Bluegrass Now: Vassar, this article will be published in the April issue of Bluegrass Now, just in time for your 76th birthday!
Vassar Clements: Oh, I don't believe that's right! I think the doctor made a mistake on my birth certificate!

BN: What are you gonna do on your birthday?
VC: I'll be playing somewhere. Everyplace I go, they have a birthday party or something. They don't let me forget it!

BN: You first started messing around with a fiddle when you were seven. What kind of music did you listen to?
VC: We had a battery radio and you couldn't tell how long it was gonna last. I got to listen to 30 minutes of the Grand Ole Opry-when it would come in. Sometimes you could get it without too much static, and sometimes you couldn't. I'd always pick the Monroe part! That's what I liked about it so much.

BN: You name Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James as influences. All great swing kings.
VC: That's the kind of music we had down there [in Florida, where he was born]. I got to see Les Brown, and Artie Shaw. And I got to see one of Glenn Miller's bands later on. That was a thrill. The Big Bands, they had the horn section and everything. They had it written out, or maybe not. It made it easy, 'cause everybody had a part to do. When all those parts were put together, it made some of the best sound I ever heard.

When legendary guitarist Tony Rice learns that Vassar Clements will be the subject of an upcoming Bluegrass Now cover story, his response is immediate and enthusiastic.

“My hero!” he says.

Vassar's a hero to many musicians, including fiddler Darol Anger, who, like Rice, has recorded and performed with Vassar on a number of occasions. “I discovered fiddling through Richard Greene, and then I got into Byron Berline,” says Anger. “And then I heard Vassar, and I realized you can go to the center of everything with the fiddle. Vassar showed me that it's a path that can take you to the center of spirituality-of the world, of the universe.”

BN: According to history, you were fourteen when you got on a bus to go audition for Bill Monroe. You had a round-trip ticket and fifty cents in your pocket, and you lost your fiddle on the way. What do you remember about that audition?
VC: I went up there and I got the job. It was just plain luck. I went off at the bus station to get a sandwich, and I just had time to catch the bus, and a man said that my fiddle wasn't back there. There was nothing I could do if I wanted to go to Nashville. After I got there, Monroe let me use his brother's fiddle.

BN: Do you remember what you played?
VC: I played his tunes that Chubby [Wise, Monroe's fiddler from 1942-48] had played-“Footprints In The Snow,” and that kinda stuff. He asked me about four tunes. I copied Chubby, see, so Monroe liked that. He asked me if I knew any breakdowns, and I said, 'Like what?' I didn't know but one or two. He called off 'Orange Blossom Special.' And that's one I knew. Luckily, I hit it right on the head!

I learned a lot from Monroe. But let's face it: I was a mama's boy. I was born just before she was sixteen, and we just about grew up together. I stayed with Monroe a little while, and I'd catch a bus and go home. Then he'd need me for something, and maybe he would send me an airline ticket, and my mother'd let me go. That went on till I got out of school, and then I started with him what I would call regular.

BN: You took a leave of absence from the music industry for five years, between 1949 and '56. What did you do?
VC: Part of that was Army Paratroopers. Part of it was a drinking problem. I never quit playing, whether it was on the base or at home. I had different jobs doing things that were not musical. I'd always come home and pick the fiddle up, and go out that night and play. I was laying low for a few years. I got all of it beat with the good Lord's help. There's all kinda temptations, and in order to cope, you've just gotta keep your right mind. Luckily, with His help, I did.

They had me on orders to go to Korea, but I got sent to Germany. We played for the head of the Army over there. His daughter was having a birthday, so our sergeant got us together and we went and played that party. The general asked the sergeant if we wanted to be Special Services. Of course, we all did! Later on, I found out that when he was out on maneuvers, he'd always go back to the Jeep to listen to our show on the radio over there--he'd never miss one.

BN: How many jumps did you make, over the course of your time in the Army?
VC: I think it was around 42. Way too many! It got worse every time. First time was the easiest 'cause I didn't know what was gonna happen.

Like many in the bluegrass community, Tony Rice first became aware of the innovative excitement of Vassar Clements' style in the early 1970s, when the fiddler was playing with John Hartford and his Dobrolic Plectral Society. Hartford's seminal Aereo-Plain album, recorded spontaneously without any arrangements, featured Norman Blake, Tut Taylor, Randy Scruggs, and Vassar. “I heard it and thought, 'Where did this guy come from?” Rice remembers. “Where did anybody come from able to play fiddle like this?”

