Hartford recalled as versatile virtuoso By CRAIG HAVIGHURST Staff Writer - June 7, 2001 The Tennessean Outside the tight-knit bluegrass and folk music communities, John Hartford, who died Monday at age 63, was an elusive, even obscure figure, known by some for writing the mega-hit Gentle on My Mind and for his vaudeville-like act on television variety shows 30 years ago. But within those communities, which encompass many important branches of the Music City family tree, Hartford was a gentle giant who left a profound mark on many genres of music and on entertainment itself. As family and friends prepared for tomorrow's 2 p.m. funeral at Hartford's house, those who knew him took stock of a legacy many believe has been underestimated by the world at large. ''I consider him the most creative, most original musician, composer and entertainer in Nashville. I don't know anybody that covered it all like he did,'' said mandolinist Ronnie McCoury. ''Every songwriter who ever picked up a pen in this town, every banjo player since the late '60s, has learned something from John somehow or another.'' That influence grew out of an especially fertile, whimsical and even paradoxical mind. He was a self-contained solo performer (''He's all he needs,'' Bill Monroe once said of him) and a master ensemble leader. He meticulously studied his mentors, like banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs and fiddler Benny Martin, but his playing never sounded imitative. He cherished and preserved traditional country but constantly experimented, inspiring thousands of youths to take acoustic music seriously and to take it in new directions. ''He was part of the reason I made my way to Nashville,'' singer Kathy Mattea said. ''It was a time when college students who maybe wouldn't have listened to straight country music were listening to Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Old And In The Way, and Hartford was a bridge to (classic bluegrass for us). ''He was a hippie. He was witty and intelligent and amazing. He had a kind of edginess that was coming from rock 'n' roll, and that's part of what made it appealing.'' ''John is an exceedingly important figure,'' agreed his recent producer and banjo player Bob Carlin. Not only was he an exceptional multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, but also ''he is single-handedly responsible for newgrass and all the jam bands.'' Newgrass is an amorphous but increasingly popular offshoot of bluegrass that takes its name from New Grass Revival, a band that included Hartford protégés Sam Bush, John Cowan and Bela Fleck and was inspired directly by Hartford's eccentric and brilliant 1971 album, Aereo-Plain. The influence, says Cowan, speaks to Hartford's versatility and virtuosity. ''Aereo-Plain blew the doors off,'' he says. ''There were two camps then (in the early 1970s), the traditional guys and the newgrass guys. John had enough stature as a performer that he was able to walk through those boundaries.'' Though Hartford's bands were influential, his solo act was a multitalented tour de force that has few parallels since vaudeville. He sang, rapped, fiddled, picked and danced on a piece of plywood that he had miked from below. Riders in the Sky bass player Too Slim said Tuesday night on WSM-AM 650 that Hartford ''would take what was going on in the room and make up a song about it.'' Hartford had a wireless pickup mounted in his fiddle before that became a fashion, said Cowan, allowing him to roam the audience. He is said to have once started a 1,000-person conga line at an amphitheater in Colorado. ''You never wanted to follow John,'' McCoury said. ''He'd just tear a crowd up.'' That freewheeling sense of improvisation continued to influence Hartford when he delved back into old-time ensemble playing in the 1990s. ''The shows were completely unpredictable,'' Carlin said. ''He had such a big repertoire that you didn't know what he'd do. There would always be a song or two each night that we (in the band) didn't know! We would just sort of look at each other. He would read an audience and just do what he felt he needed to do.'' Sam Bush, considered one of the world's best mandolin players, says Hartford not only played host to legions of jam sessions, but also continued to hone his own craft with careful practicing right up to the end of his life. ''He'd tape himself, listen back, critique himself and do it again. Music was very therapeutic during his illness. He told me that as long as he could play, he was happy.'' Since April, the cancer-stricken Hartford couldn't play his instruments. Instead, eclectic groups of musicians from super-fiddler Mark O'Connor to banjo legend Earl Scruggs sat with Hartford, playing his favorite fiddle tunes. Tuesday on WSM, singer Marty Stuart called Hartford ''a pure artist.'' More than that, he was an artist lucky enough to earn a fortune early in his career and conscientious enough to use that freedom to spend the rest of his life seeking out original ways to interpret the American canon. ''It was all one big continuum of an experiment, and you always learned something new and that was the whole point of it,'' Carlin said. ''I don't think he cared that mass taste was different than his. He didn't want to be like everybody else. That would be boring.''

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