remembering vassar clements
27 August 2006 | Uncategorized | No Comments
This mp3 was ripped from a Vassar Clements Mercury album titled Vassar Clements. The condition of the vinyl is pretty bad. So beware.
In the Pines mp3
I was a big fan of Vassar’s. I knew him a little. I liked him a lot. Soon after I came to Nashville I was the only employee (without an ownership stake) of the Old Time Picking Parlor on Second Avenue. Sitting around the Picking Parlor one night with Vassar and Tut Taylor and Randy Wood (two of said owners), Vassar said to me: come go with me to the Opry - I gotta get some musicians for a session tomorrow. I had been in town a few weeks. Hadn’t ever been to the Opry, and I was walking in the stage door - with Vassar. It was a big deal to the 21-year-old me - still is. That wasn’t too long before the Opry moved.
Vassar had a cool sound and a cool fiddle. In place of a scroll, the fiddle had a carving of a bearded face that has been pictured all over the place. The word among the instrument geeks downtown was that the fiddle didn’t sound so great until, through trial and error, Vassar found a sweet spot for the sound post (a small spruce rod wedged between a fiddle’s back and top below the bridge) at a precarious angle instead of straight up and down.
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