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Originally posted by The Violin Beautiful

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Originally posted by Brian Wood

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Originally posted by The Violin Beautiful

A lot of Old Time players have learned from Bruce Molsky (much to the chagrin of members here)

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I don't know what you mean.

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There have been numerous complaints on this forum about Bruce Molsky's "acolytes" or about his teaching turning everyone into clones of his style, not real Old Time players. I think that's ridiculous, and I've never heard it elsewhere. 

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Okay, I hadn't seen that, but I miss things here sometimes. I have the opposite bias I suppose. I appreciate Molsky and the many younger players and groups that are carrying on a tradition without demanding it be something frozen in time.

@The Violin Beautiful - I've been on this forum a lot longer than you, and I keep up with it pretty well. I've don't recall ever seeing anything like that. Can you give an example?

I've rarely met anyone "IRL" who has any interest whatsoever in the origins or 'original' versions of tunes, nor in earlier players, other than Don Messer, nor in what was going on in whatever tradition before the day before yesterday. Occasionally I will hear someone - even some accomplished fiddler - spout some erroneous and implausible 'factoid' about a tune's origins that two minutes' research on the internet would have dispelled; obviously, just something they heard somewhere and are repeating without giving it any thought.

Same for songs - unless they're Pop songs, in which case there always seems to be someone eager to tell you the number of the office in the Brill Building and the brand of coffee or which member of the Wrecking Crew was absent that day and why and who played his part and what Chet Atkins said .....

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Originally posted by DougD

@The Violin Beautiful - I've been on this forum a lot longer than you, and I keep up with it pretty well. I've don't recall ever seeing anything like that. Can you give an example?

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I'm having trouble finding the comments with search, but I remember reading a number of comments about "Bruce Molsky and his ilk" or young players who learned from him sounding like him, but not like Old Time players. This was a reason I've brought this up in the past. I mentioned this same issue in an earlier thread and neither you nor anyone else disputed it then. 

Those comments were also an inspiration for my writing about aging players of today not being as encouraging of young players as the old players who encouraged the now-old players when they were young.

Googling leaves a big gap. A lot of old threads pop up that were before my time, but very little shows up in recent years. I know there were comments connected with learning from workshops. There were some discussions about playing "your own way" that contained comments about workshops that suggested that trying to play like anyone else was not in the spirit of the music and that the teachers in workshops (such as Molsky) were actually killing the tradition of the genre by molding players in their own image.

Before joining the forum I had always held a very high opinion of Molsky and had assumed that his excellence and depth of knowledge were similarly impressive to other Old Time listeners. It was a shock to me when I read negative opinions here and contrary suggestions that he was too cookie cutter and that he was too different. 

Clean up on aisle 4.

Old Scratch - You mean that people up there don't remember Winston "Scottie" Fitzgerald, Angus Chisholm, or Ward Allen or Graham Townsend? To say nothing of Al Cherney or Ned Landry. Oh well.
There are lots of bogus "factoids" floating around about the names and origins of old time tunes - the problem now is that two minutes research on the Internet will only confirm them. I've been thinking about starting a "debunking" thread, but I may wait till everyone gets to express themselves in this one. I haven't had too much success so far with random attempts.

"Winston "Scottie" Fitzgerald, Angus Chisholm, or Ward Allen or Graham Townsend? To say nothing of Al Cherney or Ned Landry."

Who? Honestly, I care not who supposedly wrote a tune. And no one I ever played any tune for has ever asked me who wrote it.

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Originally posted by wrench13

Clean up on aisle 4.

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Why? Because a Google search doesn't show the result? The comments I referenced were not the subjects of the threads, so they were buried and don't show up in the quick search results. The forum's pages only go back a short while, so it's hard to go back manually through the threads from several years ago to find the various examples. Anyone with enough time and diligence could probably dig them up eventually. I didn't make make that up out of thin air. 

I'm kind of a tune history nerd myself, I guess. When I was first exposed to the "Clifftop crowd" types in OT music, I was surprised at their depth of knowledge and interest in the history of the genre's tunes and tunesmiths. The "Hoedown History" YouTube channel has over 5k subscribers and it's nothing but a collection of half-hour deep dives into the roots of one particular tune. Those are small numbers by social media standards, but it's at least an indicator that there are a few of us out here.

As far as general audiences, those are the same people who invariably ask about my ukulele or little guitar (and a time or two even banjo) when they see my F-style mandolin.

Here’s a quote from a thread:

“Oldtime fiddle is many different things and really many types of esthetics. But I hear more and more of these classical players turned oldtime by way of Bruce Molsky. And while it's beautiful and expertly played music, to my ear It just doesn't have the bite that I prefer in oldtime fiddle. It seems millions of miles away from the great old field recordings.”

fiddlehangout.com/archive/34623

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Originally posted by DougD

Old Scratch - You mean that people up there don't remember Winston "Scottie" Fitzgerald, Angus Chisholm, or Ward Allen or Graham Townsend? To say nothing of Al Cherney or Ned Landry. Oh well.

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Well ... you still do get "A Winston Medley" from the odd middle-aged Cape Breton fiddler.  Ward Allen is sometimes mentioned when Maple Sugar is played.  Speaking of Al Cherny, though, I heard reference to him on the radio yesterday; apparently his memory is being honoured at the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddle Championship this weekend, in High River, Alberta - which I won't be bothering with because I'm too much of a reverse-snob or something; more to the point, I'm thoroughly out of the loop, so it's quite possible I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to current trends ... !

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Originally posted by The Violin Beautiful

Here’s a quote from a thread:
“Oldtime fiddle is many different things and really many types of esthetics. But I hear more and more of these classical players turned oldtime by way of Bruce Molsky. And while it's beautiful and expertly played music, to my ear It just doesn't have the bite that I prefer in oldtime fiddle. It seems millions of miles away from the great old field recordings.”
 

Sounds more like an indictment of classical players turned OT than of Molsky.