Bluegrass Unlimited , May 1999

Fred Bartenstein: The Right Place at the Right Time

Kurt Mosser

Fred Bartenstein has always seemed to find himself perfectly situated to pursue his life-long interest in bluegrass musicÑas he puts it, "I've always seemed to be in the right place at the right time." This luck has allowed him to find bluegrass in the most surprising places, whether at a private day school in New Jersey, or at Harvard University in the late 1960s. It has also meant that, among other things, he found himself at what was one of the first true bluegrass festivals, dj-ing bluegrass shows at the age of 15, starting the Muleskinner News, and playing rhythm guitar and singing with a long list of pickers, from Don Stover and John Hartford to Frank Wakefield and Dorsey Harvey. The 48-year old Bartenstein started listening to music very young, and has never stopped: he has heard and seen a whole lot of music, and any bluegrass fan will find his story well worth hearing.

Fred grew up with a rich musical background, with a father and an uncle who had a guitar-mandolin duo on Wildcat Mountain in Northern Virginia; as Fred puts it, "while my father understood and appreciated the music, my maternal grandmother genuinely liked it"; a cousin from Tennessee taught him the songs of the Carter Family and other classic country tunes. Fred recalls that his love for traditional music was expressed early: "when asked in first grade, during a visit to radio station WREL in Lexington Virginia, what kind of music I liked, I immediately replied: 'mountain music!'" Fred remembers listening every morning to Red Smiley and the Bluegrass Cut-Ups on WDBJ-TV, in Roanoke Virginia: "Red Smiley was my hero." Perhaps most crucial in Fred's musical education was a pathbreaking concert in 1962, in New York City's Madison Square Garden. "It had the whole cast of the Grand Ole Opry, everyone from the Wheeling Jamboree, Texas musicians, California musicians, Canadian musiciansÑjust about everyone seemed to be there, each playing one or two songs. My Dad had told me that if there was somebody who I really liked, he would buy me his record. When a guitar player came out with his Martin guitar and a great fiddle playerÑwhich turned out to be Hank Snow and the Rainbow Ranch Boys, with Chubby WiseÑI thought I had my guy. But then a little later, a gentleman came out carrying what looked like a ukulele, hit a couple of quick notes and started singing 'Good Morning, Captain.' I turned to my Dad and said 'that's it!' That's how I was introduced to Bill Monroe." Fred remembers nostalgically that he could go to the local drugstore back then and find those recordsÑMonroe, Flatt and Scruggs, the Carter Family, the Stanley Brothers.

Bartenstein himself seems somewhat surprised at the fact that at Pingry School, a private high school in Elizabeth, New Jersey, one could find two bluegrass bands. When Fred graduated in 1968, "it was the only time a private school in New Jersey could claim to have a bluegrass scene. There wasn't one there before, and there hasn't been one since." During those years, Fred came to learn of the many players in and around New York City, meeting, talking with, and playing with the various musicians one could hear in Washington Square: Pete Wernick, David Grisman, Bob Applebaum, David Bromberg, Kenny Kosek, Winnie Winston, Tex Logan, and others. Graduating from high school, Fred found himself living and working in a public housing project in Newark New Jersey, driving at night to New York's famous Gerde's Folk City to play with the Greenbriar Boys, which included Frank Wakefield and Joe Isaacs. It was during this time that, under the name "Joe Isaacs and the Lonesome Drifters" that Wakefield and Isaacs, along with Bartenstein, Richard Greene, and Kevin Smythe, recorded an album that wasn't released until 1981.

Less surprising was Fred's decision to attend Harvard University. "My decision on where to go to college was based entirely on bluegrass. My most compelling reason to go to Harvard was that Boston had a thriving bluegrass scene, and none of my other choices could say that. At that time, the Lilly Brothers had been playing at Boston's Hillbilly Ranch for some 20 years; playing around town as well were Bill Keith, Peter Rowan, the Charles River Valley Boys, Joe Val, and many others. It was a strange time to be doing bluegrass, but then as now, it was my community; it was a college subculture among the bright kids, and compared to the drug scene, it was a healthier, smarter, and generally a much better alternative." Again finding himself in the right place to be playing bluegrass, Fred sat in with the Lilly Brothers on Bea Lilly's night off, as well as playing with Don Stover's White Oak Mountain Boys. He also played a good deal with Richie Brown: a dentist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Brown was "a good mandolin player, and the only African-American bluegrass musician I've ever played with or known."

