the banjo.

Bill credits another (and future) Blue Grass Boy, Bobby Diamond, with showing him a lot when Bill took up the banjo in 1959. In just a short while, he was playing full-time in a group called "The Country Four," working square dances three nights a week. This led to a six-year stint in a band led by Pennsylvania's popular radio personality AI Shade.

As the 1960s came to a close, Bill found himself subbing from time to time with Del McCoury's Dixie Pals. When banjo player John Farmer left the band, Bill began a tenure that lasted nearly eight years. During that period he played banjo on several McCoury albums, including 1973's "High On A Mountain." On subsequent records, Bill sang lead on the duets when Del would move to the high tenor vocal.

Bill describes the band's sound-"Bill Monroe sang to the

PAGElO

fiddle. Del McCoury sang to the banjo. He wanted that driving roll on the banjo when he was singing." Del recorded several of Bill's compositions during that time.

Eventually, Bill and the other members of the Dixie Pals left Del and formed a new group, Square Deal, with Dee Gunter on guitar, playing throughout the mid­Atlantic region and recording the album "Country Boy Rock N Roll" in 1985. Square Deal was followed by Dixie Dukes and eventually, Bill spent several years away from the music.

Back on the 5-string and leading

the band Bill Runkle & Smith Hollow, Bill's 2015 release on Patuxent, "Lonely Tonight," features Bill's banjo work front and center with four original instrumentals including Marching Through Glenville, which is also featured on the 20 14 release "The Patuxent Banjo Project."

At 75 , Bill said, "I don't know what my life would have been without bluegrass music." Well , Bill, just keep on laying the thumb to it! - Tom Adams (adapted from CD liner notes)

Interview conducted June 29, 2016:

APRIL2017I

Tom Mindte: We're at Bill Runkle's house in Brogue. When you were born, Bill?

Bill Runkle: January 7th, 1939. BNL: Was there music in your family? BR: Yes. Very much. Both my grandfathers

played the fiddle. My Grandfather Smith died when I was seven, so I don't remember him playing. But grandfather Runkle, he lived right across the road, on the Gum Tree Road. And we didn't have no TV, so we got together and played music most every night. I was eight when I started to play the guitar. And his other grandson, on the Warner side, he lived

Marching Through Glenville G tuning. By Bill Runkle, tab by Ian Perry. Source: "Lonely Tonight,"

Opening break: G F C G

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VOL.XLIV-6

upstairs, he played some guitar, and both my sisters and my mom played the piano. And we had jam sessions bout every night of the week.

BNL: Does your family have any Appalachian roots? Like Del and some of the others that migrated up to this area.

BR: No. My grandmother Smith was born and raised in Maryland. And my grandmother Runkle came from Wilmington Delaware.

BNL: Was there a lot of country music in this area? BR: Oh yes. Mostly old-timey country music, fiddle; we had a lot of

square dances.lt was a big thing around here. Dover PA, right over here in Faun Grove. When I started, we played over at Shrewsbury on Saturday nights, and on Sundays we played up near York in a bam some guy had fixed up for dances. We played three nights a week. Five bucks a night! That's hard playing. [laughter]

BNL: Yeah. That's about what I got playing in bars. RB: I just turned nineteen when I got married, and in less than a year

I had two kids. And I wasn't making much money working for a Ford dealer down here. 85 cent an hour, it was tough raising two kids, and we didn't have insurance. If I had to pay the doctor, I had to pay everything. It was unreal. So the fifteen dollars I made playing, it helped.

BNL: There were a lot of country music parks back then. BR: Oh yeah, my dad and mom liked country music, and we used to

go to Sunset Park just about every Sunday. I saw everybody, from Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Reno & Smiley, Sons of the Pioneers, Tex Ritter. Everybody. It was fun, and I miss those times. I think I was about four years old when I first heard Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry. My dad had a '46 Ford, and the Opry would fade in and out on our radio in the house, so I'd go out to his car and listen to the radio. Several times I run the battery dead.

