Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)

Subject: Obit: Bill Keith, 1939-2015
From: Cool Beans
Date: 24 Oct 15 - 02:53 PM

Influential banjoist Bill Keith has died.

https://www.facebook.com/bill.keith.16/posts/10206619888988703?fref=nf

Subject: RE: Obit: Bill Keith, 1939-2015
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 24 Oct 15 - 06:02 PM

Yet another legend gone. Our paths crossed several times, many years ago and I always found him a gentleman.

His playing was summed up by a heckler one night - Bill was part way through his solo version of "Nola" when, unusually, he made a mistake. "Good god, the man's human!" someone in the audience called out.

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 04:26 AM

Ray is right. I spent a day with him once and he was a lovely guy.

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 06:58 AM

I'm still awestruck when I listen to his playing. RIP.

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: BobKnight
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 08:44 AM

I had the honour of playing for two consecutive nights with Bill Keith and Jim Rooney when they toured Scotland in 1974, first in Aberdeen, and then Bill asked me to play with them in Glenrothes the next night - he was a helluva nice man.

At the end of the night at Glenrothes, he invited me to play with them for the rest of the tour. I turned them down - one of my great musical regrets. (and we all have them.)

Sad to hear that he's gone. :(

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 09:07 AM

I echo everyone's sentiment: a very nice man, with a graciousness rare anywhere.

I met Bill, then going to Amherst College, at a hootenanny I held at Dartmouth in 1958 or 59. He was two years younger than I. At the time he was just learning 5-string banjo.

Hearing me playing three-finger style, he, with the politeness and courtesy natural to him, asked me to show him a few licks. I showed him what I could. Needless to say in a very short time he went light-years beyond me!

I'm pleased I could be a very small contributor on his way to preeminence, and sorry to hear that he's gone. Not that many of us left now from the 50s pickers, and he was one of the best.

Memories!

Bob Coltman

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: Mark Ross
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 12:21 PM

Played a great pedal steel with Ian & Sylvia. watched him night after night at the Cafe AuGoGo back in 1970. Trading licks with the great Amos Garrett.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: Elmore
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 04:25 PM

Glad I got to see him perform with Jim Kweskin and company a while ago.rip

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: voyager
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 06:59 PM

Bill Keith was an instructor and performed at Steve Kaufman's Flatpick Camp on many occasions. I was lucky to have me him there
and listened to his classic 'Auld Lang Syne' rendition on the Keith tuner banjo he invented (where notes were stretched by the pegs during
the tune).

The well-known story about Bill Keith was that his stint with Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys ended when the bandleader told him to 'Change your name - there can only be one 'Bill' in this band'.

Gratitude and respect for a lifetime of fine music.
voyager

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: Mark Ross
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 10:09 PM

No, Bill stayed a while with Monroe's band, but he was known as "Brad" from his middle namd BRADFORD. He .was with Monroe for about a year I think

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: Gurney
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 02:52 PM

This would be the 'banjo picking Bill Keith' who is mentioned in Chas and Dave's 'That's What I Like,' would it?

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: GUEST,Roger Knowles
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 03:36 PM

Sorry to hear this sad news. Worked with him in Switzerland a few times, a really nice guy. A legend gone.

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: BanjoRay
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 09:37 PM

Remember being astonished by his playing with Arlo Guthrie at Cambridge FF back in '74 or thereabouts.

Ray

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 04:37 PM

Another good man gone....I have added his name to the "In Memoriam" thread. My condolences to all who know and love him.

RIP

Peter

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 05:52 PM

Bill Keith, Who Transformed Banjo Playing, Dies at 75

By Bill Frisikcs-Warren
The New York Times
Oct. 26, 2015

Bill Keith, a banjo player who modernized his instrument and expanded its musical reach, died on Friday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 75.

The cause was complications of cancer, said Claire Keith, his wife of 39 years.