Fred moved to Dayton Ohio in 1975, explaining "I needed to be in a good bluegrass scene," and found it in Dayton, which at the time had a wide variety of excellent pickers in and around the area. After playing around in bars with Jack Lynch, Fred joined John Hartford to play a cruise on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers on the Delta Queen, along with Katy Laur and Doug Dillard. He then played some seven years with Dorsey Harvey. "We were a good local bluegrass band in a good bluegrass market, playing nightclubs, country clubs, and everywhere in between around Dayton, sometimes venturing down to Cincinnati." While Dayton might not boast the talent it once did, Bartenstein points to such players as Red Allen, the Allen Brothers, Noah Crase, Paul Mullins, Harley Gabbard, Dave Evans, and Earl Taylor as carrying on a rich tradition. When Doug Dillard asked Fred to accompany him on a tour of Europe, Fred realized he had to make a decision. "I could make a living as a musician, but I knew I would never be a great musician. I had a new job in the Dayton City Manager's office, and I decided bluegrass was not going to be my career." After Harvey's death in the 1980s, Fred took some time off from playing, but has recently begun again, laying down rhythm and vocal tracks with a Dayton banjo player (see "Robert Leach: Ohio's Elusive Banjo Man," Bluegrass Unlimited May 1998) and performing at social occasions.

Fred likes to point out that in the church choir he's a tenor, and will usually sing lead in a bluegrass band; one can hear Fred on record, singing "Wild Bill Jones" on Vassar Clements' album "Crossing the Catskills," and singing "I Hope You Have Learned" on Del McCoury's "Livin' on the Mountain." And though he decided against a career as a professional musician, Bartenstein has hardly failed to stay in close contact with the bluegrass community, and has recently returned to a first loveÑplaying music on the radio. At the age of 15, Fred could be found playing bluegrass on WREL out of Lexington Virginia, as well as doing everything else, from spinning rock 'n roll 45s to giving the farm report. Among other places, Fred has had a radio show playing country music with Bill Vernon on WBAI in New York City, a Saturday afternoon folk music show for Classical FM station WDHA in Dover New Jersey (which he turned into a pure bluegrass show), and helped with "Hillbilly at Harvard" on WHRB. More recently, he has had a Sunday night bluegrass show on Dayton's WONE, and from 1985 to 1992 could be found on a variety of WYSO's public radio shows, such as "Faded Love," "the Country Music College of the Air," and "Bluegrass Countdown." Along the way, Fred has accumulated a collection of recordings that would be the envy of many a radio station, of bluegrass, country, and old time music from the 1920's to the present. Since November of 1997, Fred has worked for Joe Mullins's WBZI, doing a Saturday morning bluegrass show. "Nowhere else can I play whatever I want to and only what I want toÑwhich means outstanding bluegrass music for a well-informed audience. Many members of my audience are migrants from Kentucky and Tennessee, and they have excellent taste in bluegrass." He lists the kinds of requests his listeners makeÑBlue Highway, Bobby Hicks, Rob Ickes, Allison Krauss's "So Long, So Wrong," Longview, the Del McCoury Band, Ricky Skaggs's "Bluegrass Rules," the "True Life Blues" tribute to Bill MonroeÑand explains that it is this kind of music that makes him excited about getting to the microphone each Saturday morning.

No discussion of Fred's lifelong involvement with country music in general, and bluegrass music in particular, would be complete without considering his early role in what has become the classic bluegrass event: the festival. "I was working on a survey crew in Lexington in 1965, when I heard on the radio that there was going to be a big bluegrass festival at Cantrell's Horse Park in Fincastle, Virginia. Freddy Goodhart, an old friend, drove me down with my Gibson J-50." The first night Fred remembers sitting around picking with some other musiciansÑat what was probably the first festival jam sessionÑwhen a drunk stumbled up and pulled a gun on him and Goodhart. "He said 'play "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," and if I don't like the way you play it, I'll blow your head off!' He must have liked the way we played it, because he gave us a beer afterward."

This Labor Day festival, organized by Carlton Haney, moved in 1967 to Berryville, Virginia; Fred recalls a New England couple on their honeymoon letting him sleep in their car. One moment from the 1966 festival remains especially vivid to this day: "Bill Monroe and the Osborne Brothers were singing 'I Hear a Sweet Voice Calling,' and something almost indescribable happened: no one could move, and a complete stillness came over the entire audience, after which Bill and the rest of us broke into tears. It was a transcendent moment that couldn't be captured on tape, but anyone there will remember it." In 1966, Carlton Haney let Fred sleep in the medical tent behind the stage. The second night Haney was called away for personal reasons, and FredÑagain in the right place at the right timeÑfound himself being awakened by Dick Freeland of Rebel Records, asking Fred to help emcee the show that day. When Haney returned, he discovered that the shows were running on time, largely due to the energy brought to the task by the 16-year-old Bartenstein, and offered Fred a seasonal position helping with the festivals. In 1969, the festival again moved, to Camp Springs North Carolina. From 1969 to 1974, Fred would move each summer to live at Camp Springs full time, running various festivals for Haney, as well as for Mac Wiseman, the Country Gentlemen, and Jim Clark's "Peace Love and Bluegrass" festivals, serving as the program director, emceeing throughout the weekend, on occasion running the sound as well. Even after moving to Dayton, Bartenstein would still return to run a few festivals each summer. "Bluegrass music had just been kicked out of country music at the time of that first festival. We all felt in '65 that we were attending an Irish wake for bluegrass: for Monroe, the Stanleys, Jimmy Martin, Don Reno, Red Smiley, and Mac Wiseman." Fortunately, things turned out much differently.

