John Duffey – Always in Style
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Posted On January 1, 2001
There’s an oversized mural on a wall at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, that depicts a bluegrass band in the act. Off to the far right is a figure looming larger than the others, with a distinctive flat top buzz cut and tiny (in his large hands) mandolin. His look is one of easy authority as he seems to be finishing up a solo and handing off the melody to one of the others in the band.
That the Birchmere pays homage to John Duffey, who died at age 62 in 1996, and the Seldom Scene is only fitting — the band’s weekly appearances forever put the venue on the map — and now Sugar Hill does the same with a musical companion to that painting.
John Duffey: Always In Style collects 21 songs from ten albums over twenty years. All the cuts are Seldom Scene performances, but as this is intended as a Duffey career retrospective, he looms larger than the rest.
His crisp tenor and precise but loose mandolin solos are showcased to their best advantage in songs ranging from a crowd-pleasing version of J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight” to the traditional spiritual “Were You There” to the unlikely “Girl In The Night”, a Hank Thompson honky-tonk weeper spun into a dobro-drenched bluegrass ballad.
The Scene was formed in 1971, on the heels of Duffey’s departure from the Country Gentlemen. Their mandate was to make bluegrass something other than the age-old sound of the hollows and hills without diverting too much from tradition. Which is why you’ll find versions of Parsons/Buchanan’s “Hickory Wind” and the Dill/Wilkins country standard “Long Black Veil” in the mix with Bill Monroe’s “Tennessee Blues” and “Rose Of Old Kentucky”.
The excellent liner notes — in effect, a primer on the history of the Scene — by Jon Weisberger include quotes taken this summer from surviving band members. But there are quibbles: The songs are not dated, and complete credits are missing from the song listings. Bluegrass aficionados will know the lineups — Ben Eldridge (banjo), John Starling (guitarist), Tom Gray (bass) and Mike Auldridge (dobro), and later Phil Rosenthal, Lou Reid and T. Michael Coleman — but their names are nowhere to be found. In fact, the re-formed band with Fred Travers, Dudley Connell and Ronnie Simpkins recorded on Dream Scene in 1996; three of the cuts are from that disc, with no mention of the players.
Newcomers to the field will believe Duffey was the entire band. He may have loomed large, but the credit has to be shared. That aside, Duffey fans missing any of these songs will rejoice, and newcomers will find their appetites suitably whetted.
