Hat tip, the 6:00 a.m. ABC news on WTOP radio this morning.
Mac Wiseman, Bluegrass Star Who Was More Than That, Dies at 93
Feb. 25, 2019
Mac Wiseman, the bluegrass balladeer and guitar player known as “the Voice With a Heart,” whose hallmark was crossing musical genre lines, died on Sunday in Nashville. He was 93. ... The cause was kidney failure, his companion and caregiver, Janie Boyd, said.
Mr. Wiseman first made his mark in the 1940s playing with bluegrass legends, first as a founding member of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Boys, and then with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys.
As a sometime lead singer with Monroe’s group, Mr. Wiseman was featured on classics like “Can’t You Hear Me Callin’ ” and “Travelin’ This Lonesome Road.” He appeared as a headlining act on the bluegrass circuit in the 1950s and ’60s. ... But his musical instincts were always too wide-ranging to rest comfortably within the sometimes hermetic confines of bluegrass.
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Mr. Wiseman’s biggest hits as a solo artist were “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” in 1955 and “Jimmy Brown, the Newsboy” in 1959, both of which reached the Top 10 of the country chart. His other early successes included interpretations of songs like “Love Letters in the Sand,” which had been a No. 1 pop hit for Pat Boone, and “I Wonder How the Old Folks Are at Home,” a parlor favorite recorded by the Carter Family.
Mr. Wiseman’s signature song, “ ’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered,” was written in 1902, and his version owed as much to vintage pop and swing music as it did to country or bluegrass. “ ’Tis sweet to be remembered, on a bright or a gloomy day / ’Tis sweet to be remembered, by a dear one far away,” he crooned in a limpid tenor in the song’s waltzing chorus.
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Robert Shelton of The New York Times, reviewing an appearance by Mr. Wiseman at Carnegie Hall in 1962, wrote that he “used the penetrating, driving idiom of the bluegrass vocal leader in a most winning fashion.” Sharing the bill that evening were Mother Maybelle Carter, Johnny Cash and other popular country and bluegrass entertainers.
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Correction: Feb. 25, 2019
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the instrument Mr. Wiseman played; it was the guitar, not the banjo. And it misstated the surname of his companion and caregiver. It is Janie Boyd, not Boy.
Obituaries
Mac Wiseman, bluegrass performer of wide-ranging talent, dies at 93
By Terence McArdle
February 25 at 7:00 PM
Mac Wiseman, a bluegrass singer known for his smooth, mellifluous tenor and whose collaborators ranged from Bill Monroe to John Prine, died Feb. 24 in Antioch, Tenn. He was 93. ... The cause was kidney failure, said a family friend, Laura White.
A portly singer with an ingratiating grin, Mr. Wiseman was once dubbed by a disc jockey “the voice with a heart” for the nimble quality and rich texture of his voice. In classic bluegrass music, his approach was warmer than the keening styles of Monroe or Ralph Stanley. Though inarguably a traditionalist, he also recorded — to the consternation of purists — commercial country music with pedal steel guitars and even pop songs with choirs.
Mr. Wiseman sang lead on Monroe’s “Travelin’ Down This Lonesome Road” (1949), recorded with Flatt and Scruggs, and was most identified with the bluegrass gospel standard, “Tis Sweet To Be Remembered,” which he first recorded in 1951.
That year, he started his own band, the Country Boys, which included stalwart instrumentalists such as banjoist Eddie Adcock. He recorded a string of hit singles for Nashville’s Dot Records including the ballad “I Still Write Your Name in the Sand” (1952) and up-tempo barn burners such as “Goin’ Like Wildfire” and “Crazy Blues,” both from 1954.
Working as the record label’s country artist and repertoire man, he produced other acts such as Reno & Smiley as well as Cowboy Copas. ... “He had a talent for taking something old and making it sound fresh and new,” music researcher Jay Bruder said. “So many of his Dot recordings were pop songs from the 1920s and ’30s, even as far back as the 1880s.” Mr. Wiseman pushed Dot to record two versions of the 1931 pop song “Love Letters in the Sand,” in the late 1950s — a Wiseman rendition in the country market and the pop version by teen idol Pat Boone.
Bluegrass historian Dick Spottswood compared Mr. Wiseman to Texas-born jazz trombonist and singer Jack Teagarden. ... Mr. Wiseman, Spottswood said, “brought elements of Shenandoah Valley mountain ballads into bluegrass just as Teagarden brought in elements of East Texas blues into jazz — and they both had an affinity for ancient pop tunes.” Spottswood described Mr. Wiseman as “a country cosmopolitan [who] didn’t abandon one thing to embrace another. He saw each genre as part of the broader music palette.” ... And Mr. Wiseman’s collaborations bear that out — he recorded with big-band leader Woody Herman, singer-songwriter John Prine and, in the short-lived band the GrooveGrass Boyz, funk bassist Bootsy Collins. ... Whether performing “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” “Me and Bobby McGee” or such tear-jerkers as “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy,” Mr. Wiseman specialized in songs with a strong narrative thread.
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Terence McArdle has been a working blues singer-guitarist for 40 years and a Washington Post staffer since 1988. He released his first audio recording in 2004. Since 2008, he has brought his musical insights to bear on the obituaries of both celebrated and little known musicians. He also writes about social history for the Retropolis blog.
Comment:
bud norman 14 hours ago
Thanks for this fine obituary of a remarkable talent. I was especially intrigued by the weird detail that Wiseman once collaborated with funk legend Bootsy Collins, and although that's a combination that never would have occurred to me I went to YouTube and
listened to the Groovegrass Boyz, and I
thought it sounded pretty damned good.
= new reply since forum marked as read
