From where I sit, Jethro as a jazz player/technician of the mandolin could not be surpassed. Also, his musicality was right on, listenable, musically satisfying and totally accessible. I made the mistake of saying, as host of my old NPR live radio performance show (in introducing Jethro Burns) that he had been a star of the Grand Old Opry. Before his first number, he took time to say, very politely, that he'd never been on that program. I felt like I wanted to climb inside my guitar.

pdq,
You are correct. One of the worst cases of this was David Akeman, Bill Monroe's first banjo picker, better known as Stringbean. He wore those absolutely dumb pants designed to make him look like a long body, short-legged freak of Appalachian nature hickdom.

A friend just supplied me with a tape of Steve Goodman's first concert in Great Britain---plus some others of Steve. Jethro was there with him. It's a marvelous show.


Art Thieme