In a perfect world, great musicians would enjoy all the recognition deserving of their talent, and the listening public would recognize the innovators instead of the imitators.

And in such a world, every bluegrass and old-time fan would know the name of Carroll Best because he would still be alive and making music.

But such a world doesn’t exist. Best is dead, melodic banjo pickers play “Keith style” instead of “Best style,” and the humble genius of Upper Crabtree left a sparse recorded legacy that kept his name from widespread recognition among traditional music fans.

That’s what makes the wonderful new compact disc of Carroll Best songs so significant. For the first time, listeners can hear what folks in Haywood County and many of the best bluegrass and old-time musicians have known for many years: Carroll Best was one of the greats.

“Say Old Man, Can You Play the Banjo” includes 36 instrumentals digitally remastered from home jam sessions, stage shows and a previously released album. It’s a handsome package full of family photos, excellent liner notes and an attractive picture disc featuring Best and his banjo.

The collection came together through the collaborative efforts of producer Joe Wilson of the National Council for the Traditional Arts in Silver Spring, Md., fiddler Robert “Mack” Snoderly of Haywood County,j and Best’s widow, Louise.

It will seem odd to those familiar with the Best story that the liner notes do not mention his death. Best was murdered by his brother, Sam, during an argument. He was 63. Wilson chose to omit the tragic death in a project that emphasizes the music.

“I wanted to do something special for our buddy,” Wilson said in a recent phone interview. Wilson’s association with Best began in the 1960s, but he had seen Best perform in the 1950s on Asheville’s WLOS television station with the Morris Brothers. Wilson never forgot the experience of first hearing the unique style of Best.

Instead of a reliance on the driving three-finger Earl Scruggs rolls that include many fill-ins around the melody notes, the three-finger melodic style uses scales and more intricate rolls to adhere closer to the actual melody, enabling a picker to play note-for-note renditions of fiddle tunes instead of an approximation of the melody.

Comparatively few banjo players master the melodic style. Technically demanding and especially difficult at fast tempos, it requires a thorough knowledge of the fretboard. The best melodic players somehow find a way to emphasize the rhythm in the midst of highly complex fingering.

Best used a soft touch, mellow tone and always looked for the sweetest sounding note. His music flowed and bounced smoothly and effortlessly like the creeks in the mountains that he never felt comfortable away from. He worked the family farm and a regular shift at Dayco Rubber Products and made most of his music at home.

“Whenever Carroll went and made music somewhere, people would gather around him, and that’s how people heard about him,” Louise said.

The most well-known practitioners of the melodic style might have absorbed more from Best than most musicians realize. The liner notes point out that in the 1950s, Bobby Thompson showed the beginnings of a melodic style as a member of Carl Story’s Rambling Mountaineers and Jim and Jesse’s Virginia Boys. Best had said that he first met Thompson in 1955, and it’s worth noting that Thompson performed on the same television station that hosted Best and the Morris Brothers.

Bill Keith’s melodic style began appearing in recordings with Bill Monroe and Red Allen in 1963. Best first met Keith in the early 1960s. Best said in a 1992 interview that Keith “didn’t play. I played for him.”

But Best didn’t call attention to himself or grumble about his lack of notoriety, and great musicians still managed to find him.

Bluegrass and old-time fans will recognize a few names on “Say Old Man, Can You Play the Banjo.” In 1994, Wilson had organized a Masters of the Banjo Tour that included Laurie Lewis on fiddle and Dudley Connell on guitar. Five live tracks from the tour appear on the anthology, including the standout piece of the entire collection, “Johnson Boys,” a driving number featuring a stirring banjo-guitar duet with Best and Connell.

Two of the tracks, “Angeline the Baker” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” come from previously unreleased sessions in Bristol, Tenn., featuring bluegrass master Kenny Baker on fiddle and Josh Graves, a pioneer of bluegrass dobro, on bass.

The rest of the collection includes six cuts from the 1982 album, “Pure Mountain Melodies,” produced by Waynesville native Marc Pruett (now banjoist for the Whitewater Bluegrass Band) and featuring Mack Snoderly on fiddle, with the whole band shining brightest on a lovely version of “Whiskey Before Breakfast.”

Snoderly plays guitar on six tracks from 1975 and 1978 performances at Berea College in Kentucky, including traditional favorites “Chicken Reel,” “Leather Britches,” “Liberty,” and “Cripple Creek.”
Snoderly also contributed to the project by rummaging through his collection of assorted cassette tapes to find recordings of home picking sessions featuring Best. The miracle of digital remastering cleaned up the rough sound quality and provides vivid examples of how formidable Best could be even in relaxed formats not intended for professional recording. Three of these tracks allow a rare glimpse of the late great Mars Hill fiddler Tommy Hunter, including one of his original compositions, the beautiful “Laurel Branch.”

The listener senses that Best could adapt any kind of music to the banjo, and indeed, he always worked on his music and added new material.

“He was pushing ahead all the time,” Snoderly said. “That was one problem. He didn’t perfect things to knock the world out like Scruggs did,”

But Snoderly explains that before Best died, he had “perfected his art” and was starting to receive the recognition he had long deserved.

Anyone who had met Best remembered how modestly he regarded his own talent and how he would generously give pickers a lesson if they asked for one. Wilson called him a “bolt of sunshine,” and Snoderly recalls how easily he could interact with people, a remarkable feat for someone who was happiest at home.

“I don’t think he really wanted to be famous,” Louise said. “You know, he tried that for a while, but he didn’t care too much for it.”

(Karl Rohr teaches history at Western Carolina University and can be reached at rohr@wcu.edu)

 

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