BNL: You were listening to Earl, weren't you. BR: I didn't know it at the time, but I was. And man, I just loved

it ever since. It never left me. And so we just started playing. But when I was about eight, it didn't matter it if was Reno and Smiley, Stanley Brothers, Jim and Jesse, Flatt and Scruggs, whoever it was at Sunset Park, I would tell my brother-he's eight years older than me; he had his driver's license-I'd say, "Now I don't know what you're going to do Sunday, but I know one thing you are going to do, and that's take me down to Sunset Park, whether you like it or not." And he would take me.

BNL: You started on guitar. When did you get your banjo? BR: I was about nineteen when I started. There was two banjo

players around here. Bobby Diamond used to go and see Flatt & Scruggs all the time. So he picked up some stuff, and Gerald Flaherty, when he was a young boy, he used to be on television every Saturday morning. And he was a pretty good banjo player too. But then I found about Del [McCoury]. And Del was playing banjo then for Keith Daniels. The first time I met Del, I was working at the Ford place, and he was driving a dump truck. And Del stopped in and got gas. So that must have been 1957? Anyway, it was a good time around here. Everybody liked country music. Actually, when I started playing guitar, we played rock and roll. And early rock and roll was pretty big around here as well. That's what I started playing.

BNL: It was pretty close to country in those days. What bands were

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you in in your younger years? BR: The first job I played was with Dean

Burke-he's passed away now. I was just beginning to play the banjo, and he called, asked if I wanted to play a job. I said, Dean, I ain't good enough to play in a band. And he said, Oh you're good enough; I've heard you. Come on up. So I went, and that was my first job. And it was up on the roof of that Tropical Treat. And I kept playing-this was when I was about 20-and then this guy who had a pretty good band called Porky and the Travelers, and who was a heck of a country singer. He started these square dances over in York, and wanted to know if Dick Laird could get a band. And Dick's brother in law, Jerry Lince, played fiddle. So me and Dick got together with Jerry, and Richard Laird, Dick's daddy, and Charlie Shaw. We called ourselves the Country Four. That's how we started. And one guy called from Columbia and wanted us to come and do a radio show, on Redline, WGCB, but they didn't want to pay us anything. But I was on the radio for 25 years, we played on the radio every Saturday.

BNL: Did you just do live stuff, or spin records up there too?

BR: We did live stuff, and after I took over and started being a DJ, I'd have live bands-Del, and other bands­they'd come and play. And they'd bring in records for me to play. And I did everything to help. And I did that show for 25 years, and I never got one cent for that. Just did it to help promote bands and bluegrass. Course it would help get jobs, that's what the whole thing was about. And it was fun, but it was hard work. Because I was running my service station over here, seven days a week, from 6 in the morning to nine at night. So I didn't have much free time. They wanted me to soed the whole afternoon up there, but I said I couldn't.

BNL: And it probably takes as long to plan a radio show as it does to do it.

BR: Yeah, and then when I started playing for Del, then we were gone just about every weekend. And so I had to record the show sometime during that week. On reel to reel tape. But then I would make a couple of copies that they would just keep there, in case I couldn't make it, and then they'd just play one of those tapes.

APRIL20171

BNL: So you were with the Country Four. Did you play with anybody else before you went with Del?

BR: Yeah. I played with AI Shade; he had a country band, steel guitar and stuff. He came over and wanted a banjo player, and I said, Well, you talk to my wife. If she says I can play, I can play. So I went in the other room, and that's how we did it. So then he asked me to do a 45 record, so I did. So at about this point AI said he wanted to go bluegrass, and so Jerry Lince, from the Country Four, he came with us. And Charlie Stump on bass. And AI, and his wife Jean. I think I recorded three albums with him. And then I went with Del, for almost eight years ...

