by Ricky Skaggs
Later that night, a friend of Linda’s walked in. “Hey, Emmylou,” everyone called out. I’d never met her. She was a long-haired, long-legged woman. She was so lanky, as skinny as a rail. She hunched over her guitar with her hair hanging down. She closed her eyes, and she was singing, “One day a mother went to a prison.” I recognized the Louvin Brothers’ “The Sweetest Gift,” a song about a woman visiting her son in prison. Linda started singing on the chorus, and all of heaven started listening in. My God, it was one of those moments you never forget.
It was like everything stopped and time stood still. The room became deathly still, and Emmy’s voice hung in the air. John Starling was playing guitar, and I was backing ’em up on mandolin, as quiet as I could. I was thinking, Man, I don’t even want to play a solo. I don’t want to touch this moment. It’s just too sweet and too pure. So I just tried to play behind these beautiful voices and stay out of the way.
I just remember how stunned I was at hearing this beautiful voice from someone I didn’t know and had never even heard of. This beautiful stranger. This was my first introduction to Emmylou Harris. I found out she’d been a singer with Gram Parsons and his country-rock group the Fallen Angels. Gram had died of a drug overdose, and now she was starting a solo career. We became buddies. A few months later, Emmylou offered me a job playing fiddle with her Hot Band. It was a great offer, and I was tempted, but I had to turn her down. Emmy already had Rodney Crowell singing harmony with her, and I knew if I wasn’t singing, I wouldn’t be happy.
I’d made an inner vow that I wasn’t gonna ever work again in a band where I couldn’t sing. I didn’t want to let my chops go to waste. I wanted to sing! The Gents were doing fine popularity-wise, and we were playing adventurous music. But the festival circuit was wearing me down again, and my role wasn’t developing the way I wanted. I needed room to stretch out, and not just on the bus between shows.
So when J.D. Crowe called and said he had an opening in his group, the New South, for a mandolin player and harmony singer, I was already chomping at the bit. The New South was based in Lexington, Kentucky, and had earned a reputation as one of the most exciting bluegrass bands in the country. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I was back to my first love, the mandolin, and I could sing my heart out, too. I was ready to go in another direction. It was that long hunter thing again, I guess. Back to ol’ Kentucky, go out and explore with some young guns, try something new.
Chapter 12
NEW SOUTH
In 1975 Rounder established itself as a label with outstanding contemporary bluegrass when it released “J.D. Crowe and the New South,” one of the most influential bluegrass albums of the decade. . . . In Crowe’s band Skaggs began building his reputation as a spectacular singer and entertainer as well as an instrumentalist.
—Bluegrass: A History, by Neil V. Rosenberg
I knew when I came to Lexington to work for J.D. Crowe that I was gonna have to get me a major-league mandolin. Every man in that band had him a big gun. Tony Rice had the big ol’ D-28 Martin guitar that the late, great Clarence White once owned. J.D. had a Gibson Mastertone RB-75 banjo that could knock down trees. I had to have a good, loud mandolin that would measure up. It had to be, as the young kids say, legit.
I had a great job. Now I needed a great instrument. I’d been dreaming about a certain mandolin, one that I’d fallen in love with a few years back. All I had to do now was find it. It wasn’t gonna be easy, but I was determined to track it down and hopefully make it mine.
When I was on the road with Ralph, we played a lot in the Detroit area around Port Huron. One day this local guy came to see us before the show. He was an old friend of Ralph’s from the early years with Carter. He played a little bluegrass himself, just fooling around, and he brought in his old Gibson mandolin. He noticed I was eyeballing it, and he said, “Son, you want to play a good mandolin?” I told him I sure would, and he handed it over to me.
It was a 1924 F-5 Lloyd Loar. There was no finish on it, except on the headstock. The rest of the body was all sanded down or stripped off. And the neck had been cut down so much you could see the truss rod, so thin it was almost like a fiddle neck. You may be thinking, that’s a beat-up old mandolin, ain’t it? Well, for me it was love at first sight. I loved the way it felt, I loved the way it played. I loved the way it sounded. It was major-league. Legit!
