Jethro Burns Tribute

[jnikora]

Today is the 22nd anniversary of the passing of Jethro Burns. For some time I have been working with Mike O'Connell and Rob Coleman to make available another installment of "Lessons with Jethro" tapes. Mike is an accomplished player from the Chicago area and he agreed to let me digitize and publish his lesson tapes on the Internet. Rob Coleman, who so generously has hosted the tapes of my lessons, agreed to host these as well. This is our tribute to Jethro.

All the lessons can be accessed on the same page, either by going to the Mandozine.com website, select Jethro Burns Info from the Quick Links menu and then select Lessons with Jethro, or you can click on robcoleman.com/jethro/index.html (or copy/paste it into your browser).

The material on these latest released lessons are absolutely amazing. Jethro had a few more years of teaching behind him and Mike was an advanced student. If you can identify the 2 or 3 missing titles, let me know. Neither Mike nor Don Stiernberg knew what they were.

Enjoy! And play with the same light hearted spirit that was Jethro.

[Markus]

Thank you very much Jim, Rob, Mike and all the others who put this together.

[David Rambo]

Thanks for all of your work.

[Marc Berman]

Thank You!! Absolutly love them!

[MONami]

Chorus of thanks for your dedication to our hobby/life. You'all rock...in a bluesy mando kinda way.

[TerryBurnsKing]

Thank you all for your kind words. My dad was as wonderful a person and father as he was a musician! Jim, what you've done with the online lessons is awesome. Love to you all.

Terry Burns King

[John Soper]

My all-time Non-BG (and maybe just all-time) favorite mandolin player. Thanks Jim, Rob, and Mike for putting these lessons out there for us.

[djweiss]

Another thanks to Jim, Rob and Mike for making these accessible to those of us who could only dream of being there first-hand.

-Darren

[jasona]

Perfect timing given recent discussions in Theory and Techniques. Not that I would expect anything other than perfect timing from Jethro! Thanks to all for making these available!

[jnikora]

Terry,

I am surprised and thrilled to hear from you. I remember you (and your mom) from those Wednesday nights in the Winter of 1975-76. Those days I spent with your dad were very precious to me. And, what you say is so true. He was truly as wonderful a person as he was a player. He was funny, friendly, encouraging, honest, helpful, good company and a good friend.

I am so happy that you are pleased to have these materials made public. When my lessons were first put up, I wondered if it was "proper", but I knew how generous Jethro was of his knowledge and thought he would approve.

Warm regards to you and your family.

Jim

[Dale Ludewig]

Wonderful! Jethro would be proud.

[Jim Garber]

Thanks from me, too, for all these precious documentation from one of my absolute favorite musicians. I had the extreme privilege of participating in Jethro's one and only workshop offered at Augusta heritage Srts Workshops in Elkins, WV, I think around 1983 or 4. I will never forget the experience.

[Raymando7]

Many thanks for getting this together.

How amazing to be able to have a one-to-one learning experience ... a very rich resource !

[Loretta Callahan]

Thank you so much for this labor of love! . I'll definitely follow your suggestion to enjoy and play in the light hearted spirit that was the talented Mr. Burns.

[mandolirius]

I agree, this is a fantastic resource to have and am grateful to those who made it available. To me, Jethro really was unique. I hear other people, especially nowadays, play jazz on the mandolin to an extremely high level. But to my ears, no one sounded like Jethro.

I did have one experience with him as a teacher, a workshop held in conjunction with a festival. It was in a high school gym and the thirty or forty people who were there all sat in the first two rows, so Jethro had a long line of people to deal with which he did by strolling back and forth, mandolin crooked in one arm like a rifle.

I also got a glimpse of how he dealt with dumb questions. I asked if he could demonstrate how he played the chord solo version of "Cherokee". Now if I'd had a clue, I would have realized that was way too much information for a casual workshop. But Jethro didn't say anything. I was in the front row so he just walked over, stood right in front of me and said, "it goes like this" and proceeded to play it.

Everyone, myself included, began to laugh as it went on, all of us realizing there was no way anyone was going to absorb all that in one pass. Jethro was a perfect gentleman, never said anything about the nature of the question, but let me know without saying as much, that it probably wasn't the best one I could have asked if I actually wanted to learn anything.

No one has inspired me more to learn about music, how it works, harmony and all those great concepts more than Jethro and he did it just through his playing. There was obviously no other way to play like that - you had to know music, backwards, forwards, inside and out.

