Here’s an article Murphy wrote long ago for the Winchester Star’s “Slice of Life” column. It was published on April 15, 1991. As the song goes “that has been some time ago!”
Mac And Me
When I heard that Mac Wiseman was going to be playing at the Apple Blossom Bluegrass Festival this year my thoughts drifted back to the first time I met Mac. It was 1973 and I was a student at the University of Georgia. Bluegrass was on a roll then, Mac was in town to do a gig at a little club called The Last Resort, and I got to play bass with him. I thought I was hot stuff. My friends thought I was hot stuff. My parents thought I was on the broad road that leads to destruction.
You see, I was one of the many baby boomers, nurtured in the bosom of folk music, who had crossed over into the welcome arms of bluegrass after seeing the movie “Deliverance” five or six times. I had in short order: traded in my Yamaha 12-string guitar for a six-string, sold my motorcycle to buy a banjo, and dropped out of the pre-med program at the university to work at Stan’s Sandwich Shop and play bass in a bluegrass band. My parents were not amused.
I got the job playing the “dog-house” bass by answering a classified ad in the Athens Banner-Herald. I had never played bass of any kind but that didn’t stop me. The night before the audition, I borrowed an electric bass, got a friend to show me a few chords, stood it upright in a chair, and practiced until I blistered both of my fingers. The job was mine. Blistered fingers were to become a way of life. The University of Georgia was to become a thing of the past.
When I found out that our band was going to be playing with Mac Wiseman, I honestly didn’t know much about him other than he was a Big Name in Bluegrass. I didn’t know Mac had played and recorded with both Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs. I had not grown up listening to Mac play on “Farm and Fun Time” over WCYB in Bristol or the “Old Dominion Barn Dance” in Richmond. I didn’t even know Mac was from Virginia. (I still don’t know where his hometown, Crimora, is.) I knew some of Mac’s songs like “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy” and “Footprints in the Snow,” but others like “’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered” and “Love Letters in the Sand” I had to learn on the spot when Mac played them on stage. I followed him as best I could. Fortunately, Mac is very tolerant and didn’t even flinch at my many mistakes and missed notes.
What I remember best about Mac from that evening was the way he entertained the crowd. He didn’t just get up there and sing, he drew the audience into his show with his smooth emcee work and his jokes. My roommates, who knew nothing about bluegrass, but who were on the front row, walked around for weeks singing “Put My Little Shoes Away”!
I have had the privilege of working with Mac on several occasions since our first meeting. The last time was over five years ago when we did a radio show called “Liberty Flyer” out of Asheville, N.C. Our band, Red and Murphy, taped a show in front of a live audience to be aired later, and then we backed up Mac while he taped his show. I had struggled to make our show smooth, trying to please the crowd that was there, yet knowing I was also playing to an unseen audience. At the end of our thirty minutes, I felt like a dishrag. Wrung out. And then Mac came on.
Completely relaxed, he addressed both the live audience and the radio audience with such consummate skill that I realized that I was in the presence of a master. It was not hard to see why Mac has been popular for so long. He is not only a great singer, he also knows how to entertain a crowd. I can’t wait to see him again here at Apple Blossom.
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