BNL: What year did you start with Del? BR: 1970. But I had played some shows

with him before that. Filling in for Donnie Eldreth, who played banjo with him at that time. Then John Farmer came and played for Del for about a year. But Donnie worked at Chrysler, and he had a hard time getting off during the week. We used to go over to Lancaster, they had live bluegrass shows on channel 8, WGAL; the old sheriff, he had a show that I did several with Del. But then one day Del called and said I need a banjo player. I couldn't quite believe it, and so I said, just for one day? And he said, no, I need a full time banjo player. I said, You got one!

BNL: Awesome. BR: At that time I was separated .. . BNL: So you didn't have to ask .. . BR:No. BNL: Let's backtrack. You said Bobby

Diamond and someone else was around here. Did they show you stuff on the banjo?

BR: Oh yeah. Bobby helped me as much as anybody. Because even after I ended up playing with Del, I'd get together with Bobby. He had a carnival, and didn't work over the winter, and he'd come down here three nights a week, and we'd play. And argue, and say you're not getting this righ~ ... And he was just a fun guy, you know. He played for Bill Monroe for a little while.

BNL: And Red Allen. BR: And Del too; he was part of the original

band, and Bobby actually named the band The Dixie Pals. They played all the little bars around Baltimore. Which I did too.

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VOL. XLIV --6

But at one point Bobby switched over to fiddle. And we used to have this old man on Gum Tree Road who said he knew a 1000 fiddle tunes, and I believe he did. Bubby Caswell. And Bobby was going back there to learn this stuff off of him. And Bubby was a good fiddler, but like a lot of fiddlers, he was a little stubborn. But he'd show you stuff. I wish I'd been more into the fiddle, now that I think of it. But I was just crazy about the banjo.

BNL: There's a biography of you on the website AllMusic.com, that says, in Eugene Chadbourne's opinion, the Dixie Pals were just playing on weekends, for fun. What do you have to say about that?

BR: Well, it was fun. Ain't no question about that. But it wasn't just for fun. I mean, that's the only reason Del stuck with it. We weren't making any money, that was the problem. I couldn't leave my job. It's just like Jimmy Martin, he was hounding me for twenty years. Wanted me to sell my service station and move to Nashville, buy a station down there, and play for him. But I couldn't do that. But it was fun, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't take a million dollars for the fun we had playing. But for the money we made, you might as well call it just for fun.

BNL: But you guys really worked on your music.

BR: Oh yeah! BNL: How many albums did you cut with

Del? BR: I think it was four. "High on the

Mountain," "Our Kind of Grass" on Rebel. Then we did one on Revonah.

BNL: Well, give me some stories about picking with Del.

BR: Del never said, "Boy, you're not doing that right." And some of the stuff I still play now is stuff that he told me to play. He's say, "Now play it like that every time, what you just played, cause nobody else does that. Play that."

BNL: Would he get his banjo out? BR: Oh yeah. He'd play my banjo. He did

that a lot. And plus, practically the whole time we were driving on the bus, some of us were playing. Practicing. We never really had that much time to practice. Except going from job to job. Cause we were playing two or three nights a week, and sometimes we'd have to drive a ways.

BNL: What's the farthest you went?

I 'BB..Qjo Ne-vvsLet:;t,er PAGE 131

BR: We went to Kilgore, Texas a couple of times. Oklahoma. Canada, and up into Maine. Boston. That's a tough trip up to Boston. I minded that trip-all that traffic, you know. I don't know how many times we came down through New York, and got in the wrong lane, and wound up down at the baseball stadium. Oh my. One time we had a booker over there, and took us through Chinatown. Well, that was a mistake. I think Del was driving, Jerry was out the right side, I was out the left, and we had about three inches clearance

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PAGE14

on either side. Del said, "Don't you ever take us through there again ... "

BNL: Did you ever play twin banjos with Del? Onstage?