The mandolin I had at the time was a little round-hole model, an A-5 Florentine mandolin. It didn’t have any bark. Like I told you a while back, Keith gave it the nickname the Red Bomb as a joke, and it was a bomb all right. I didn’t like it, but it was all I could afford at the time.
I wanted a mandolin as loud and ornery as the F-5s that Bill Monroe and Pee Wee Lambert had. Every time we’d go to Detroit, I’d get to spend a few precious hours with this guy’s F-5 Loar on stage, and it always sounded killer. It fit me so well, too, ’cause I was playing twin fiddle then with Curly Ray Cline on some songs, and when I’d get back on mandolin, my fingering wasn’t off, ’cause that Loar’s neck was nearly as small around as a fiddle’s. And that made it easy to switch back and forth on the instruments all night long.
After every show, the guy would take that mandolin back home with him. Ralph knew how bad I wanted it, and he tried to convince his ol’ buddy to make a deal. Ralph even said he was willing to come up with the money to help me get it. It was always the same answer. “I don’t want to sell it,” he’d say. “I’m gonna just hang onto it.”
There was no convincing him, but I wanted a way I could contact the guy if he ever changed his mind, so I finally got his business card, wrote “1924 Lloyd Loar” next to his name, and stuck the card in my wallet. Always hoping one day he’d change his mind.
Like I said, I used to dream about the mandolin, and I wasn’t kidding you. It may sound crazy, but I’d have dreams where I’d see myself playing this Loar. Recently, I saw an old black-and-white photo somebody posted on the Internet: It’s Keith and Jack Cooke and me on stage with Ralph in Port Huron, and there I am, picking a tune on that guy’s Loar and looking happy as a pig in mud.
After I got to Lexington to start with J.D., I knew the Red Bomb wasn’t up to the job, so I borrowed a mandolin to have a decent instrument until I found my own. One day not long after Brenda and I had moved into our new place, I was going through some boxes and found my old wallet from the Ralph days. I rifled through it and bingo! I found this guy’s card. It was wrinkled and worn out, and his name and phone number were barely legible next to my hand-scrawled note. Straightaway I got on the phone and called the number on the card. A gruff voice answered, and lo and behold, it was him. My heart was racing and I was rattled, but I tried to keep my voice steady and calm. “Hey, this is Ricky Skaggs,” I said. “Do you remember me? I used to play with Ralph a few years ago.”
“Yeah, I remember you.”
“Well, I just moved to Kentucky, and I’ve taken a job with J.D. Crowe.”
“I love ol’ J.D!” the guy said. “How in the hell’s he doing?”
J.D. was probably the only bluegrass musician more popular in the Detroit area than Ralph Stanley. He’d broken onto the scene with Jimmy Martin’s band as a redheaded teenager with a hot banjo in the 1950s.
“J.D.’s doing real good,” I said. “But the reason I’m calling is I need a mandolin real bad. I’m just wondering if you’d be willing to sell that ol’ Loar. I sure would like to have it.”
I knew he could probably hear how desperate I sounded over the phone, and that ain’t exactly the best way to try to negotiate. But I didn’t care. I was desperate, and he was the only man who could help me. I guess I caught him in a moment of weakness. Maybe he was hard up for cash, ’cause this time he seemed willing to make a deal.
“Well, I might,” he said. “What can you offer me for it?”
That threw me off a little. I was expecting him to make an offer. “I don’t even know what it’s worth” I said. “All the finish is worn off, the neck’s been cut down, and
I’d have to pay extra just to get it up and going. But if you know a price—”
“I won’t take nothing less than twenty-two hundred and fifty dollars for it.”
“That’s a lot of money for me,” I said. “I’m making five hundred dollars a week. Let me see if I can get some cash together.”
Well, this was the only Lloyd Loar mandolin I knew about that was up for sale. There just weren’t a lot of old classic Loars floating around then that people were willing to part with. Monroe had made ’em the most prized mandolins in creation. And when people got ahold of one, they wanted to keep ’em forever, just like this guy. Up till now.
