Good “Banjo Manners” (2)

You folks might remember when I wrote, a couple of weeks ago, about a picking session with a banjo player who had really bad banjo manners. Well, I'm glad to be able to write, this time, about a session with a banjo picker who really had good Banjo Manners! The scene was the same as…

The Ballad of Jed Clampett

I want to answer a question I got about the song “Ballad of Jed Clampett” which Casey taught on our new DVD Easy Songs for Banjo. The inquirer wanted to know if we taught it exactly like it is tabbed out in the Earl Scruggs Book. (Actual title of the book: Earl Scruggs and The…

Sample Clip from “Easy Songs for Banjo”

March Murphy Method Newsletter

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Joe Forrester

I wanted to take a moment today for a tribute to a fine gentleman who is also one of the founding fathers of bluegrass music. I'm speaking of Joe Forrester, of Tennessee, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday in Nashville. Here's a photo from a Nashville party a few years ago, of Joe swatting the…

Backup 2

Someone suggested to me, as I was getting ready to film the new Easy Songs DVD, that we do a video solely on backup. Of course, vamping is the first step in any banjo backup and we do have a video on that. There are some difficulties inherent in teaching more advanced backup. For one…

Backup

In the last couple weeks, with two of my more advanced students, we've been looking at a particular backup lick that Earl uses sometimes. It's found on medium-to-slow tempo songs and is done with two-finger chords on the first and second strings way up the neck. (Here is where tab would come in handy. I…

Recording

Well, as you can guess, "Recording" is 'way too big a subject to be covered in just one day's blog. But I wanted to mention that our friend Wes Thacker, a fine singer-songwriter from Virginia, has just released his new CD, "Vault of My Old Memories". The disc features a lot of good original material…

Misfits Jamming Again!

Just wanted to report that I have another group of Murphy’s Misfits who are meeting every week to jam. We’ve just started, so we have only two jams under our resonators (so to speak) but already I’m seeing great improvement. You know, it took me a long time to figure out what is now as…

Banjo Contests

One of my students is playing in a banjo contest this evening. First prize is $200, so he's really hoping to win. This is not the first contest he's played in, and I think he'll do pretty well. Yesterday at his lesson we worked on his contest numbers: "Big Tilda" and, if he needs a…