Posted by Tim Craig on June 06, 101 at 20:55:22:
John Hartford’s music has been a part of my life every since a rainy spring night in Winfield Kansas in 1975. He came out after a series of hard driving bluegrass bands including New Grass Revival. I only vaguely remembered him from the old Smother’s Brothers show in the 1960’s. I wondered what was going on when he started with a 15 minute fiddle solo of what I later learned was Austin Minor Sympathy, which a strange and wonderful contrast to what had gone before. The rest of the audience seemed a bit mystified too, but warmed as he picked up his banjo and played Steam-powered Aeroplane and other songs that soon became my favorites. Since then I have driven 1000s of miles listening to tapes of Mark Twang, Nobody Knows What you do and many more great albums.
One of the high points of my life was having him sing my mangled version of his song. He was performing at the Dillard Family re-union concert near Salem Missouri. I had been working as a seasonal park ranger at Ozark National Riverways on the Current River. All summer as we had been singing his song Long Hot Summer Days, changing the words to fit our river “For every day working on the Current River, you get half a day off with pay” and so on. We were walking around back stage buying a Mark Twang t-shirt, when for some reason John walked up and asked if anyone had a harmonica. I felt that my many years of bad harmonica playing had finally paid off, as I had one in my pocket. To my disappointment he didn’t invite me up onstage for a duet. He wanted to tune his fiddle to a blues harp for a performance with Grandpa Dillard. After he tuned he very good-naturedly listened to us sing our Current River song, and we suggested that he sing it on stage. He pointed out that Current River didn’t have the same number of syllables as Illinois River, and so it really didn’t work very well. But we were amazed that halfway through his set he sang the song as Current River, inserting a tap on his plywood for the missing syllable. I used to think I should write him a fan letter telling him how much it meant to me to have him spend the time talking with us and to play our song, but I never did. I was happier than if Mick Jagger had done something similar. I can’t imagine the Rolling Stones doing anything like that which why I think John was such a great musician and why he had so many loyal fans.