Widely referred to as Keith-style picking, Mr. Keith's signature technique was an extension of the rolling style popularized by the pioneering bluegrass banjoist Earl Scruggs in the 1940s and '50s. Mr. Keith rethought what the instrument was capable of as a result of his desire to play classic fiddle melodies like "The Devil's Dream" in linear, note-for-note fashion. In effect, he transformed the banjo from a largely percussive instrument to one with previously unforeseen melodic potential. In that way he became a bridge between the traditional banjo stylists of the mid-20th century and the more freewheeling latter-day players like Tony Trischka and Béla Fleck.

Mr. Keith studied piano while growing up in Boston in the 1940s and did not become enamored of the banjo until he was a teenager, when he heard late-night broadcasts of country music coming from strong-signaled radio stations in the South and Midwest.

He made up for lost time while at Amherst College in Massachusetts in the late 1950s, devoting himself to Pete Seeger's classic instructional manual, "How to Play the 5-String Banjo," and playing at hootenannies in local coffeehouses with the singer and author Jim Rooney, his college roommate.

The two became regular performers at Boston's Club 47 (now Club Passim) and, in 1962, released their first album, "Livin' on the Mountain," on the Prestige Folklore label.

In 1963, after hearing him play "The Devil's Dream" backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Bill Monroe, the acknowledged father of bluegrass, invited Mr. Keith to join his band, the Blue Grass Boys. The arrangement lasted only eight months, but it afforded Mr. Keith the opportunity to record with Monroe and to perform with him at festivals and at colleges throughout the Eastern United States.

After leaving the Blue Grass Boys, Mr. Keith worked briefly as a session musician before joining the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, a Boston-based combo that appeared on bills with both rock and folk acts. He remained with the Kweskin band until 1968, and toward the end of his tenure there he became the pedal steel guitarist for Great Speckled Bird, the country-rock group formed by the Canadian husband-and-wife duo Ian and Sylvia Tyson.

Mr. Keith also did extensive studio work during this time, often as a steel guitarist, appearing on recordings by Richie Havens, his fellow former Kweskin associates Geoff and Maria Muldaur, and even the Bee Gees.

He moved to Woodstock in the early 1970s and did more studio work, with Judy Collins, Jonathan Edwards, Loudon Wainwright III and others. Throughout his career he also recorded a number of albums, both as a leader and in collaboration with other musicians, including his fellow improvisation-minded "newgrass" progressives Peter Rowan and David Grisman.

William Bradford Keith was born on Dec. 20, 1939, in Boston, to Eldon Keith and the former Vernie Lucile Pruet. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He played tenor banjo in Dixieland bands before switching to the five-string banjo in college. He served in the Air Force Reserve after graduating from Amherst with a degree in 18th-century French literature.

Mr. Keith received an early break in 1963 when Earl Scruggs invited him to Nashville to help him lay out the tablature for his instructional volume, "Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo." It was during this time that Mr. Keith and a college friend, Dan Bump, invented a special tuning device, now commonly known as a Keith Tuner, that enables banjo players to change pitches with greater accuracy while performing.

In 1964 Mr. Keith and Mr. Bump founded the Beacon Banjo Company, which manufactures and sells banjo tuners as well as Mr. Keith's banjo strings and his instructional books on music theory and the mechanics of the five-string banjo.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Keith is survived by two sons, Charles, a professor of Asian history at Michigan State University, and Martin, a luthier and bassist; a brother, Allan; a sister, Mildred Drummond; and four grandchildren.

Mr. Keith's final public appearance, to celebrate his election to the International Bluegrass Music Association's Hall of Fame, was on Oct. 1 in Raleigh, N.C.

Mr. Keith's tenure with Bill Monroe was brief, but the impression he left was enduring. "Brad, he understands music," Monroe once said of Mr. Keith, whom he always referred to as Brad, a shortened version of his middle name, because as he explained, there was already someone named Bill in the group. "He's a good listener and he's a good man to listen to."

"Before he came along," Monroe went on, "no banjo player could play those old fiddle numbers right. You have to play like Brad could play or you would be faking your way through a number. It's learned a lot of banjo players what to do and how to do it where they can come along and fill that bill today."

[links as provided by the NY Times]

Subject: RE: Obit: Banjoist Bill Keith (1939-2015)
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 06:53 PM

Cruising Youtube for Bill Keith vids I came across this 2 part gem:
Bill Keith Banjo Tribute