BR: Yeah. We used to do it. .. We had a thing we'd do once in a while, since Donnie and I and Del all played banjo, we'd switch it around. Everybody'd switch instruments. And we did Foggy Mt. Breakdown that night-! started it in G, then Del played it, Donnie played it, Gene played it on the fiddle, then Bill Poffinberger on the mandolin, then Donnie played the fiddle, switch it around like that. Then when we all got around, I put the capo on for A, and played it just as fast as I could. And I mean to say, the people went wild. I couldn't hear nothing. Just screaming and hollaring. And Ken Alexander had a tape of that, and he said he'd give me a copy, but I never managed to get it, and I wished I woulda, cause now Ken's passed away. And Grandpa Jones was coming on after us, as we were coming off the stage, and he said, "Now you fellars sure do make it hard on an old man like me, to follow something like that!" [laughter] But we did have fun. No fighting, no arguing, never. Always got along. Poffinberger, he was like me, always right there, on time. Now if you wanted Donny to leave at three o'clock, you better tell him to leave at two. It would be three before he got there. But that was all right...

BNL: Did you ever think back then that Del would make it to the top of the heap? In bluegrass?

BR: I always knew he had the talent. I wasn't sure he had the ambition. You know? And I don't know this for a fact, but I think Ronnie helped make Del as famous as he became. Cause Del, like I said, just a laid-back person. But man, Del could sing. And I still think, and I might be prejudiced, but people tell me the same thing: on that CD lying right there, "High on the Mountain," that was remastered with White House Blues, and I've Endured, and a couple others. Man, the singing! He was probably 32 years old at that point. But he had the natural talent. He just had it. He could hear a brand new song, you could play it through one time, and he'd have it the next time. The rhythm and the chords, it didn't take him but moments to learn.

But I learned a lot. J.D. Crowe showed me stuff, Bill Emerson showed me stuff. Porter Church was one of the greatest banjo players I ever heard. He was as steady as a rock. He played with Bobby Diamond and Red Allen and them, and Bobby really liked Porter. I sold him the first Gibson Mastertone I had. A gold-plated Granada, one of those ball bearings. I took the ball bearings out, and put a flathead tone ring in it. He was playing for Red Allen. And I forgot who bought Porter's banjo-one of the New York banjo players. And about a year ago, I was talking to Jim Mills, and I said that's the one banjo I'd like to know what ever happened to it. He said he knew where it's at: out in California. I had to borrow money and make payments on that banjo-for six months, $350 a month. But its funny, what you go through.

I bought a lot of instruments in my time. Sold em. Just to make a little money on the side, you know. Same way I did with cars; that's how I got in the car business. Fixing up cars and selling them, that's how I made my living.

BNL: Back in the '70s there was a lot of newer bluegrass coming up, people playing a more modem style, and seems like Del always stuck with the traditional style. How did that affect the draw? The audience. Did audiences like the traditional better, or were they starting to like the newer stuff?

BR: Well I think the old traditionalists­and still today-like the old bluegrass. It's just like me; I appreciate-just like the New Grass Revival come out with Great Balls of Fire and stuff like that­and I knew from coming up in rock and roll, and I loved that! And a lot of people didn't like Jim and Jesse doing rock and roll songs, but I thought that was really neat. Something different, you know. But I think it grew from the young people liking that kind of bluegrass. I don't think it was the old timers that did. Like with the Osborne Brothers, when they tried to go electric a couple of times at bluegrass festivals, that did not go over. They booed them off the stage. But I loved the stuff they did. Wonderful. And that stuff was hard to do, what they were doing.

BNL: What did you think of Bill Keith's style?

BR: Oh, I liked it. And I can't play it. I can

APRIL20171

play some of it, but I'm still a Scruggs man. But, it was different. I knew Bill. Last time I saw him was over here-a friend of mine had a bar across the river, in Pickaway. And he was doing a banjo workshop, and charged $50 to get in. So I went, and I went up and talked to him for just a minute; I didn't sit in on it. But they said he was trying to show people chromatic style banjo. But you can't just show that to people; they have to learn that. That's got to be taught, you know. And they didn't think they got their money's worth-the beginners. It was way over their heads! Some of that stuff's over my head. I know the basics; how it's supposed to be done, but I can't do it perfectly in time, like Bill did. But Bobby Thompson was actually the first guy that did that. When he played with Jim and Jesse on those early records.

