The Bigger Picture
Long Journey Home: The White Brothers and the Birth of Country Rock
by Bob Moses
It didn’t take an enormous leap of imagination for the Byrds to pull Clarence into their exploration of country music, a musical turn that brought the country-rock sound conceived on stages of country dance halls and folk clubs like The Ash Grove to worldwide audiences. Clarence played on sessions for three Byrds records, including 1968’s country-rock landmark Sweetheart of the Rodeo, before becoming a full member with 1969’s Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde. He played on all Byrds records until 1971’s Farther Along, the longest-serving Byrd other than Roger McGuinn. A listen to (Untitled)’s live set demonstrates just how central Clarence was to the Byrds’s sound, with “Nashville West” a blistering homage to the band that was country-rock’s launching pad. “Black Mountain Rag,” which appears on the Essential Clarence White disc and was a staple of the Colonels, continued as a centerpiece of the Byrds’s acoustic breakdowns, as can be heard on a clip of “Black Mountain Rag” from the Byrds’s last show at the Fillmore East in 1971 on Wolfgang’s Vault.
Roland devotes special attention to The Ash Grove, referring to the brothers’ 1959 introduction to Ash Grove’s Ed Pearl as “a big break.” And it was the first place they really heard themselves play: “Ash Grove actually had two microphones and a monitor, and that was the first time we had ever heard ourselves come back through a monitor.” It was at Ash Grove that Clarence played his first guitar breaks, which Pearl recalled as being during “Wildwood Flower” and “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy.” The Ash Grove stage was their classroom, where they learned, taught younger players, and watched masters like The Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, and New Lost City Ramblers. More importantly, Ash Grove exposed the Whites to a folk audience that came to listen rather than dance, and to the folk festival and college circuit that propelled their early career. Roland remembers that Ash Grove was a gathering place. “[Ash Grove] was always open in the afternoon. Sometimes the local players would come by and pick, or somebody would be giving lessons. I’ll tell you how Clarence taught. He would just play for them and they would ask him questions. None of us knew any music theory or why we did certain things. We just played, and we’d been playing since we were little. It started very early on.” Though he didn’t teach at Ash Grove, Roland has been a teacher and mentor to many since, including Marty Stuart. He remains active with his own band.
As they matured from the Country Boys to the Kentucky Colonels, the brothers continued to play The Ash Grove — and Ed Pearl recorded them. Those recordings are now restored and remastered, and Wolfgang’s Vault has posted a set from April 1967, one of several Whites performances in its Ash Grove collection.
The show captures the White Brothers at a crucial juncture. The Colonels had disbanded in mid-1966, Clarence had recently done his first sessions with the Byrds, and Roland was a month from joining Bill Monroe. Roland describes the five-piece that appeared that night (the three Whites plus Dennis Morris on rhythm and Bob Warford on banjo) as a “part-time” band but they pull together a set of Kentucky Colonels favorites. Their take on the fiddle tune “Sally Goodin” illustrates Clarence’s signature crosspicking, their melodic invention, and the intuitive rhythmic interplay with Roland’s equally propulsive mandolin. After Roland kicks it off in high spirits, they send the fiddle chestnut into a completely different orbit (it’s also on the Essential Clarence White disc).
Share
