When Bill Monroe was creating bluegrass in the early ’40s, a large part of his inspiration came from an African-American songster named Arnold Schultz, and it was the rhythmic drive and moaning vocals of the blues that separated Monroe’s invention from his old-time string-band predecessors. The blues are often submerged in modern bluegrass, but when they resurface — as they do so effectively in the Del McCoury Band and the Nashville Bluegrass Band — they reconnect the music to its most powerful currents.
“Bluegrass has roots just like anything else,” Rigsby says, “and blues are a big part of where bluegrass came from. My next two records will be a gospel record and an acoustic-blues record, and [Bowling Green John] Cephas & [Harmonica Phil] Wiggins will be on the blues record. I brought Cephas & Wiggins out to Morehead State, where I teach, for a workshop on the parallels between the Piedmont blues and Appalachian music. The parallels were so obvious and I got to be such friends with them that I knew I had to make a record with them.”
Where does that ache in Rigsby’s voice come from? Well, in 1971, when Don was only 3, his father Bill was a surveyor on the crew that was building Interstate 64 through the mountains of East Kentucky. A vibratory roller, a piece of heavy equipment with liquid in its wheels, was flattening and packing the road foundation. The driver didn’t see Bill; Bill didn’t see the driver. The roller knocked him down, crushed his legs and broke his pelvis into seven pieces.
“At first they told us that he probably wouldn’t live, but he did,” Rigsby remembers. “They told us he wouldn’t walk, but he does. He lay in the hospital for 14 days, but he came home and 45 days later he was standing up. And the whole time, Dad didn’t pray for himself; he prayed for his family. The government tried to deny his Social Security benefits and sent him to a doctor. But the doctor said, ‘They’re out of their mind; your leg is about to fall off. But I’m going to do my best to restore your leg.’ Dad did walk, but he was never able to hold a regular job again.
“It was really hard. My poor old mother, bless her heart, couldn’t get any help. We had food, because we had a big garden, a milk cow and some hogs. Social Services would give her food stamps, and she’d say, ‘We don’t need food stamps; we’ve got food. We need medical help.’ She took in laundry; she churned the milk into butter and sold that.”
At this point, there’s a choked-off sob at the other end of the phone line. “I’m sorry,” Rigsby eventually says; “it’s still hard to talk about this. My mom finally went to work for the Post Office. So in a way, the government did take care of the family. She bought a grocery store, too. She’d be there at 4:30 in the morning to fix lunches for the coal miners. She’d work till 8 in the evening without any rest, and it broke her health, and now she’s in as bad shape as my dad. And yet I consider myself lucky to still have my parents.”
Don has had health problems himself in recent years. The new solo disc comes with a note saying it was delayed a year “due to health and scheduling.” He explains: “I was on my way home from a session in Nashville last year when I pulled over to a gas station to get some food. I started feeling some numbness in my right leg, but I laid it off to my chronic back problems. I got back in my vehicle heading east on I-64 and before I reached the next exit, the numbness had spread into my back, my arm, my neck, my head, and then it got into the left side of my body. I thought I was having a stroke. I was terrified, because a 34-year-old man doesn’t expect to have a stroke.”
It wasn’t a stroke, but the doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. Meanwhile, Rigsby had three more attacks. Finally a neurologist in Lexington diagnosed the condition as complex migraine headaches, so severe that they mimic a stroke. With the right medication, it now seems to be under control, and Rigsby has returned to a regular schedule. But the episode was one more reminder of how little we can take for granted in this life. And it was one more reason to be wary of I-64.
Bill Rigsby was a huge Stanley Brothers fan, so on Don’s sixth birthday, February 18, 1974, the father took his son to see Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys perform at the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland, Kentucky. The lead singer was Keith Whitley, who had grown up in Sandy Hook, Kentucky, just seven miles from the Rigsbys’ hometown of Isonville. Keith knew Bill, so he came out to the seats before the show, picked up the birthday boy in his arms, and carried him backstage to meet Ralph.
“I was hooked,” Don remembers. “I already loved the music; I was already singing ‘Little Maggie’. But this made it seem that much more real and exciting. My dad bought me one of Ralph’s tapes that day, Something Old, Something New Or Some Of Katie’s Mountain Dew on Rebel. Ricky [Skaggs] and Keith were both on it, and I listened to that tape till it wore out.
“After Ralph, Ricky became my biggest influence. I wanted to play mandolin and sing just like he did. One time I made it my goal to collect every record he’s played on, but I didn’t have enough money, so I stopped at 150. I got the last Mandocaster made by the guy who made Ricky’s. In high school and college, I made it my goal was to do Lou Reid’s job, being the utility guy in Ricky’s band. But I could never get the hang of the banjo. At one point I realized I had to let it go if I were ever to have my own musical personality. Imitation is suicide, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said.”
Before and after Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs became Clinch Mountain Boys, they had a local band called the Lonesome Mountain Boys with Keith’s brother Dwight. The group performed on local radio for years, and the Whitley family still has the tapes of those shows. Dwight and Ricky asked Rigsby to restore the tapes and edit them down to a single disc to be released by Sugar Hill next year. “To get that vote of confidence from Ricky and Dwight means the world to me,” Rigsby gushes. “They recorded those shows in Sandy Hook, just seven miles from my house.”
Don’s other big influence was his brother Ron, older by nine years. When Don was still in grade school, Ron was a teenage hotshot, already one of the best banjo pickers in the region. But like so many others, Ron put the music aside when he got married and had children. It was only after he had established a successful construction business that he returned to bluegrass, recording the 1999 album Banjo On The Run with help from his baby brother. Ron recently finished a second album, once again with Don’s help, that he is shopping to different labels.
“As a young boy, my brother played and was good at it,” Don says, “and my dad gave him most of the attention, because my dad loved the music. I was jealous, so I decided I had to play catch-up. And I did. The fact that my brother seemed so troubled when he quit stayed with me. I knew if I took up this music seriously, I would never be satisfied if I ever lay it down.”