BNL: I think Don Stover did some too. BR: Oh I loved Don. He was one of the

sweetest guys I ever met. And he could play clawharnmer. I remember one time in North Carolina, just him and Del was playing. I bet it started about four o'clock in the afternoon, and it went on past dark. And I was sitting there, and after the sun went down I was freezing, and I stayed until the last note. One playing guitar, the other banjo. And Don would play clawharnmer, and they'd be singing. I wish I had a tape of that. And I do have quite a few tapes, from Marysville and places like that, from a little cassette player I'd set it in front of the speakers. But I don't have any good quality.

BNL: When you did Someone Took My Place With You, it sounded like you had a bit of a Reno thing going on. Did you know Don?

BR: Oh yeah. We were down in Reidsville, North Carolina. Don and Bill Harrell got on the bus one night. And we were drinking a little, and Reno started playing guitar, and I started playing Charlotte Breakdown. And I played it as hard as I could. [laughter] And he said, Play it again! I think I played it ten times for him. Sitting right in front of me, across the bus. And this last weekend, this guy from Ocean City has one of Don Reno's banjos. And he told me a story that I don't know if it's true or not. I said how did you get that banjo, and is that it? Is it original? And

~cruggs

· · Bill.

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VOL. XLIV --6

he said, well, it has original parts. And it's a good sounding banjo. And I said, how come Reno had it? And he said that the story he heard was, when he was going to do Feuding Banjos with that 4-string

In this installment of adapting blues and boogie woogie piano to banjo, we'll look at the use of pedal tones. This is

when a note is sustained or repeated against movement in the rest of the musical phrase or chord progression. For the sake of these examples, we'll mostly be "pedaling" the root note of the chords, as that gives it a very full and grounded sound, but other chord tones could certainly be used as well. We'll check out some examples in the key of Eb; note that these positions can be moved anywhere on the neck to play

player Arthur Smith, his banjo was broke or something, and so he stuck this banjo together quick, to do that. I just heard that two weeks ago. And I know Earl Scruggs

continued on page 30

Pedal Tones

Andrew Green I-IV-V progressions in any key.

Ex. 1 shows a common boogie pattern in which the root is pedaled on the bottom of the chord (the fourth string) while the III and V degrees move to outline an Ab and Eb7 chord on the 2nd and 3rd strings -think of the riff for the "Sesame Street" theme song. You'll get a nice single string workout on your thumb and index as you pedal that low root, and make sure to swing those eighth notes.

The next two examples place the root pedal tone on top of the chord. In Ex. 2,

Bluesy Pedal Tone Exercises the I and V degrees of the chord stay constant on the first two strings

Example I Ex.2

PAGElS I while the III darts up and down on the third string. Ex. 3 starts with an arpeggiated Eb major triad, and the III and V degrees descend while that high root stays constant. Note the jump to the 3rd and 4th strings for the Ab( 6) chord- this phrase could be played descending all the way down on the 2nd and 3rd strings but it can get to be a big reach depending on where you are on the neck. These are reminiscent of the iconic "Basie Ending" (Ex. 4) which was popularized and employed by bandleader Count Basie-in this case both the I and VI degrees are pedaled (Eb and C, respectively) while the movement on the third string outlines a IV - I(dim) - I(6) progression.

Finally, Ex. 5 shows the intro lick to Qualified by Dr. John, which is really just an extension of Ex. 3. It uses that same descending motion (though in this case it starts on an Eb7 chord) with the root note on top, but instead of pedaling that note on the 1st string, we'll play it on the 5th string to free up our right hand to play some bluesy triplets. The main riff for the verse (starting in measure 10) was based on James Booker's version of Pinetop Smith's Pinetop Boogie. It's~ great syncopated line making use of bluesy double stops, first played in a lower register on the 2nd and 4th strings, then up an octave based around

the 1st and 3rd strings.

