Vassar Clements has died. If you're not a big bluegrass fan, that won't mean much to you. If you are, this is a time for mourning. Clements played all kinds of music on all kinds of albums with many of the best musicians of the last 50 years. But it was bluegrass that he infused with his genius. He was just the best damn fiddle player around.
He was one of the true giants of the first generation of bluegrass. Along with Bill Monroe and Jim & Jesse (both of whom he played for) and Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers and a few others, he helped shape an art form that was only created in the middle of the 20th century. And like Earl Scruggs did with the banjo, Clements defined an instrument and how it could sound in a bluegrass ensemble.
The first time I saw Clements at a bluegrass festival, I was in my early 30s, but I acted like a high school kid meeting a rock star. I had spend uncountable hours listening to several of his albums (especially this one, among his best work, if you want to give him a try). I wasn't very interested in the band on stage, so I wandered back to the food booths. And there he was, standing at the edge of a picnic table just noodling on the fiddle. I went up to him and mumbled something about what an honor it was to meet him, and he said something back that I was too hyped up to even hear. I went back to my friends and babbled for the rest of the day about having shook the hand of Vassar Clements, a man who never studied music but just "played what he heard," but, Good Lord, how could someone possibly be born with that much music inside him?
They were very embarrassed for me. That's not the way you act at a bluegrass festival. It's very casual and matter of fact -- tape recorders and video cameras welcome -- with everybody hanging out with everybody else like it was a gigantic family picnic. The famous artist playing on stage during the day is likely to be around a campfire that night, playing songs with all the no-talent boobs who've brought their campers loaded with beat-up guitars and banjos. You don't go treating people like they were stars or something. They're just folks.
Yeah, I know. I've stood around with a group and talked to Bill Monroe just like he was an uncle I hadn't seen in a while. I told a joke once that one of the White family (which Ricky Skaggs married into) actually laughed at. One Sunday morning as the assembled multitudes closed a festival with "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" I was one of the 150 or so guitar players banging out three chords.
But still. Vassar. Clements. Shook his hand. Awesome.
(If you go the discography page on his Web site, you can find short samples of his music both for Real amd mp3 players. But just go out and buy all the albums you can find with his name somewhere in the credits. There's only 2,000 of them.)
