“I moved to Chicago for Major League Baseball, I might leave for the same reason.” – Jethro Burns
If you spy a copy of the rather expensive magazine Fretboard Journal, there’s a lovely, long article about Jethro Burns in it. Good stories from Sam Bush and Don Stiernberg, among others.
If you have not heard it, you should seek out the album Jethro made with Tony Moore (of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys). Sweet picking. Naturally, I’m inclined to fandom of Jethro, but on that album I have to say that Tony’s fluid, tasty solos make Jethro’s sound kind of mechanical.
My favorite quote from Jethro in the story is “I moved to Chicago for major league baseball; I may leave for the same reason.”
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To which EastPortlandBlog duly responded:
Your message is a positive serendipity as I’ve been thinking a lot about Jethro lately. I will search for this article and disc.
Jethro wandered into my constant internal dialogue about music and history, personal and global, in the last few weeks while listening to Elvis’s weaker post 1960 material. My favorite Jethro quote was always the not quite believable line, “I wouldn’t trade the laughs I’ve had for the money some guys have got.”
I remembered from Guralnick’s second Elvis book that Chet Atkins, head of A and R for Elvis– the dream gig of a lifetime– didn’t like Elvis or understand his popularity. Eventually Chet Atkins assigned Elvis over to somebody else. This doesn’t make Chet Atkins a bad person– though nice people don’t succeed in the music business, particularly in A and R– but it does seem that, despite the fact that Chet was out of touch with his biggest moneymaker, and the growth sector of the industry, he still made an empire’s worth of money and prestige for himself.
I realized that Jethro was probably not talking obliquely about “some guys” and their money, but may have been talking specifically about his brother in law, Chet Atkins. Jethro may not have believed, deep down, that Chet deserved his empire of money, while Jethro– well respected, but unremunerated– drank Lite beer in his Evanston empire of post post hippie cool.
JB was probably also referring to Bill Monroe, whom he did not like and did not respect as a musician. Jethro mellowed with age, at least enough to allow him share a stage with Monroe. However, Jethro mentioned that Monroe had also gotten nicer as he got older, because he had to. When BM aged and younger guys could trounce him, he had to learn diplomacy. Young, cocky Bill, commander of an ascendant Bluegrass Boys, must have been big and mean, a bully pushing around shortish Homer and Jethro, funnymen whose superior jazzgrass skills were never acknowledged, by Monroe or the world. As for Monroe’s mandolin ability, Jethro said there were five guys on his block in Knoxville who could play circles around BM. JB had been gone from Knoxville 40 years when he said that. Either Knoxville had many eight string playas back in the day or, more likely, Jethro believed Monroe wasn’t very good at all.
I also wonder if Jethro’s wife Gussie and her sister, who married Chet Atkins, were country music groupies ala Miss Pamela Des Barres and rock’n roll. They musta been hot.
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By way of benediction, BernardStreetCred capped it off with the following:
There is some stuff in the article about Jethro’s feelings about Monroe, and it even mentions the concert in Evanston we saw where they played together.
YouTubing Jethro leads to a lot of Chet, with his rictus smile, which in turn leads to some tasty picking with Jerry Reed:
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Or
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Still, I can help but like Chet for cutting this song:
Shit gets me ever single fucking time.
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And as long as we’re in a sentimental mood, this one (written by JR) changed my opinion of Jerry:
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Please post anything and everything.
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