One thing was for sure. I could tell this guy wasn’t going to budge on the price. Usually I’d have tried to haggle, which is how you make a deal when you’re from eastern Kentucky. Not this time. Not with this guy. I wasn’t sure why $2,250 was the magic number for him, and I didn’t really care. My money supply was low, but my hopes were high. Seemed like the offer was serious, so I called John Paganoni, a friend in northern Virginia I knew from my time in the Washington bluegrass scene. He had one of those real top-secret, can’t-tell-nobody kinds of jobs working for the federal government. But besides his day job, John was one of the finest luthiers around, and he specialized in mandolins. If anybody could help, it was John.
I explained all about this beautiful old Loar and the work it needed. It called for his touch. The idea was to spiff it up a little and highlight its fine pedigree, not give it a full makeover. A thin coat of finish was all I needed. He said he’d do it for $250, which was a bargain.
So now the total price was up to $2,500, and I didn’t have a dime to spare. I went to my friend Hugh Sturgill, who was close with J.D. at the time, and I told him how bad I needed this Loar. I asked him if he could help me get a loan. Hugh said he’d do his best.
We went to the bank, and it didn’t start out too good. I told the bank manager what I needed the money for, and he just about laughed in my face. “You’re going to pay $2,500 for a mandolin? What’s it made of—gold?”
“No, sir,” I said. “It’s wood and steel. And it feels great in my hands and it sounds great, too. I’ve got a new job in a great bluegrass band and I gotta have a great instrument and this old mandolin is what I need.”
And I told him the story of Lloyd Loar and his legendary mandolins, and how Bill Monroe had changed the course of American music with his famous F-5 Loar. None of it meant a thing to him. He looked me up and down, shook his head, and sort of grumbled, “I don’t know how we’re gonna sell an old mandolin if you can’t make payments on this loan and we have to repossess it.” He talked as if I was just wasting his time.
Well, this banker’s harsh words and bad manners were offensive to me. To his way of thinking, I was just another no-account musician. In his world, musicians didn’t have a good reputation for repaying loans, and there were plenty of pawnshops full of hocked instruments to prove his point. Good thing I had Hugh along. At that point, when it seemed like all bets were off, he told the banker, “Look, I’m gonna co-sign for Ricky, and it’ll all work out just fine.” Now, Hugh built houses for a living, and he was well respected in the community. He had a friend who was high up at the bank and was a bluegrass fan, so he called the friend over and explained everything. And the bluegrass banker said to the non-believing banker, “Let’s take a chance on this guy. I think he’s good for it, and Hugh says he’ll co-sign. Let’s make the loan.”
So that bank finally lent me the $2,500, and I needed every daggone penny. In 1974 that was a lot of money to borrow. Especially for a mandolin. I phoned the guy in Detroit and told him I had the check for him. We set up a meeting to make the deal, and I wanted to get up north fast before he had a chance to change his mind. I hopped on a Delta flight out of Lexington, and I flew to Detroit. I had already booked a return flight within an hour straight back home to Kentucky. It was gonna be just get it and get out.
This was back in the days when you could meet somebody off the street right there at the gate—you didn’t have to go through security like nowadays—and that’s what happened. I came through the arrival gate, and there the guy was, waiting for me, right on time, and he had the mandolin case tucked under his arm. His grown-up daughter was there with him, too, but I didn’t pay much attention to her. I was too fixated on what was in that case.
I didn’t remember the case being so banged-up. It looked like a truck had run over it. The black covering was stripped away. It was just a raw wood case all scuffed up, with two little latches, one of which was busted. The handle was gone, and there was a piece of leather wrapped around the hinges so you could carry it.
I sat down and started playing. Oh, God, yes. This full, rich tone came pouring out. It sounded even better than I remembered.
I set the precious Loar down. I smiled friendly-like and said in the style of a satisfied customer, “I’ll take it—here you go!” I tried to hand the guy the check, but he wouldn’t accept it. “I don’t know,” he said, sort of scratching his head, wheels turning. “Buddy, I’ve about decided I don’t want to sell it. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pay the expenses for your trip back if we can just forget the whole deal.”
Thinking back on it now, I probably shouldn’t have played the mandolin at all. I think the sound of the Loar made the guy start having second thoughts.
