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Mark O'connor Benny Thomasson Was the Greatest Breakdown Fiddler

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Mark O'connor Benny Thomasson Was the Greatest Breakdown Fiddler Mark O'Connor Benny Thomasson was the greatest breakdown fiddler from Texas ever, but was tragically not recorded professionally or otherwise at his prime in the later 40s - a real shame. Here is an early Tom and Jerry from me that beat all of the Texas fiddlers consistently (older and younger) when we competed in the 70s and 80s though! Ha! It did well with the Southerners in GA, NC, VA etc too - Weiser, ID of course, Canada... I would do well in the contests they would not kick me out of shall we say! (long hair, sandals, breakdowns and all!) It was about as exciting as it ever got when Terry Morris and I would compete. Placed over him 3 of the 4 times. But for me, it did not matter. It was heavy and we both knew it. The first North and South match up of fiddlers by anyone's memory (Seattle and Texas), the young prodigious caretakers of the music. We helped usher in the new era that the old timers were seeing slip away just before we came along.. We had plenty of pedigree through Benny, Solomons and others. It had an epic seriousness to it that had the young people inspired to try and play and the old timers talking for hours and days who was the best, who were these geniuses of the fiddle with nearly no other young player in our midst? Memory lane! Mark O'Connor Yes... it seems that many on this list don't know what a "breakdown" is. It is derived from an American hoedown, not a Scots/Irish reel. And someone put my hero Johnny Gimble on as the top Breakdown fiddler... he did not play breakdowns, I knew him most all my life - the best Western and Texas swing ever though! Southern style fiddling should be recognized and respected - hoedown/breakdown is one of the greatest musical inventions ever created in my opinion. Breakdown actually has African American ties as well - break it down. Comes from the old South. This is important history. Breakdowns have been traditionally associated with extending the form with either improvisation like bluegrass players occasionally do. My good friend Earl Scruggs who just died, wrote "bluegrass breakdowns" ie Foggy Mt. Breakdown. Bluegrass players "break it down" into "breaks," solos, improv... The Texas players were the best breakdown fiddlers, because they "broke it down" the best with extended variations of most all the tunes they crafted - that is why Benny Thomasson is the best, he crafted more breakdowns than any other, as well as outplaying everyone. When the man wins the Texas State Championships 15 times in a row, while Major, Orville and Norman look on - you know something is up! Great hoedown fiddlers (mostly categorized as playing only 2-part tunes) should also be recognized of course like Jarrell, Kessinger, both whom I knew as a kid... but it is a little different - more old-time - the hoedown dating back 400 years, is the precursor to the breakdown which came on as individual expression was sought after in subsequent generations. But the Canadian fiddlers play the reels. So it continues to be hard to get the word out about what American music is - as always...lots of mystery and intrigue...there should be! Mark O'Connor Benny never met Clark, but was a big fan of his recordings from the late 20s. Clark Kessinger and his nephew were a popular radio and recording act in the late 20s and 30s out of WV, and their music had wide circulation. It got to Texas either over the air or on recordings. When I got to meet Clark when I was 12, he was thrilled to know Benny was teaching me. Benny loved Heifetz, Kreisler, Venuti, Grappelli, Arthur Smith, of course "uncle" Eck Robertson who was his dad's running buddy, and his father Luke - as well as the early western swing fiddlers that Wills hired and similar bands - all early influences. Benny really created the Texas fiddling style as we know it. Major Franklin absorbed it quickly, Orville who wrote Limerock, basically handed Benny less than half of the tune as we know it today. Benny extended it like he did all of the tunes. Then his versions were emulated by the Solomons etc. Everyone else that we know of (other than Eck of course) came after or was influenced by Benny in Texas. Even bluegrass players like Kenny Baker and Byron Berline were influenced by Benny. I think it is noteworthy that Kenny Baker, a Kentucky fiddler, discards Ed Haley's Grey Eagle version in the key of C, for Benny Thomasson's version in A, and then records that version with Kentucky's Bill Monroe. This gives you an idea of the reach of Thomasson. All corners of the American fiddling he had a hand in. When I met all of the famous southern fiddlers and took lessons from them as a kid, like Howdy Forrester, Tommy Jarrell, Curly Fox, Tommy Jackson, Dale Potter, Benny Martin, Jerry Rivers and more. They would always ask me to tell my teacher Benny hello. He was revered amongst the greatest fiddlers of the 1940s, 50s and 60s as THE greatest fiddler to ever pick up a bow. That is the truth! Mark O'Connor Justin Obviosly I have tons of favorite players! Do you have my "Heroes" album! Review who is on it... Earl Scruggs is the best bluegrass banjo player... but it should not take away from J.D Crowe or Bela Fleck... Not many people would hear of someone that was the best in something and look no further as you put forward here Justin. Becuase many of us fall in love with the greatest musicians of our time, of all time, and that love or inpsiration fuels us to look futher into the style of Texas fiddling or whatever the style is and find other greats. If it were not for Benny Thomasson, Texas fiddling would not have flourished beyond Texas, NM and Oklahoma and you may have never known it existed! I also would add myself in there as spreading Texas fiddling around to every corner of the country. It in part became known as "contest fiddling" because I won every contest around the country with it, Kentucky State, Tennessee Valley, OK state, Winfield, KS Canadian Nationals at Calgary. This was unheard of, Terry nor even Benny could not do that. I won contests including at bluegrass festivals, fiddle contests in the Northeast, Weiser when no Texan had won Wieser yet outside of Benny! When one considers greatness, one has to take all to account - and influence is a huge factor, success is a huge factor. Major Franklin, did not influence anyone of his generation or the next generation beyond the Texas border besides Dick Barrett. I knew Major, I knew Norman. I loved them. I am just simply trying to answer the man's question in this thread. I would also admit that in this new generation, it does seem that Major, Orville and so forth have become folk heroes. And that is a very good thing. I bring up Orville's name too as a Cherokee who greatly contributed to fiddling. I love them all... I am simply telling you is that Benny's peers judged him as the greatest fiddler to ever play, and that inlcuded all of the fiddlers you mentioned and a great many more! - even his rivals! And about myself... I beat every one of those Texas fiddlers repeatedly from my generation and the generatiion before as well. Hundreds of times... ! I entered something like 400 contests! And I don't believe I ever placed lower than 3rd in my contest career! We were judged by our peers. I recalled another contest with Terry Morris and I from my last entry, so it was five contests total we competed in. He would try to avoid contests that he knew I was showing up at. Herman Johnson did the same! I placed over Terry 4 out of 5 times. The one of those I lost was Crocket, TX when I was just 14. And I was not allowed to play against him. as they elminated me early in the Junior round. People who attended Crocket in 1976 will still talk about that day, many of those Texans claim it was one of the saddest days in Texas fiddling contest history not to let the two young guns fight it out on stage at the great contest. This also should be common knowledge, but the best Texas fiddlers never came to Weiser becuase of one simple reason - me. As long as I was winning there, they did not want to make the trip and lose to me there, they just were not going to do it (Terry, Randy, Larry, none of those guys). So peope like Jimmy Don started coming to Weiser only after I retired from contests. But those are the facts, whether you like it or not! Look it up is all I got to say! Whether you want to change some of the influence now, it can't change history and it can't change what the very people you speak of thought contemporaneously to those times. It speaks volumes and should be remembered. I will have to write the dang book on those great days of fiddling becuase I can see it has gotten pretty distorted from the way it actually was and that would be a shame to change history becuase of a few people's changing tastes.
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