Eb (Ab) (Eb7) (Ab)

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Eb Ebdim Ab6 Eb (Ab) Ebo Eb6

Ex.3 I tl u IT u I tJ & tJ & ~ Ex.4 ~ G tuning. Arr. by Andrew Green. n= [)

Andrew plays in Roosevelt Dime (www.roosevelt­dimemusic.com): Americana Rhythm & Blues.

" ... adapting the swagger and swing of New Orleans piano to the 5-string"

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Qualified

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• CLASSIFIEDS • ~LP~:A~G~E~3~o ~~~~~l]n~BIU~·~o~N~e~:'VVS~!L~e~:t,-t,~e~r~ +00353 91 796931. Web: wwwbanjo.ie E-mail: tomcus- a bright tone and glides easily off the string. The pick

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used to do that; he'd put banjos together and take them round and sell them. 5-string necks on 4-strings.

But Don Reno. If Red's guitar was out of tune on stage, Don would walk over, he'd know what string it was and tum up that string. I seen him do it many times! f,.h, he was a funny guy. We used to go to his house. I loved Don; some of the stuff he did on the banjo ... I'd always go see him when he came through.

BNL: After you left Del, what did you do? BR: I didn't do too much for a while. And

then maybe six months later Bob Paisley called me. Wondered if I'd play for him. I said yeah. So I went with Bob for about a year. At about that time Bob had got a new hip, and it got infected or something, so he had to go in the hospital. And so it was actually Danny Paisley and me, and Donnie Eldreth playing mandolin. Billy on bass. And Jerry Lundy playing fiddle.

BNL: Did you record with them? BR: No; wish I would've. Then I kind of

quit for about two years. In the meantime I was filling in once in a while for Walter Hensley, with Dee Gunter and them. Then he and Gunter split up, and Gunter called me about getting a band together. But before that, we had got the Square Deal band, with the players that played for Del. And as far as I'm concerned, that was one of the best bands I ever played with. It was really good, and we had fun. We recorded that one record, "Country Boy Rock N Roll" in 1985, and I don't think anybody ever recorded that song better than that. And then Gunter, he quit, and then we got Leroy Cole to play, and then Harold Tippman, and we had a bunch of jobs booked up. And then I kinda just quit playing. And Gunter came around again, and wanted to start it up again. [laughter] And I said, Well, I don't know ... you done the same thing to me again. Cut one CD, then quit. But we practiced every Thursday night; I'd drive down to just

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VOL. XLIV-{)

this side of Newark, Delaware. Close to where Donnie lived. And we were just really starting to cut it. And Gunter quit again. And I just about ended it then, because I had to fill these jobs in. I could have canceled them, but I didn't want to. I wanted to play . And so we just have played a year or two after that. I had all these J -. Leroy, Tippton-both on guitar.

BNL: \\ en was all this? After Del went to Nashville?

BR: Yeah. In the 90s.Butljustcouldn'tfind a guitar player around here that played the kind of . Lhm that I was used to playing.

BNL: Thaf hard to find . Is there anything you say about your playing technique t banjo players would understand- and I might not?

BR: Well. a of banjo players, in my opinion.~ · pu too much stuff in. Like I said be o ~.I ould hit something, play it a little ·r dlfferently from anybody else. And Del ays liked that. He liked somebod~ . ing a little bit different. But basica..:· play what Jimmy martin called the 5-3- roll. Jimmy told me that. That's wha= · ~ his banjo players do: fifth string. · -:ring, one: the forward roll . And thai ·- ically where I would start any bod~, ; f • ey wanted to play like me. But the . to learn them turn­

arounds and them. If you re ~ want to learn to play banjo , it 's nor - as you think it is.lt's hard, but no as hard as I thought when I started. Because I didn't know any of that stuff. And I didn · w a lot of it when I was playing \\i Del. And Jimmy Martin actually showed me a couple things on banjo. Like the · -off on Rain Go Away, Jimmy showed me that. He could show me with two fingers what he wanted. Sitting right there in that chair. He came in here one night \\ith Hugh King , and Hugh said, Jimmy. can you still sing as loud as you used to? He said. \Vhere's your guitar, Runkle? I went and got it, and he started singing Blue Moon of Kentucky. And the veins were sticking out of his neck. I said Yeah, I guess you can. So then he wanted me to play one of his songs , kick it off. Well , if you didn't kick it off exactly like he wanted, he wouldn't sing it. And I bet I kicked it off six or eight times before I got it right. He wanted you to play it just like