Rice was familiar with Vassar's work with Bill Monroe and Jim & Jesse in the '50s and '60s, but this was something completely different. “Vassar took a hiatus of quite a few years. Then all the sudden he comes out of nowhere, playing with this bunch of wild hippies. Everybody's mouths were dropping open at this guy's musicianship. And the sound coming out of his fiddle was just . . . I still can't describe it. There's no words to describe how good it was.”

BN: The Dobrolic Plectral Society earned huge recognition and popularity, but disbanded after only ten months. Why?
VC: They were doing great things, but the money wasn't all that great. John should have been playing in bigger places, because at that time he was well-known. The funds wasn't there to keep the band going, because he had us all on salary, whether we was working or not. And we flew everywhere we went. It just took a lot of money.

BN: You set the world on fire with Aereo-Plain. Your fiddling had evolved into something progressive and new. What brought about the evolution?
VC: Well, it was a different type of music. All this stuff was in my mind. 'Course, playing with Bill Monroe, I didn't know enough. I knew this was in there, but I couldn't enter it into the dyed-in-the-wool bluegrass. When I got with John, he just turned me loose on anything. So I began to spread out into other things I never would have thought about. And the more you spread out, the more you think of. Over the years, I've been blessed enough to play with a lot of different people and a lot of different music. So I was always ready to do that, not knowing if I could or not, but wanting to take a chance. I've learned lots of things like that.

I try different things and I'm lost all the time. I'm hunting everything that I'm doing. I get caught out on a limb, and luckily, before it breaks off, maybe I can get back. Used to, I could remember and say, 'What was that I did?' But I can't remember to play the same thing twice.

BN: You don't ever get so far off that limb that you can't get back elegantly, and eloquently.
VC: Everybody says that, but boy, I really feel, inside, like I am lost as I don't know what. If they'll hum the beginning, if it's a tune I haven't played in a long time, I'll remember that, and hopefully the end. But in the middle, I have no earthly idea.

BN: Where do you suppose it comes from?
VC: The Man Upstairs, I think.

He is a fiddler whose versatility and innovation are universally admired by his peers. Yet Vassar Clements doesn't read music. “He doesn't even read charts!” marvels Darol Anger. “I think I've explained to him twice now the difference between a note and an interval, and he still doesn't get it! It doesn't matter to him. That's another thing everybody has to remember. It's great to study music, but the more you study, the more you have to remind yourself that music is sound. It's emotion. It's communicating.”

“Vassar has an ability to play over a really complex set of chord changes, real fast-he thinks so fast!” says Tony Rice. “There's rarely anything you could thow at him that he can't improvise over. A really good example is a couple of tunes on Me And My Guitar [Rice's 1984 album]. He had never played them before in his life, and the first time he played 'em-that's the released version. One of 'em is 'Tipper'. He had never played that solo before, and the one he played the first time is the one that's on the tape. Another one is 'Port Tobacco.' There's a tune on Cold On Shoulder [released in 1986] called 'I Think It's Gonna Rain Today.' Well, the first time Vassar played that, that's what's on there. These are complex tunes. You've gotta have a millisecond thought process to be able to change from one chord to the next without screwing it up. That level of musicianship boggles the imagination.”

BN: Can you believe it's been 30 years since you appeared in Nashville, the Robert Altman film?
VC: I can't believe that! It doesn't seem like that long. Robert Altman, we became good friends. Years after that, we'd go up to New York and see him and some of the people that was in the movie at that place that had the iguana on top of it--the Lone Star in Greenwich Village. If he was in town, they'd all come up there and see me. It was a blast.

BN: You've worked with musicians from diverse genres, including Linda Ronstadt, Paul McCartney, the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Buffett, the Allman Brothers . . . Whose musicianship and sensibilities surprised you most?
VC: A lot of people ask me that, and there's really no answer. There's a lot of things stick out in my mind. Everything was good. I've enjoyed everything I've done, and I wouldn't change it. Even people like Spinal Tap!

