Phil Nusbaum JE: Joe Enright PN

Joe Enright Narrator Phil Nusbaum Interviewer March 16, 2010 PN: Phil Nusbaum JE: Joe Enright PN: This is Phil Nusbaum and Joe Enright is here, and we're talking Bluegrass. This is an oral history project that I'm going to ask you to sign a release for when we're done. JE: Ok. PN: The purpose of this is to provide a primary document for Bluegrass in Minnesota. This is something that can be used for research, and placed in libraries around, so we're looking forward to that. Let me ask you about your family background and where you're from. JE: Ok. I was born in Massachusetts, and I spent most of my boyhood days in Greenville, New Hampshire, on a farm. After my father died, we moved to downtown Greenville and my sister lived there, and her husband. I was born November 13, 1934. My dad, we had a small farm, enough to support us during the war years; I had three brothers that were in the service. After my father died and we moved to town, I made friends with John Paginen, we were both going to high school, and he was real interested in Bluegrass music, and I got interested in Bluegrass music. PN: This must have been about when? JE: About 1950, I suppose. I graduated in '53, and this was all through high school. PN: You recognized the difference between Bluegrass and other kinds at a young age, because they say that Bluegrass was just part of the Country music field at the time. JE: To us it wasn't. [Laughter] PN: How did you pick that out? JE: The banjo was the big thing. On WCOP, in Boston, they used to have an afternoon show with the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover; they broadcast it live from WCOP. We went down there one time, I remember, and stood outside the studio and watched 'em play. That's where a lot of the stuff that Don Stover did was the recordings of Earl Scruggs, and Everett Lilly used to record with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs; he played mandolin on a few cuts of stuff that they had. We also had, from this WCOP, there used to be a guy named Nelson Bragg, and he was the Master 1 of Ceremonies for a Country show on that. Every so often, maybe once a month, they would have a concert at Symphony Hall in Boston, and it would be all Country stars with headliners like Hank Snow, or somebody like that. Then they'd bring in all local talent, and the Lilly Brothers used to play at that, of course they were the only Bluegrass band that ever played on those things. We'd mainly go down there to see them. That was a lot of fun. PN: So you were a high school kid, in about 1950, were there other kids around doing this? JE: Nope. PN: What kind of stuff did you do? JE: He [John Paginen] had a record player that would play records slow, it was a Zenith, I remember this, because I bought one later, and you could actually go from 78 all the way down to 16. So you'd slow 'em down to try to pick out just exactly what Earl Scruggs was doing on the banjo. Then there was a guy out of WJJD in Chicago that we used to able to pick up at certain times of the night, and he used to play some Bluegrass music for his theme songs, and that's where I heard a lot of instrumentals. I wrote to him one time, and I was a young teenager, and I wrote to him and I never put a self-addressed envelope or anything, and I'll be darned, he did answer me, he wrote back and told me the different tunes that he played for his theme songs, and I eventually got these records. PN: Were you trying to play, too? JE: Not then, I didn't really start to play 5-string, my buddy, John - we used to call him Sunny, he had an old K banjo, it wasn't a very good banjo. I was trying to learn guitar at that time, and he was playing the banjo. We were going to be a group someday [laughter], which never happened, but was a lot of fun to dream. PN: So you had these radio shows to listen to, and you had a guitar, what kind was it? JE: It was a Harmony guitar, the first one I got. That was the cheap stuff that they had back then. It was an "F" hole, it sounded like crap, but it was still a guitar, and I learned on it. Shortly after high school, I kind of loafed around for a year, couldn't get a job - it was pretty tough back then, and I went into the service - Air Force. That's where I picked up a used guitar, went to basic training at Sampson, New York, which is by Geneva - Finger Lakes Region of New York. Then went to Chanute Air Force Base, Rantoul, Illinois, which is south of Chicago by quite a bit. When I was down there I picked up an old guitar at one of the pawn shops, then you meet people, that's the nice part about being in the service is you meet people from down south. I met this kid [Boyd Faringer] from around North Carolina, and we used to get together and just play guitar, no banjo. He used to listen to some guitar player on the radio. He showed me how to flat- pick a guitar, only not like a flat-picker does today, but to take and pick the note on the down stroke, and then on the back stroke play the chord; you kind of twisted your hand to do this. You 2 could play tunes and you could actually kind of accompany yourself. That was interesting. I used to Wildwood Flower, over and over. PN: What other songs did you play? JE: Under the Double Eagle, and he had some tune I can't even remember the name of it, that he used to play and he taught me. I remember Hank Thompson came out with a song, “Wake Up, Irene.” I don't know if you've ever heard it or not, but he used to have…the guy who was in From Here to Eternity, guitar player, I'm tryin' to think what his name was. He was the forerunner of Curt Atkins, is that right? PN: Chet Atkins. JE: Chet Atkins. He used to play, I'm tryin' to think what his name was, but he used to play that same style, only instead of us in' all his, I think he only used two fingers; thumb and first finger, I'm not sure, to play, and he did recordings of a lot of different songs…now where were we? [Laughter] PN: You were just telling me about the guy you met in the service. JE: Yeah, Boyd, Boyd was his name, Boyd Faringer, I believe, he was from the south, but once we got through Tech school, which was at Chanute, he went someplace, and I went someplace, and we never did cross paths again. And when you were in the service like that you didn't tend to write to people, for one thing, I don't think I knew his address. Acquaintances in the service they come and go; it's pretty fast and furious until you get to your permanent party base, which was Truax Field in Madison (Wisconsin). Then I met up with a guy, I believe he was from Virginia, his name was Arthur Grover, we used to call him, "Hank;" he played guitar a lot like Hank Williams, and he sang like Hank Williams. PN: That's why you called him, "Hank," I bet. JE: Yeah, well I don't know, I wasn't the one who called him, "Hank," to begin with, I mean, that's what he told us to call him. We formed a small Country band, I'm still, in the back of my mind I'm thinkin' about Bluegrass music, but I'm not doing much with it. We formed this little band, and I don't know how we ever ran into this fiddle player, his name was Floyd Hathaway, and he lived in the top apartment of this three story apartment house, he had the top floor, and Marshall Brickman [later won an Academy Award, was a screenwriter with Woody Allen, as well as a writer for the Tonight Show, Candid Camera, The Muppet Show, and many others] was in the apartment on the bottom floor, he and another friend of his. I'm talkin' to him [Floyd] one time about 5-string banjo and this kind a stuff, and he says, "Ya know, there's a guy in our building that plays like that," and my ears perked up, and he says, "Ya know, sometime when you're over at our house we'll practice, and if he's around, we'll go down and talk to him [Marshall Brickman]." And that's how I met Marshall Brickman, who was a friend of Eric 3 Weissberg's [later played the legendary “Dueling Banjos” in Deliverance, played duet of “Buffalo Gal” with Marshall Brickman in Super Size Me, and played on other soundtracks, including Schoolhouse Rock]. Marshall kind of showed me what to do and how to start: 1, 2, 3, little exercises.

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