Results for David Grisman
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Artist:

David Grisman

David Grisman

Born:
1945 in Hackensack, New Jersey

Representative Songs:

"I Ain't Broke (But I'm Badly Bent)," "Appetizer," "16/16"

Representative Albums:

Dawg '90, Tone Poems 2, Tone Poems

Similar Artists:

The Lost & Found, Laurel Canyon Ramblers, Psychograss, Mark O'Connor, Mike Marshall, Béla Fleck, Vassar Clements, Chesapeake, The McPeak Brothers, Emma Smith, The Other Ones, Buddy Spicher, Vern Gosdin, Sam Bush, Alan Stivell, Tony Trischka, Larry Sparks, Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas, The Country Gazette, Norman Blake, Butch Baldassari

Influences:

Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Peter Rowan, Bill Monroe

Followers:

Barry Mitterhoff

A Member of the Group:

The David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, Bluegrass Reunion, Jerry Garcia & David Grisman, The Even Dozen Jug Band, Old & In the Way

Relationship with:

Sam Grisman

Performed Songs By:

Anthony Rice, Andy Statman, Miles Davis, Ralph Stanley, Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt

Worked With:

David Dennison, Joe Craven, Daniel Kobialka, Todd Phillips, Rob Wasserman, Jerry Garcia, Darol Anger
  • Genre: Country
  • Active: '70s - 2000s
  • Instrument: Mandolin

Biography

David Grisman is normally associated with the bluegrass wing of country music, but his music owes almost as much to jazz as it does to traditional American folk influences. Because he couldn't think of what to call his unique, highly intricate, harmonically advanced hybrid of acoustic bluegrass, folk, and jazz without leaning toward one idiom or another, he offhandedly decided to call it "dawg music" -- a name which, curiously enough, has stuck. A brilliant mandolinist, with roots deep in the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, Grisman's jazz sensibilities were strong enough to attract the admiration of the HCQ's Stephane Grappelli, who has toured and recorded with Grisman on occasion.

Grisman was already playing the piano, saxophone, and mandolin by the time he was a teenager, taking up the latter at age 16. While attending New York University in 1963, he began playing with the Even Dozen Jug Band, which at one time included Maria Muldaur and John Sebastian. In 1966, bluegrass bandleader Red Allen invited Grisman to join his Kentuckians, and the following year Grisman joined Peter Rowan in the progressive-minded Earth Opera, which blended folk, country, rock, pop, and jazz. After two albums, he moved to San Francisco and hooked up with Jerry Garcia, playing on the Grateful Dead's classic American Beauty. He went on to play in Garcia's bluegrass side project, Old & in the Way, along with Peter Rowan, who also reteamed with him in the loose all-star group Muleskinner. In 1974, Grisman co-founded the Great American String Band with Muleskinner fiddler Richard Greene, which first allowed him to explore the lengthy instrumental improvisations that would become his trademark.

Greene didn't stick around for too long, and in 1976 Grisman assembled a new group dubbed the David Grisman Quintet, which featured guitarist Tony Rice, fiddler Darol Anger, bassist Joe Carroll, and mandolinist/bassist Todd Phillips. The Quintet's self-titled debut was released in 1977 on Kaleidoscope and proved a seminal influence on the so-called "newgrass" or "new acoustic" movements, thanks to its progressive, jazz-fueled harmonies and improvisations. The follow-up, 1979's Hot Dawg, was Grisman's breakthrough album; it was released on A&M's jazz imprint, Horizon, and featured guest work by jazz violin legend Stephane Grappelli. By this time, there was already personnel turnover in the Quintet; mandolinist Mike Marshall joined up, and by the time Grisman moved to Warner and recorded Mondo Mando in 1981, bassist Rob Wasserman and violinist Mark O'Connor joined Rice, Anger, and Marshall. In all, Grisman recorded four albums for Warner over 1980-1983; 1982's Dawg Jazz/Dawg Grass was another notable outing with Grappelli that, true to its title, split its repertoire between swing and bluegrass.

By 1984, the original "dawg music" lineup had largely broken up, with most of the members moving on to productive solo and/or collaborative projects (Anger notably joined the Turtle Island String Quartet). Grisman played on a number of sessions in the meantime, including with jazz-minded banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck, who claimed Grisman as a major influence. In 1985, Grisman organized a new group with seasoned jazz musicians: bassist Jim Kerwin, guitarist Dimitri Vandellos, and drummer George Marsh, who backed him on a 1987 duet album with jazz violinist Svend Asmussen, Svingin' with Svend. The more traditional bluegrass outing Home Is Where the Heart Is followed in 1988, before Grisman formed his own Acoustic Disc label in 1990 and got much more prolific.

A steady stream of releases appeared on Acoustic Disc during the first half of the '90s, starting with Dawg '90, which debuted a new core group that included Kerwin, fiddler/drummer Joe Craven, and flutist Matt Eakle, as well as returning alum Mark O'Connor, guitarist John Carlini, and fiddler Matt Glaser. Other notable releases included a 1991 reteaming with Jerry Garcia and two albums of Tone Poems (i.e., duets with Tony Rice and Martin Taylor, respectively). Argentine guitarist Enrique Coria joined the lineup of Grisman, Kerwin, Craven, and Eakle for 1995's Latin-flavored Dawganova. Grisman entered another productive period in 1999, issuing several widely varied projects, and reconvened that quintet for 2002's Dawgnation. A collection of collaborations with other bluegrass musicians recorded over three decades, Life of Sorrow, was released in 2003 by Acoustic Disc, followed by New Shabbos Waltz, a collaboration with Andy Statman, in 2006, also on Acoustic Disc. ~ Richard S. Ginell & Steve Huey, All Music Guide
 
 
Wikipedia: David Grisman
David Grisman
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David Grisman

David Grisman (born March 23, 1945 in Hackensack, New Jersey) is a noted bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist and composer of acoustic music. In the early 1990s, he started the Acoustic Disc record label in an effort to preserve and spread acoustic or instrumental music.