BN: You've worked with Spinal Tap?!?
VC: I just did a show out here in Nashville with them. But it was so loud, I couldn't tell what the music sounded like! It was an experience! You should have seen me that day. I didn't know they were supposed to come out on cables and slings and stuff like that. It was in the act, and I didn't know. I was gonna be Mr. Good Guy, and I went over to the soundboard and said, 'Bring the mic down a little bit, 'cause they can't hear it!' And everybody fell out. Man, they thought I knew what was going on!

BN: They didn't make you wear anything funny, did they?
VC: Oh, no. They tried to give me earplugs, and I'm sorry I didn't take 'em! When they hit that first note, the electricity went from the top of my head to my feet. I never heard anything that loud.

BN: You play violin, viola, cello, bass, mandolin, guitar and tenor banjo. Do you still mess around with them, or are you mostly a fiddle man these days?
VC: I just mostly fool with the fiddle. I cut my finger off on the lawnmower, my little finger on my left hand. But they put it back on, and it worked. They said it wouldn't, but it did. That made me quit fretted instruments for a long time. I think now I can get back to mandolins maybe. The frets on instruments really tears me up, you know?

“What attracted me most to Vassar's playing was the fact that he wasn't afraid to step outside the norm and play anything,” says Tony Rice. “Thank God I had him as a hero, because otherwise I quite possibly wouldn't have learned to do that myself-to experiment on the fly. I'll spend of my life thanking him for the contribution he has made to music, and the way it has influenced my own musicianship for over three decades. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be playing a guitar the way I do.”

It's only been a month since Rice last played with Vassar, at luthier Randy Wood's venue down near Savannah, GA, and the experience is still fresh in his mind. “Vassar Clements is such a master musician; he's way beyond anybody else I've ever heard. I'm one of those guys that like to watch the whole spectacle of this musician. The way he shows up at the gig, the way he handles his fiddle, takes it out of the case and tunes it up and runs over a few little things, just noodling around--all that is equally valid to a performance that's really good. The slightest sound out of his instrument has an extreme amount of value.”

“He's the soul of a lot of this music,” comments Darol Anger. “It's hard to say enough about him. I think anybody would do well to aspire to what Vassar does, in any way. Put your entire self out there, and do it as good as you can.”

BN: What is your most vivid memory of Will The Circle Be Unbroken [the classic 1972 recording by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a guest list that included Mother Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Jimmy Martin, Merle Travis, Doc Watson, and Vassar]?
VC: Having everybody there. That, and being on all the sessions except Merle Travis'. I was out of town when that happened. I wish I'd been there! But lucky enough to get all the session work, and getting to play with people I'd never played with, except maybe around the Opry, just jamming. You never know when you're doing anything like that what's going to happen or how far it's going. It was just a lot of fun.

BN: You provided vocals on your 1988 recording New Hillbilly Jazz. Why don't you sing more?
VC: My daughter told me I couldn't sing. Who am I to argue with Midge? I'm just kiddin'! If I'm in a place where I have to sing, I go ahead and do it. It's like playing: you have to do it all the time, and I just don't.

BN: Whose idea was it to do Old And In The Grey [the 2002 follow-up of the musical adventures of Old And In The Way, a band that consisted of Vassar, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, and John Kahn]?
VC: Well, I'd been trying to talk 'em into it for I don't know how many years, even before Jerry [Garcia] passed away. We were getting ready, and he went in the hospital and didn't make it. And it just didn't happen. Finally they said, 'Let's go and we'll do another album.'

BN: Did you feel that Jerry would have been right at home with the material?
VC: Oh, yeah. Right after he passed away, we did that show in California. When we got on that stage, it felt like Garcia was there, 'cause Herb started walking over toward me, like Garcia always did. I was backing up from the mic, and I was seeing him coming, and it put cold chills on me. I could just see the way we used to be, and this was the first time in many years that we got together and did this. It was a weird, eerie feeling, believe me. And still, to this day, when we're onstage, I can feel part of that.

BN: You've written some really extraordinary instrumentals, like 'Lonesome Fiddle Blues' and 'Kissimmee Kid'. Which do you think will have the longest legs?
VC: I think 'Lonesome Fiddle Blues,' and I almost believe 'Kissimmee Kid.' I'm not sure about the rest of 'em, because they haven't been to the place where enough people has heard them yet. But the good Lord willin', I'm gonna build me a compilation of everything I've ever played, that I'll redo again, so they'll be out there where people can hear them. That's what I want to do. I've talked to Matt Glaser; he teaches at Berklee [School of Music], and he's followed me ever since he was a kid. If anybody can find all the tunes that I've ever written, he can do it! He's working on that now, and he wants to be part of the project. At least I'll know what I've done! It's gonna be a big project.

