In 2018, Matt Combs, Katie Harford Hogue, and Greg Reish completed a truly mammoth project, John Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes, including original tunes, the musical notation works of art, rendered by the hand of the late musical icon taken from his collection of notebooks, along with photos and stories and Hartford’s charming drawings.
While the book is certainly a feast for the eyes, and the stories evoke memories and reveal much about Hartford’s life, the songs represent an untapped treasure. During his life, Hartford had recorded only 17 of the 176 tunes in the book. To bring from the page to the air, Combs and Eric and Katie Harford Hogue put together a Kickstarter project to make recordings of an additional 17 songs for The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project, Vol. I. for a lucky March Friday the 13th release.
The performers selected to bring the songs to life are all talented musicians influenced by John Hartford’s music. The list reads like a Who’s Who of Old-Time, Bluegrass, and Roots music. In addition to Combs, the recording features such well- known names as Ronnie McCoury, Sierra Hull, Alison Brown, and Tim O’Brien. The other musicians are no less talented or recognized in their field: Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, Mike Compton, Megan Lynch Chowning, Dennis Crouch and so many more.
The selections for the first recording represent the breadth of Hartford’s music, waltzes and hornpipes, songs that belong at square dances and late-night jams.
While most of the selections are instrumental, Tom O’Brien sings on “The Old Man’s Drunk, and the quirky song, “On Guitars, The Ends of New Fingers Get Sore,” with a distinct old-time flavor. “Old Beveled Mirror” is another departure from the body of fiddle tunes, rendered by Sierra Hull as a beautiful mandolin solo.
The narrative from the book provides some background to many of the tunes, including “Don Brown and the Boys,” a tip of the hat to Hartford’s time playing with Don Brown and Norman Ford in the Ozark Mountain Trio in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.
While both can easily stand alone, music lovers will find the book a perfect companion for the CD. In his carefully crafted manuscript, Hartford not only rendered the notation for each song, but dated each piece and noted the location where he created the tune. (He marked the songs he wrote at home simply with a lowercase hor Mile 200.8, the location of his home on the Cumberland River he so loved.)
Though it appears in the early pages of the book, “Evening Farewell” provides a poignant, tender close to the recording, and as the music ends, listeners can certainly be hopeful that “Vol. I” suggests the likelihood of additional recordings to follow. In the meantime, musicians can take their instruments out of their cases and start learning a new set of old fiddle tunes.