David Grisman started his musical career in 1963 as a member of Even Dozen Jug Band. His nickname, "Dawg" was affectionately assigned by his close friend Jerry Garcia in 1973 (the two met in 1964 at a Bill Monroe show at Sunset Park in West Grove, PA). "Dawg Music" is what he calls his mixture of bluegrass and Django Reinhardt-Stéphane Grappelli-influenced jazz, as highlighted on his 1977 album "Hot Dawg". Stephane Grappelli played on a couple of tracks on the Hot Dawg album and then the 1981 recording "Stephane Grappelli and David Grisman Live". It was Grisman's combination of Reinhardt-era Jazz, bluegrass, folk, Old World Mediterranean string band music, as well as modern Jazz fusion that came to embody "Dawg" music. Grisman, along with New Grass Revival are generally considered the modern day interpreters of the new bluegrass-influenced fusion sound, sometimes called newgrass.

Grisman's father had been a professional trombonist at one time, and he had young David take piano lessons at the age of seven. In the early 1950s, Grisman heard the beginnings of rock 'n' roll, and was influenced by pop music and everything he heard. Grisman's father died when he was 10, and David drifted away from the piano. He took it up again when he was about 13 or 14, but then discovered folk music through the Kingston Trio; a group that became popular during the American folk music revival. David, and three friends from his school, then met folklorist and musician Ralph Rinzler in Passaic, New Jersey, and became greatly influenced by Rinzler's vast knowledge on the subject of traditional music. After that, David knew what he wanted to do with his life; and Greenwich Village in New York City was bustling with folk musicians by this time. In 1963, Grisman was in the Even Dozen Jug Band, and they recorded an album that year on Elektra Records. Grisman did a Red Allen and Frank Wakefield session for Folkways Records in 1963, but didn't play with Red Allen and the Kentuckians until 1966. Grisman played mandocello on Tom Paxton's album "Morning Again" (Elektra, 1967). In 1967, Grisman was in a psychedelic rock group called Earth Opera with Peter Rowan. In 1973, Grisman joined Rowan, Vassar Clements, Jerry Garcia and John Kahn to form the bluegrass group Old and in the Way. In 1974, Grisman, Rowan, Greene, and Kahn joined Bill Keith, Clarence White, and John Guerin in the group Muleskinner. In 1974, Grisman was also in the The Great American Music Band. Then in 1975, he started his own band; the David Grisman Quintet.

Some of the musicians that have played with David Grisman, or have been part of the DGQ (David Grisman Quintet), include: Rob Wasserman, Denny Zeitlin, Tony Rice, Doc Watson, Peter Rowan, John Carlini, Mark O'Connor, Béla Fleck, Clarence White, Bob Brozman, Mike Auldridge, Mike Seeger, David Bromberg, Stephane Grappelli, Martin Taylor, Del McCoury, Ralph Stanley, Earl Scruggs, John Hartford, Vassar Clements, Richard Greene, Mike Marshall, Darol Anger (Turtle Island String Quartet), Sam Bush, Stephane Wrembel, Joe Craven, Todd Phillips, Frank Vignola, George Marsh, Matt Eakle and the Kronos Quartet. Grisman also played mandocello on Bonnie Raitt's album, Sweet Forgiveness (1977). In 1977, the David Grisman Quintet released their first album.

In addition to performing with the DGQ (David Grisman Quintet), David Grisman also performs with his bluegrass group, the DGBX (David Grisman Bluegrass Experience). Other members of the DGBX are Keith Little on banjo, Chad Manning on fiddle, Jim Nunally on guitar, Samson Grisman on upright bass.

The documentary Grateful Dawg (2000) chronicles the deep friendship between Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. David Grisman appeared on the Grateful Dead's American Beauty (1970) album. To this day, Grisman complains of how Jerry Garcia vetoed the length of the mandolin part featured on the studio version of "Ripple".

Grisman and Garcia played together in the band Old and in the Way with Vassar Clements, John Kahn, and Peter Rowan. Their album "Old and in the Way" (1975) was for decades the best-selling bluegrass album (though it has since been overtaken by the soundtrack of "Oh Brother Where Art Thou"). Grisman's Acoustic Disc label has released two additional albums of live material from the band.

Grisman and Garcia also recorded a number of duet albums in the 1990s, including the children's album Not for Kids Only, as well as Garcia/Grisman, Shady Grove, The Pizza Tapes, So What, and the last in the series, Been All Around This World, which was released in 2004.

"Dawggy Mountain Breakdown" is NPR's Car Talk's theme music.

David Grisman sued YouTube in May 2007, complaining in federal court that YouTube should be required to prevent individuals from posting recordings of Grisman's music (rather than that Grisman should be responsible for licensing and policing his own copyrights).[1]

Discography

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Artist. Copyright © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ® , a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
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