Not long ago, Darol Anger spent some time with Vassar Clements, talking fiddle: What's going on with this interval? What do you play over this chord? How's this work? Banjo legend Earl Scruggs was also at the same event with guest guitarist Bryan Sutton. “Bryan said, 'Yeah, it's been really great on the bus, because Earl gets in a certain mood, and he'll start talking about the old days, and it's so cool!'” Darol reports. “And I'm thinking: 'I've been hanging out with Vassar Clements! We never talk about the old days!' Vassar's totally in the moment. He's completely present for you, all the time. He's totally alive. I don't think Vassar will ever be done.”

“He's way beyond anybody else I've ever heard. Still is, to this day,” concurs Tony Rice. “He hasn't sagged a bit. The older he gets, the better he gets. Just the fact that he can play over lightning-fast, complicated chord changes . . .” Rice pauses, remembering the music with amazement. “He's got a magic touch.”

BN: Let's talk about your fiddle.
VC: A guy by the name of Duiffoprugcar made the violin, and it goes back to the 1500s, before Strad or Amati. I can't find much information on him. I think he was a German that migrated to Cremona, Italy, the prestigious place to make fiddles. He wouldn't sell his instruments; he'd build 'em for people who would play in big events, and give it to 'em. To me, it's one of a kind. You can tell it when you hear it. I don't care how many fiddles is around; you can tell that one.

BN: I understand you got this fiddle from John Hartford.
VC: We were playing Bean Blossom, Monroe's festival, in 1970 or '71, somewhere around there. A guy brought it over to John, and asked him did he want to buy it. It didn't have a thing on it-not the fingerboard, not the tailpiece, nothing. But it had that head carving, the head on the scroll. I said, 'How much did he want?' And John said '$325.' I said, 'Well, if you buy it, I'll pay you back when we get to Nashville.' He said, 'You probably won't like it. They say these pretty fiddles don't sound good. They said people have tried this fiddle; it just doesn't work.' He wouldn't take any money for it. He called me up a year or two later--him and his wife Marie was over in Hawaii--and he said, 'What do you want for Christmas?' I said, 'Just you callin' is enough.' And he kept on: 'No, really!' And it dawned on me. I said, 'Are you talking about the fiddle?' He said, 'How'd you know? I think the fiddle was meant for you, so you got it.'

“When Hartford gave that fiddle to him, it sounded like shit!” says Tony Rice. “What's amazing is without any serious overhaul, Vassar played that tone into that fiddle, in the same way that Clarence [White] and I played that tone into the D-28 that I've got.”

It seems almost supernatural, the way a musical instrument, an inanimate object, can change in the hands of the person who plays it. “Vassar took that to the extreme,' Rice says. “That fiddle will jar your teeth, when you're standing next to him and he's playing. That fiddle is so deep and loud. With his bowing technique, and the way he plays, you get the sensation that the fiddle is not gonna be able to hold together, that it's vibrating so wildly that it's just gonna fall apart!”

BN: How's your fiddle holding up these days?
VC: Holding up real good.

BN: And how are you, Vassar? You're 75, and in great shape! What's your secret?
VC: I don't know. The good Lord just takes care of all of us. I feel real good.

BN: What event or accomplishment in your career has been the most meaningful?
VC: Oh, I guess . . . recording for people that maybe can't afford to hire somebody, and spending time with people that's just starting. I stay pretty busy now, but if anybody wants to learn anything, and they're around me, I'll show 'em everything I know, 'cause it's a compliment for me for somebody to want to learn it. I'd stay up all night with somebody that needed two chords. Things like that make me feel real good. That I'm still doing this makes me feel real good. And I will be like that as long as I live, I guess, and I'm able to keep learning.

BN: Are you still learning, then?
VC: Oh, yeah. I'd learn in five lifetimes, if I had 'em to live.

Visit Vassar on the Web at www.vassarclements.com.

EPILOGUE: Sadly, Vassar's good health, which we discussed during this interview, did not last. In March of 2005, about a year after this article was published, he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

On August 16, 2005, Vassar Clements passed away.

Caroline Wright is a freelance writer. She can be reached at c@wrightforyou.com.