It was at Haney's festival that Bartenstein, then a college student at Harvard, along with Kathy Kaplan, produced the festival program that soon became the bimonthly Muleskinner News, which Fred edited throughout his college years. (One can see a picture of Fred selling the News at Jim Clark's Culpepper Festival in Neil Rosenberg's definitive Bluegrass: A History.) The News offered a variety of information to the bluegrass fan, from interviewing various artists and introducing up-and-coming stars, to offering valuable discussions of the historical background of bluegrass, as well as providing as complete as possible a list of future appearances and festivals. In its time the News served a valuable role, complementary to Bluegrass Unlimited, but after Fred left his position as Managing Editor in January of 1975, the magazine appeared less frequently, finally ceasing publication in 1976.

Bartenstein's unique background gives him a valuable perspective on the history of bluegrass music and on where it might be headed. Those of his generation help connect the older and younger eras of bluegrassÑthey've gotten to see Bill Monroe at his peak, while also having the chance to see contemporary talent emerge from the enormous shadow Monroe cast. Born in Virginia, where he spent the summers of his childhood, Fred also has lived in New York, Boston, and other big urban centers; Harvard-educated, he is also keenly aware of both the history and the sources of country music. Older and younger, Southern and Northern, college and grassrootsÑ"it's the music itself that always remains important. No matter what tensions, or even conflicts, one might see between all of these parts of my life, it has always been the music that has served as the bridge between them." Raised in a family that stressed education and ambition, but always drawn to bluegrass and its emotional content, Fred concedes that his co-workers in the Dayton Police Department may have been right when they told him he was "a cross between Walter Cronkite and Tammy Wynette." But as Fred notes, he couldn't have survived without that high lonesome sound, and it appears that the phase his family keeps waiting for him to go through isn't passing anytime soon: "when I can't walk, I'll be listening to those same records, the classic core country stuffÑMonroe, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Porter Wagoner." Along the way, Fred has been helped enormously by his wife, Joy. "We attend concerts together, and listen to the music together: she's my best critic, and helps me program cuts for my radio show." Fred and Joy, along with their two daughtersÑneither, Fred admits, bitten by the bluegrass bugÑlive in Yellow Springs, Ohio, home of the first bluegrass college concert in 1960.

How does Bartenstein identify the music that counts, that resonates and survives? "I don't think there is any need to go into the controversy around the question of what 'bluegrass' is. I ask myself: Does it melt titanium? Does it make a difference to the soul? I don't build strong walls, but I do think you have to pay attention to the source of the power that is there." The recent music Fred has been listening to gives him a great feeling of optimism: "My soul is beginning again to be satisfied."

Fred admires those who resisted what he calls "the dry spell of the 1970s"Ñthe Johnson Mountain Boys, Del McCoury, Hot Rize, the Nashville Bluegrass BandÑand played music that was "consistently listenable." He is even more enthusiastic about the music that has emerged after the passing of Bill Monroe. "There is a new revitalization going on in bluegrass. The death of Bill Monroe released energy and passion, that like an exploding star, freed up those fires that are now burning so brightly." Bartenstein points to Ricky Skaggs' "Bluegrass Rules" as a prime example. "It's like the National Bureau of Standards, or the meter bar in Paris: it serves as a standard for bluegrass. He performs and interprets the canon, but doesn't add much and doesn't take anything away. It is the kind of recording that will enter into a bluegrass fan's permanent collection and stand the test of time."

"I've been accused of being 'obsessed' with the music, Fred notes. "But bluegrass is like a religion. You may have to give up a little, or sacrifice enormously, to live that religion, to live for bluegrass. Bill Monroe had a sound he had to make, which explains the singular passion that held him in its grip. You don't play the music you do primarily for fame, or to make money: it is simply because it is the music you have to make." In reflecting on his 40-plus years listening to, playing, organizing, and writing about country music and bluegrass, Fred observes "Some part of me is a bluegrass true believer. I'm like a plant that hasn't had sufficient soil for 25 years. But I'm optimistic that I'm getting it now, and my soul is starting to be nurtured and renewed again."