Banjonut's Bluegrass Blog

It must have been sometime in 1993 when I decided to travel from Kansas City back to Fulton to perform once again with The Country Rangers. At that time, we only had one vehicle and my wife needed it for work. It was on a Thursday night that I was to play, so I took off from work and planned to spend the entire weekend in Fulton. For the first (and only) time, Linda took me to the bus station and I did the ol' "Have Banjo will Travel" thing on the bus. No, I did not meet Claud on the bus. But, that is close.

While riding down the Interstate, the guy in front of me asked me what I had in the case. I told him it was a banjo. Then I had to explain to him what it was and what kind of music was played on it. We were just a few rows back from the front of the bus. I noticed 2 ladies sitting on the front row right behind the driver because everytime I mentioned "bluegrass" or "banjo", one of the ladies would turn her ear towards us.

At some point the inquisitive fellow asked "where and when" I was playing that Thursday evening. I told him it would be in Fulton with The Country Rangers, my family. At that point, the lady that had been doing the listening turned completely around and looked at me. She asked to verify if she had heard me correctly, then she said, "Are you the one on the radio station that they call 'Baby Brother'?" When I said "yes", she wanted to know if I had known her late husband, Harley Crum. I told her that I used to fill in for him with the group called The Kingdomaires around Fulton whenever Harley couldn't make a performance. So, I really didn't get any chance to know Harley. She said she was going to come up and listen to us that evening, and so she did.

At the end of our first set, she came right up to me and said she really liked our music and was going to tell her son to bring his guitar and come sit-in with us the following week. She told us not to worry because he was really good on the guitar. Well, I'm not too sure how many times things like this have happened where the mother serves as an "agent" and then the results turn out good. But, we told her that would be fine.

And so it was that the next Thursday as we were setting up the hall and tuning before any customers arrived, this fellow walks in the door. When I saw that he was carrying a Martin guitar case, I figured it had to be "the son" and he introduced himself as Claud Crum. Well, while the others were still tuning I said to him lets run through a song or two to check our tuning. Folks, I don't remember for sure what songs we started, but after he started his second break I said, "Hold it, hold it, HOLD it!". Claud looked funny at me as if to think what's wrong. Then, I made the understatement of the year...I said, "Man you are GOOD on that thing!". Claud just looked at me and grinned.

We set him up a microphone on the end of the stage right next to me. We had a list of songs to go through for our performance, but we didn't have time to run any of them by Claud ahead of time. We'd just kick off one of the songs and at the appropriate moments I would look over to Claud indicating "if he wanted a break or not". Without exception, Claud stepped right up to the microphone and played a totally awesome and perfect break to every song! It didn't matter how slow or how fast, he played something that fit just right in every case. I was duly impressed.

Thankfully, Claud and I pretty much hit it off that night and we have remained good friends ever since. I don't get to jam with him very often since we live about 150 miles apart. And many thanks to Claud's mother and other mothers out there that are never too bashful to push their children when they see that it is good to do so. Mind you that Claud was "well into his thirties" when she introduced him to us. It makes no difference to a parent, your kids are always "your kids".

I have much more to share with you about Claud and our other mutual friends. But, I will save that for another posting.