[jnikora]

Jethro did not judge his audiences or his students, beyond making the necessary calibrations to cater to their needs. He was loyal to them to a fault. He wasn't even judgmental of his critics.

One night, soon after I started taking lessons, he appeared at a seamy little club in Racine or Kenosha, I don't recall exactly. It was pathetic, I thought, that the greatest mandolin player in the world would have to stand solo in this smoky, noisy roadhouse and try to entertain a group of inattentive and unappreciative drunks. He carried on for two long sets, telling stories, corny jokes, fending off hecklers, singing, and playing the devil out of his mandolin - smiling the whole time like he was having the time of his life. I remember being completely mesmerized by his chord solos on an endless number of jazz, country and pop standards.

The following morning, there was a review in the Milwaukee Journal and it was scathing. I was wounded, angry, outraged, embarrassed, and depressed. I was in disbelief. At my next lesson, I worked up the courage to ask him about it. "Doesn't that get to you? When someone is so mean-spirited and wrong?" He just grinned at me and said, "Hell, no! They spelled my name right."

[mandolirius]

Jethro did not judge his audiences or his students, beyond making the necessary calibrations to cater to their needs. He was loyal to them to a fault. He wasn't even judgmental of his critics.

One night, soon after I started taking lessons, he appeared at a seamy little club in Racine or Kenosha, I don't recall exactly. It was pathetic, I thought, that the greatest mandolin player in the world would have to stand solo in this smoky, noisy roadhouse and try to entertain a group of inattentive and unappreciative drunks. He carried on for two long sets, telling stories, corny jokes, fending off hecklers, singing, and playing the devil out of his mandolin - smiling the whole time like he was having the time of his life. I remember being completely mesmerized by his chord solos on an endless number of jazz, country and pop standards.

The following morning, there was a review in the Milwaukee Journal and it was scathing. I was wounded, angry, outraged, embarrassed, and depressed. I was in disbelief. At my next lesson, I worked up the courage to ask him about it. "Doesn't that get to you? When someone is so mean-spirited and wrong?" He just grinned at me and said, "Hell, no! They spelled my name right."

Boy, that would have broke my heart too. But it goes to show that guys like Jethro, as great as they were as musicians, took their role as entertainers seriously. I see lots of fantastic players these days, but very few fantastic entertainers.

[danbui]

Jim, it's hard to express how valuable these recordings are and what a huge service you've done for the mandolin community by sharing them like you have. I've had these for a couple of years now and whenever I need some jazz mandolin inspiration, I know that I can always turn to them! Of course, sometimes I also just listen to them for pleasure!

I actually posted this to the cafe sometime last week, it's one of my favorite examples on there, some of that inimitable Jethro chord melody. Know that there are people out there who really do value this stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiR6PyxxVpo

[jasona]

Meanwhile, here are Homer and Jethro doing what they did best.

[AlanN]

Wonderful.

See 4:28...who needs a strap.

[Raymando7]

I'm now adicted to these tracks ! :-)

Can anyone advise the key of 'Lick 1' ?

[jnikora]

Raymando,

Can you be more specific? Where is "Lick 1"? There are no tracks by that name in the Lessons.

[Raymando7]

Hi Jim,
You had me worried there for a minute ... It's on your disk 1 - on the website it shows as 'Whole Tone Exercise' but I downloaded the whole disk and it came out named as 'Lick 1'.

Once again, thanks for sharing :-)

[jnikora]

Raymando,

It is a C whole tone scale but it is played over D7 or D7b5 - it is the lick he uses as an interlude in "Take the A Train" - the subsequent licks are variations that he used to close the second half of the melody. The whole a part line reads I-I-II7(b5)-II7(b5)-ii7-V7-I-I or C-C-D7b5-D7b5-Dm7-G7-C-C.

Hope that helps.

[jnikora]

Danbui,

Thanks for the acknowledgment. I can't think of what Jethro called that tune. I am impressed by your tenacity to play it - not easy! The voicing he used for the main chord was - and pardon me for trying to diagram this, I'm not sure it will pan out - is one of his favorite forms. In this case t is a sixth chord but can be a ninth chord with the root absent.

|___|___|_X_|___|___|
|___|___|___|___|_X_|
|___|_X_|___|___|___|
|___|___|___|___|___|

Another favorite 3-note chord form - also a sixth/ninth derivative is:

|___|___|___|___|_X_|
|___|_X_|___|___|___|
|___|___|___|_X_|___|
|___|___|___|___|___|

Check them out - they have that "cool" sound