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J .D. Crowe, and I don't believe in that. I believe do your own thing. Do it right. Put your notes in time. Time, rhythm , and tone is all Earl Scruggs ever played. You know, I gotta hunt on the banjo where to get the tone-some of them are back toward the bridge, and some are farther away ...

BNL: You change it up some, don't you? BR: Yeah. You change that up. And you

have to do that on a banjo to get the right tone. Depends on whether you're gonna put a run in, or back-up, or whatever. And that's what Scruggs did. And I've got those DVDs, and I still watch Scruggs. I just told Larry, By god I just learned something that Earl did that I never noticed that he did. . . Down the Road. He puts two thumbs in there. And its like in Foggy Mt. Breakdown; Del showed me that. There's two thumbs in a row there as well. Donnie and I were both sitting there watching Del do this, and Dannie said, No wait a minute! Stop right now. What are you doing there? And Del said, Well I'm just playing ... And Donnie said But you're doing something different! And that's what it was . And you can hear Scruggs do that: two thumbs in a row. But in perfect time. And in Down the Road, if you do that, your roll comes out right. And it feels good; feels like its supposed to be that way. And it was just little stuff like that that Earl would do. And it was normal to him, but he had that perfect timing. He was just the best. I know there are a lot of good banjo players , and I like to hear them too.

BNL: How about Walt Hensley? BR: Oh, yeah. I picked up some things from

him. I'd walk in to the Cub Hill down there , and he'd say Runkle , come up here and play a couple . I got up there, and he might never come back! I'd get to play all night! But one night Jim McCall was playing there, and to me, Jim was the nearest thing to Lester Flatt that ever walked the stage. And boy, I really enjoyed that night. Cause I played all night long.

BNL: You played, and Walt got paid. BR: And Gunter would do the same thing. If a guitar played walked in , Gunter would disappear- I don't know what they did ... But Walter, he was a good guy. Last time I saw Walter it was a couple of years before he died. And he had that finger he just couldn't straighten out.

BNL: Yeah but that happened a long time

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ago. He played that way for years . BR: Years! But he could play. And he had

his own style . He basically played Scruggs style , but he did unusual stuff, like Lady of Spain, World's Waiting for a Sunrise, air that kind of stuff. But he was a barroom man. They had him booked all over the country, when he did that r~cord for Columbia. And he said I'm going home to Baltimore, I'm not going to tour.

But they were playing bluegrass down in Baltimore.

BNL: So you got your current band now. BR: Still at it. Practice every week. That's

the only way you can stay good. But a lot of these younger musicians don't want to practice. I .,don't know why. They just want to show up, and play. You can' t do that. Specially if you' re gonna sing three­part harmony or something. You have to practice saying your words together. That's one thing we did with Del, we practiced that. Some of those songs, I don't know if it was ever released-the song Detour. Donnie said it was on a Bear Family collection. But we had to switch parts on that. I'd go to lead, and he'd go to tenor, and Del on the last part of the chorus , he 'd go to high baritone, and I'd go to tenor. And Donnie'd come up on the lead. And that's the kind of stuff you gotta workout.

continued online at banjonews.com

Gentlemen. To my knowledge, there has been no further information about him. According to a discussion on the internet, he quit playing long ago . Still I would very much like an interview if that would be possible. After all, I consider him a really good picker and it seems to me he deserves some credit. (Apart from Irish Spring, James Bailey plays on the last 12 cuts on

continued online at banjonews.com