Brother John is gone

A requiem for John Hartford, written in June of 2001

One of the most beautiful lights in American music has passed.

John Hartford inspired a generation of American Vernacular musicians with his music and his presence. He managed to be simultaneously a link in American cultural history and a startlingly transcendent individual, a creative force who always could make room for others’ vision. His innovation, while sometimes shocking, aways grew naturally out his own life and his incessant curiosity about whatever came into his life.

If Bill Monroe was American string band music’s Nathaniel Hawthorne, an innovating maverick who legitimized a home-grown self- invented style, then John was our Melville and Twain rolled into one. His early work constantly stepped outside the frame and examined string music’s own conventions, á la Melville, but in a pithy and amusing manner, á la Clemens, and always with a good story. He tackled everything in his lyrics from Bible-thumping sharpsters through social & ontological issues, to the most homey and personal sentiments, to the very meta-stucture of his own music.

In fact, the one most salient aspect of John was curiosity. His insatiable curiosity about everything that came into his purview led him on remarkable quests and turned him into one of the great storytellers, and a cultural treasure for us. Steamboat history (he became a steamboat captain), fiddle tune history and lore, all the different varieties of banjos, music performance theory, penmanship (he was a master of Spencerian and other handwriting styles), minstrelsy, head music, crackpot ideas about genetic romance and who knows what else were all documented on his famous 3x5 file cards, which might have been invented solely for his use, to hear him talk about them.

He was inspiring to many through the idea that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, and more to the point: that everyone has a responsibility to their community to research and hold some of their culture for their neighbors, whether local, historic, artistic. John did it all and shared it freely with anyone who appeared to be interested. For that alone he will be loved and treasured, and he shared that trait with the late great Charles Sawtelle.

John was also incredibly generous with his time and could see talent everywhere and would fearlessly encourage it, often far before anyone else. I remember when I helped organized the John Hartford Tribute at Merlefest many years ago; all during the festival, dozens of artists I never would have suspected came up to me and gave me stories about how John had helped them at a shaky point in their life or career and given them the encouragement they needed to go on. Of course everyone knows how he helped some of our greatest: Vassar Clements, Benny Martin, Mark O’Connor, many others we don’t know, since John would never really see fit to mention much about that, except to talk about a special fiddle that he found with a head on it, which was made in Derazey’s shop in the 1800’s and there were so many made of that one, and oh yes, I gave one of those to Vassar.

His attraction to other musicians always seemed to depend on their souls; he always recorded with the most original and deep players, who became lifelong friends.

John was fiercely tenacious and would follow a line of inquiry until it either evaporated into gas or, mostly, connected with some other area of his interest. Always looking for first and last causes, his pursuits led him into uncharted areas many times.

Just one instance: I think of his quest to see how fast a banjo could be played and still be musical-- a dangerous proposition. One can trace a line through about 3 recordings until by the end of his quest, John is playing what sounds like Jackson Pollock brush sweeps across a musical canvas. He made splatter hummingbird art out of potential goofy disaster. And then–OK, that’s gone about as far as it can go, let’s try something else. Something like...oh, writing music. Dots, I mean.

I remember when Mike Marshall and I visited him once, John had finally discovered written music (dots on lines) and was utterly charmed by the fact that written music is set up so that diatonic harmonies can be constructed very simply on paper by writing notes on line or space above or below the melody note. So John had embarked on a massive project to hand write, in his gorgeous penmanship, all the fiddle tunes he knew AND harmonize them AND record them... and of course he already had a PILE of them! I guess the record company balked at the project and John finally put that one aside, and I suspect it just got too easy for him anyway.

My personal musical quest gained serious traction with the purchase of John’s Aeroplane recording in about 1972, which woke me up and sent me on a path at the age of 19. Vassar Clements of course, Norman Blake, and that incredible banjo sound, as personal as Earl’s, intimately connected but radically, unmistakably different. And the lyrics; nothing had to rhyme. Matter-of fact references to everything—everything— that was going on around us, supposedly hidden; unabashed open-hearted love for women, deep emotion intermixed with the silliest everyday ditties... and the soul movement, the breathtaking swirl and movement in the music. The swoops and dips that music took was a joyous breaking the bonds of earth that set me looking for like-minded souls to express all the joy that we can have in this life, through music.

And I found them, too.

Thanks, John.

-Darol