Happy! - Aug 29 (B Kazee)

Subject: Happy! - Aug 29 (B Kazee)
From: Abby Sale
Date: 29 Aug 05 - 08:49 AM


Happy Birthday!

In a log house on Burton Fork in east Kentucky,

my own favorite banjist,

Buell Kazee

was born 8/29/1900
(d1976)

"Considered one of the very best folk singers in U.S. history,
he was a master of the 'high, lonesome' singing
style of the Appalachian balladeer." [AMG]

In many ways, I much prefer banjo over guitar; that is, if any instrument must be used with ballads.

Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved
What are Happy's all about? See Clicky

Subject: RE: Happy! - Aug 29 (B Kazee)
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 29 Aug 05 - 10:45 AM

It all depends on how you play it. Bad banjo is one thing, but done well.....

Subject: RE: Happy! - Aug 29 (B Kazee)
From: Stewie
Date: 30 Aug 05 - 10:09 PM

Kazee was a wonderful singer and banjo picker, but it is a big stretch to claim that he was 'master of the high lonesome' sound. He was a trained singer and one of his challenges was to sound 'untrained'. In respect of his first recording session for Brunswick, Buell commented: 'I had to make a record seven or eight times to get it bad enough to sell. They'd say, "Buell, that's fine but it won't ring on a cash register". I'd ask, "Well, what do you want?" "Well, that vibrato and resonance, if you can cut that out". If you want to sing country, you sing with a light throat. But I can hear the trained voice all the way through (my recordings)'. Elsewhere, he commented: 'I have always tried to keep in the trained voice - I don't know what you call it - some of that plaintive sound, the heart of singing, not let it become purely mechanical. I think that is a good thing to retain. Now if I'm interpreting folk songs, I sing as they (the folk) did. I appreciate all kinds of music'.

He may well have sang as 'they' did but, in respect of 'high lonesome' singing, he was no Roscoe Holcomb. Good though!

[Kazee quotes from notes by Loyal Jones accompaning 'Buell Kazee' June Appal LP JA 009].

--Stewie.