“No, sir,” I said. “I’ve gone through a real hard time to get a loan so I could buy this mandolin. We had a deal. You said you’d sell it. To me.”
Just then, his daughter piped up. She hadn’t said a word the whole time, but she couldn’t hold her tongue anymore. “Daddy, you know what you promised Mama!” she said. “You told her that when you sold that ol’ mandolin, you’d buy her a brand-new washer and dryer.”
He gave her a look. “Yeah, I remember.” He knew he’d been outvoted. He knew he’d lost the Loar, and there was no turning back. “You know,” he told me. “This is the finest mandolin I ever played.”
“Yeah, it’s a good one,” I said, all the while closing it up in the case, tightening that leather strap real good, putting it under my arm, and just hugging it. The mandolin was mine. My dreams had come true.
There was nothing else to say. He took the check, and they walked away. Sure was glad I had a short layover back to Lexington. Soon as we got finished, the gate agent called the passengers for our flight, and not a bit too soon for me. When I got on the plane and put my mandolin in the overhead and took my seat, I looked out the window, and there he was down by the gate, watching me leave with his Loar. I even felt sorry for the guy.
It took a good long while for this Loar deal to go down. For the first few months I was in Lexington, I was playing a mandolin I had borrowed from Larry Rice, who’d just left the band. J.D. and the New South had a big following in Lexington. For years they were the house band at the Holiday Inn North, which was a little ways up Newtown Pike at the intersection of I-64 and I-75. J.D. was one of the first to take his bluegrass uptown for the college crowd, and he made that Holiday Inn gig so popular they gave it the nickname the Crowe’s Nest.
The hotel had a bar called the Red Slipper Lounge, and we played there five nights a week, four shows a night. Décor-wise, the Red Slipper was a fancy place for bluegrass, especially considering the era we’re talking about. It had chandeliers and mirrors and thick shag carpet and real waiters, the works. But true to the music, it was rowdy and noisy as could be. It wasn’t really a place to get food unless you consider booze and bluegrass to be food groups, and I reckon a lot of the regulars did. They loved to drink and holler and they loved their bluegrass and they let you know it.
The Red Slipper was loud and smoky, and when I say smoky, I mean every fiber of your clothes would be saturated with stale cigarette smoke, right down to your socks. I’d come home at night after four hours of playing and try to pull my shirt off, and I got to where I’d flinch, I’d just about upchuck my dinner, by the time the shirt got around my nose. The crowd was
a mix of locals from Lexington, townies and college kids both, and people who drove in from miles away. There were students from the University of Kentucky; some of the Wildcat basketball players were bluegrass fans, and they’d come by after practice and catch the late show. We were packing the place most every night. I was twenty-one years old playing music I loved for a living, and I was having a ball. A new band, a new crowd, a new town: Everything was new and fresh, ’cept for my clothes at the end of the night.
The thing I liked most about working for J.D. and the New South was not only their musicianship, but their approach. They were doing traditional and progressive bluegrass, and they were doing ’em both justice. They weren’t afraid to try all kinds of music. Didn’t matter what style, as long as it felt right. They were taking songs by Gordon Lightfoot and Fats Domino and Guy Clark and Bob Dylan and turning ’em into bluegrass. Nothing was watered down or compromised. Tony was good at finding folk-type material that could be adapted to our style. The New South was all about exploring new territory, and that was just my speed.
J.D. was the oldest member of the band by close to twenty years, and he was the leader and headman, but he gave his musicians a lot of leeway. It was a democratic setup, really, where every man counted equal. There was a lot of camaraderie and competitive fire. We had a real team spirit on stage, same as those UK Wildcats had on the basketball court. This band had chemistry. You can’t force a musical bond like that; it just happens. From the first mandolin chop, I felt a surety and a rock-solid foundation I’d never experienced before. With these guys, you always knew where the “one” beat was, no matter what the tune. You could set your watch to it. Timing is so important. Anybody can play fast; what matters is playing together. The Red Slipper Lounge was where we started to make a name for ourselves. People were calling us J.D.’s hottest band yet. We were building a reputation beyond the local bluegrass nuts to folks from all over the region who came to see what all the fuss was about.