Tape Spotlight: Taylor and Blake Deliver Solid Gold
Welcome to the first installment of our SPPS Tape Spotlight series, where we illuminate a choice holding in our collection!
This week, we’d like to draw your attention to the Tut Taylor Collection, tape #78. On March 25, 1999, Tut Taylor and Norman Blake performed an in-studio (well, more accurately, an “in-kitchen” at host Earl’s place) for an Eastern Tennessee-based internet radio program on SolidGoldBluegrass.com. Blake plays a 1929 Gibson Nick Lucas Special guitar (to which Taylor says in the introduction, “Just grit yer teeth and hang on!”), and Taylor plays one of his own Tutbro resonator guitars. The two are joined by Laura Walker (of The Dismembered Tennesseans, a band that also features Blake’s old picking partner Ed ‘Doc’ Cullis on banjo) for a couple tunes, her sweet vocals shining on The Stanley Brother’s “Could You Love Me One More Time,” and Blake’s then-unreleased “Just Another Faded Love Song.”
Besides the stellar picking, which features some wonderfully textured interplay between Blake and Taylor, there are some grin-inducing asides here. Taylor is in an especially feisty mood, declaring, “Two years ago, I couldn’t even spell computer, now I’m playing on one!” and jokingly attributing his new-found technological skills to having discovered computerized ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ There is also a very touching tribute to the late great Charles Sawtelle, who had passed a few days before this recording. Blake dedicates Roy Acuff’s “Lay My Old Guitar Away” to him, noting that, “Charlie loved guitars and music and all that. It’s what it’s all about.” Featuring some well-loved classics and original material, this inviting session from two old friends really is ‘solid gold. ‘
Audio
Track Listing:
Radio Intro, with Instrument Descriptions
Sweet Heaven>Bringing in the Georgia Mail
Could You Love Me One More Time
Whiskey Before Breakfast (Blake solo)
Unknown Instrumental (Taylor Solo)
Special thanks to our researcher and historian Mitch Wittenberg
