The Nitty Gritty

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

By Willie Moseley

Half a century of eclectic music

The legendary Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has now been purveying its unique style of music for over half a century, and the group’s founding guitarist, Jeff Hanna, recently went on the record with River Region BOOM! regarding the band’s long history. The NGDB was originally known as a “jug band,” and was founded “… in 1966, in Long Beach, California,” according to Hanna. “We were six guys who all played guitar, but we went with other instruments. A jug band uses a jug, of course, as well as acoustic instruments and unusual or homemade instruments. I also ended up playing a washboard, which was a lot of fun.” Jackson Browne was also a founding member of the NGDB. He departed after a few months, but the singer/songwriter kept in touch with his former bandmates over the decade. As the band’s acclaim increased, they appeared in movies in the late Sixties, including Paint Your Wagon. “Paint Your Wagon was a musical Western,” Hanna recounted, “and had Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin. We enjoyed playing ‘Hand Me Down That Can o’ Beans’.” Hanna also recounted the transition of the band to a “country rock” outfit that played electric instruments. “We’d been together for a couple of years,” he said, “and had been doing concerts with bands like the Jefferson Airplane. Then the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo was released in 1968. It had some tremendous songs on it, and we changed directions.” The band briefly broke up, and Hanna and erstwhile NGDB bandmate Christopher Darrow played in a band called the Corvettes. They recorded two singles produced by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, and also backed up Linda Ronstadt. When the NItty Gritty Dirt Band regrouped, the membership consisted of what has become known as the “classic Seventies” lineup of Jimmy Fadden (drums and harmonica), Jimmy Ibbotson (guitar), Les Thompson (bass), multi-instrumentalist John McEuen (fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar, keyboards) and Hanna (guitar). Early 1970 saw the release of what would be their breakout album, Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy, produced by McEuen’s brother William. The album pulled its songs from numerous genres of American music, and begat three hits, including the band’s signature song, “Mr. Bojangles”. “Those were written by songwriters we really admired,” Hanna said of the hits. “’Bojangles’ was written by Jerry Jeff Walker, ‘Some of Shelley’s Blues” was a Michael Nesmith tune, and “House at Pooh Corners” was written by Kenny Loggins, back when he was starting out.” Band members were still known to play jug band instruments on selected concert songs, as exemplified at a concert at Troy State University, where they opened the show with a rousing version of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Will the Circle be Unbroken, a triple-LP collaboration between the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and legendary country and bluegrass musicians, was recorded in Nashville in August of 1971 and released the following year. Participants included Mother Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, Doc Watson, and Earl Scruggs, among others. The monumental recording sessions also included acclaimed performances by

talented but somewhatobscure fiddler Vassar Clements. On one song, Clements unexpectedly threw in the signature passage from the musical theme of television’s Dragnet police drama. “Wasn’t that great?” Hanna said of the Dragnet ad lib. “It doesn’t get any better than that!” The album was considered to be a milestone in American music history, and in 2005, Will the Circle be Unbroken was added to the National Registry of the Library of Congress. Hanna was also appreciative of how the chronicle of the album was detailed on the recent “Country Music” PBS documentary by Ken Burns. One of the more memorable images from the presentation was an in-the-studio photograph in which Hanna was seated opposite and slightly below The “classic ‘70s” lineup of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Left to right, John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Les Thompson, Jimmy Ibbotson, Jimmy Fadden

The band’s “breakthrough” album was 1970’s Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy.

Maybelle Carter. He confirmed that his countenance as he gazes at the matriarch is indeed reverential. “One of my favorites,” he said of the photo. Amid personnel changes in the latter half of the ‘70s, the band became known as simply the Dirt Band for several years, and marketed such hits as “An American Dream” with Linda Ronstadt on harmony vocals, and “Make A Little Magic”, vocally assisted by Nicolette Larson. Specializing in keyboards, Bob Carpenter joined the band in 1980 and got off to a fast start as a co-writer of “Make A Little Magic.” Carpenter is still onboard after forty years. Hanna moved to Nashville in 1985 and still resides there. 1987’s “Fishin’ in the Dark” was another keystone hit, and is still a concert favorite. Other country hits have included “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream)” and “Modern Day Romance.” The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band endured through the decades, and continued to release acclaimed albums, including two sequels to Will the Circle be Unbroken in 1989 and 2002. The band celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2016, and as a precursor to such a milestone, the NGDB presented a retrospective concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in September of 2015. Guests included frontline artists such as Vince Gill and Alison Krauss, as well as songwriters the band has revered for decades. Hanna noted that participants signed on quickly when the project was being organized.

“A couple of artists weren’t actually able to make rehearsals,” he said, “because it was September and everybody was on the road. They literally came out on the day of the show. And this wasn’t just a ‘guest list’—these were all folks who had impacted our careers on a personal or professional level.” The overall concept of the concert was to present distinctive re-workings of previous material, abetted with appropriate contributions by special guests.

Legendary tunesmiths who performed included John Prine, Rodney Crowell and Jackson Browne. Not surprisingly, Jerry Jeff Walker sauntered onstage to join the band on “Mr. Bojangles.” Former band member Jimmy Ibbotson also returned for two songs. Hanna averred that his favorite personal moment from the show was singing “Paradise,” which the band had never recorded, with Prine. The Ryman concert has been released on CD and DVD as Circlin’ Back (NGDB Records). Jim Photoglo, who has had musical success in his own right, signed on to play bass for the fiftieth anniversary tour in 2016, and he still occupies that slot. Following that tour, the band experienced more personnel changes. Ross Holmes joined the band on fiddle and mandolin, and Hanna’s son Jaime was added as a guitarist. The younger Hanna already had recording and touring experience, and he’s added a fresh facet to the band’s sound. “He’s a better player than I am,” Jeff said with a laugh.

In their career of a half-century, the NItty Gritty Dirt Band has been nominated for Grammy awards nine times, and has won three. As for the upcoming performance in Montgomery, Hanna was informed that the venue was across the street from the Hank Williams Museum. “We’ve recorded so many of his songs— ‘Hey, Good Lookin’’, ‘I Saw The Light’, ‘Jambalaya’, others—it’s easy to see why we think he was one of greatest singer/ songwriters ever,” he said. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band will perform at the Montgomery Performing Arts Center on Thursday, March 19. Author/lecturer WILLIE G. MOSELEY is the Senior Writer for Vintage Guitar Magazine and is presently working on his fourteenth book. The present day lineup of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band includes, left to right, Bob Carpenter, Jim Photoglo, Ross Holmes, Jaime Hanna, Jimmy Fadden, Jeff Hanna. Photo by Glen Rose Hanna (right) gazes at greatness during the August 1971 Will the Circle be Unbroken recording sessions. From left, the iconic musicians are Maybelle Carter, Merle Travis, and Pete “Oswald’ Kirby. Photo by William McEuen. Released in 2016 as a CD and DVD, Circlin’ Back documented a one-of-a-kind concert recorded at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.