Date: Fri 03-Oct-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Quick Words:

Sprung-bluegrass-banjo

Full Text:

(feature on musician Roger Sprung, 10/3/97)

Music Of The American Heritage, At Home In Newtown

(with cuts)

BY SHANNON HICKS

Live music will return to Sharon's Coffee & Tea this weekend when Roger

Sprung, Hal Wylie and some of their friends will present an evening of folk,

Irish and bluegrass music on Saturday night.

Roger Sprung, a Newtown resident, has been performing on the banjo since 1947.

That year, when Roger was 17, his brother brought him to one of the Sunday

folk music jam sessions held at Greenwich Village's Washington Square in New

York. In different parts of the park, small clusters of acoustic musicians

were playing a variety of styles.

Roger, a die-hard boogie-woogie piano student at that point, fell in love with

the banjo that day. Inspired by the 5-string playing of legends like Tom

Paley, Pete Seeger and Billy Faier, the teenager gave up his first love and

began learning the banjo.

"I saw those people playing and said `That's for me!'" Roger related recently,

50 years and nearly an equal number of albums later. "Besides, it's easier to

carry a banjo around than a piano.

"I'm knee deep in this music now," he said. Not to mention knee deep in

trophies. In a studio/workspace in the Newtown home he shares with his wife

and youngest daughter, Roger is surrounded by trophies and ribbons by the

armload. There aren't too many places in the downstairs rooms that don't hold

an award of one form or another, including trophies naming Roger the World

Champion 5-String Banjo Player, a title he has won repeatedly.

Roger's name is probably as well known in the bluegrass world as Earl Scruggs.

He has performed in situations as diverse as on stage at Carnegie Hall to a

network television broadcast of The Dean Martin Show . He has toured with Kay

Starr, whom Roger affectionately calls "a big wheel," Josh White, Arlo Guthrie

and Pete Seeger, all revered in the music world. And there are the albums: 46

of them, on labels ranging from Stinson and Electra to Folkways and Roger's

own, Showcase, situated in New York City.

Bluegrass is a derivative of country music. The music relies, says The New

York Public Library Performing Arts Desk Reference , exclusively on

traditional instrumentation and musical styles. The bluegrass style was forged

by the banjo player Earl Scruggs. Roger Sprung says he taught himself how to

play by listening to 78 rpm recordings of Scruggs.

Scruggs was a member of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, a popular Grand Ol'

Opry act of the late 1940s/early 1950s. Scruggs developed a style of

right-handed, three-fingered banjo picking where he could play passages at

great speed and complexity.

Today's bluegrass bands typically include four to seven members playing

acoustic instruments. The musicians, playing violin, mandolin, guitar, string

bass and banjo, trade solos as effortlessly as jazz players are known to.

Roger Sprung plays what is called "mountain" music. These are songs that

literally came out of the mountains in the southern regions of the

Appalachians. During the 1950s, Roger began yearly trips to this region,

collecting and swapping songs and instruments with the musicians he

encountered.

Roger has even written a few songs of his own for the banjo, but says he

prefers to perform the songs that have been etched in stone by others. These

mountain-folk songs, along with some Irish folk music and English selections,

are what Roger tends to select when performing.

"I like these kinds of songs because they're part of the American heritage,"

he explained. "We play the Bottom 40 and up - the songs people usually don't

get to hear."

Over the past 35 years, Roger has been a leading architect of many of the

trends that are now commonplace among contemporary bluegrass musicians. He is

credited with creating "progressive bluegrass": matching the bluegrass banjo

playing style with non-related material, resulting in a very distinctive

sound. Progressive also incorporates traditional bluegrass, where songs are

performed with guitar, bass, mandolin and/or fiddle accompaniment.

Roger describes progressive bluegrass as going "out of the main line of

bluegrass tunes. You use horn pipes, reels, contra dances, pop tunes...

anything! That, to me, is progressing."

Thanks to this blurring of the lines, Roger's performances can cover

everything from "Jingle Bells" to "Puff the Magic Dragon," "Greensleeves" to

"It's A Small World."

Roger's partner is Hal Wylie, who lives in the Bronx. The two have been

performing together for about 35 years. Hal plays the guitar and does most of

the singing ("Boy does he sing!" says Roger) when playing out. The two perform

as a duo, or with any number of the five musicians who make up the band The

Progressive Bluegrassers. Along with Roger and Hal, the Bluegrassers are Bud

Morrisroe, fiddle; Drew Smith, autoharp; Manny Krevat, mandolin; Danny

Holland, lead mandolin and guitar; and Ethan Kende, bass. Holland and Kende

are planning on being in Newtown Friday night when Roger and Hal perform at

Sharon's Coffee & Tea.

Because they have been playing together for 3« decades, there isn't a need for

a lot of rehearsing before shows for Roger and Hal. Rehearsal takes place,

Roger said last week, "about an hour before we go on."

When he isn't performing or competing - Roger, Hal and the Bluegrassers have

played everything from concerts and festivals to private parties, children's

shows and conventions, and Roger has had his music recorded for a boatload of

commercials - Roger is concentrating these days on "teaching, buying, selling

and playing."

Past students have included Chad Mitchell, John Stewart of The Kingston Trio,

and Erik Darling (The Rooftop Singers).

Roger also spends a lot of his Sundays at The Elephant's Trunk, a weekly flea

market set up on Route 7 just over the New Milford border, where he sells

music and banjos. A lot of friends will stop in on any given Sunday to sit

down and start playing music. With a banjo always close at hand, Roger

welcomes these opportunities.

"We enjoy this, and we haven't been kicked out for making too much noise yet,"

he laughs.

If his name sounds familiar and the face rings a bell to Newtown residents, it

could be that they ran across Roger and Hal and any assemblage of The

Progressive Bluegrassers during any of the performances at Pizza Villa for 13

years. The shows had to stop last year when the Sandy Hook restaurant began

renovations, which are continuing, but Roger is hoping to return when the

restaurant reopens.

"We always played to full houses down there. It was always a lot of fun," he

said. After the Pizza Villa gig was put on hold, Roger and Hal played for

about six months at My Place Pizzeria, in the center of town. But now My Place

is about to start moving its business into a different building, so that

pursuit has also been put on hold.

In about a month, Roger will be featured at the annual NOMAD Festival, a

celebration of Connecticut's culture in music, arts and dance. The festival is

a three-day event held at Newtown High School. It includes workshops, hands-on

demonstrations and performances, all open to the public and suitable for every

age.

Roger was in last year's festival, and is looking forward to returning to this

year's event. He will have a two-hour jam session from 9 to 11 am on the

Saturday of the fall event in one of the high school's classrooms.

"I asked for two hours this year," he said. "One hour was too short last time.

And I love to jam! It's more fun when everyone plays together."

People familiar with Roger, Hal and The Progressive Bluegrassers know that

audience members are more than welcome to bring along their own instruments

and join in during shows. This warm, familiar atmosphere is the exclamation

mark of most bluegrass performances. Roger expects to see a number of friends

doing just that when he starts playing at Sharon's this weekend.

"People come with their instruments and they play and they pick, and people

have a good time.

"Playing like this, it's not a concert, it's a party," Roger promises. "It's a

lot of good music, and a lot of fun."

The music begins Saturday, October 4, at 8 pm, at Sharon's Coffee & Tea, 49

Church Hill Road in Newtown. The show will run until midnight. There will be a

cover charge of $3 per person. Refreshments will be sold all night. For

additional information, contact Roger Sprung at 426-5243 or Sharon's, at

426-3770.