EGN NEWS DESK
Frank Wakefield, an modern bluegrass mandolinist whose sweeping musicality led to collaborations with the New York Philharmonic and Jerry Garcia, and whose distinctive voicings and method expanded the parameters of his instrument, died on Friday at his residence in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He was 89.
Marsha Sprintz, his companion of 47 years, mentioned the trigger was problems of persistent obstructive pulmonary illness.
In a profession that spanned seven a long time, Mr. Wakefield performed with a number of bluegrass luminaries, together with Jimmy Martin and the Stanley Brothers.
He first made his mark within the early Fifties after becoming a member of a band led by the singer and guitarist Red Allen as a vocalist and mandolin participant. Working in Ohio and the Upper Midwest and, by 1960, the Baltimore-Washington space, the band developed a hard-driving, harmony-rich model of bluegrass that impressed not solely different musicians within the style, but in addition bluegrass-inclined rock bands like New Riders of the Purple Sage.
While nonetheless an adolescent, Mr. Wakefield mastered the closely syncopated “chop” chord of the bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, whom he met in 1961 and who instantly acknowledged Mr. Wakefield’s prowess as a mandolinist.
“You can play like me pretty much as good — or close to pretty much as good — as I can,” Mr. Wakefield, in a 2022 interview with the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association, recalled Mr. Monroe saying at their preliminary assembly. “Now you’ve received to exit and discover your individual model.”
Heeding Mr. Monroe’s recommendation, Mr. Wakefield did precisely that. He devised his personal sound by alternating up and down strokes on his instrument with equal power to provide a transparent, ringing tone and sustained rhythm, which he likened to a sledgehammer hanging a metal rail in a 1998 interview with the bluegrass web site Candlewater.com.
At different instances, plucking the strings with a number of fingers, he produced a richly textured impact suggestive of two or three mandolins taking part in collectively.
David Grisman, a scholar of Mr. Wakefield’s and a mandolin virtuoso in his personal proper, mentioned in an typically quoted passage from Frets journal that Mr. Wakefield had “break up the bluegrass mandolin atom” by taking the instrument past the place Mr. Monroe had.
“Bluegrass,” the album that Mr. Wakefield made with Mr. Allen for Folkways Records in 1964 (and {that a} 19-year-old Mr. Grisman produced), proved ample affirmation of that declare: It featured variations of two of Mr. Wakefield’s most enduring originals, “New Camptown Races” and “Catnip,” each of which, with their developments in melody, tunings and chord adjustments, pushed the boundaries of what then constituted bluegrass.
Mr. Wakefield’s improvements didn’t cease there, although. By the mid-Sixties he had begun composing sonatas for the mandolin and arranging classical items for conventional bluegrass ensembles. He carried out with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1967 and made a visitor look with the Boston Pops orchestra the subsequent 12 months.
Mr. Wakefield’s forays exterior bluegrass prolonged into pop territory as nicely, together with a mid-Sixties stint with the Greenbriar Boys, an city folks revivalist group. During this era, he additionally carried out with nation bluesmen like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Son House and, later, rock acts just like the Grateful Dead.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Wakefield was born on June 26, 1934, within the Emory Gap enclave of Harriman, Tenn., the tenth of 12 kids of Simpson and Bertie (Isham) Wakefield. Growing up poor, he was pressured to go away college after second grade to assist work on the household farm.
Enthralled by DeFord Bailey’s performances on “The Grand Ole Opry,” younger Frank took up the harmonica at an early age and shortly additionally grew to become adept at taking part in the guitar.
His father, who labored as a brakeman to complement the household revenue, froze to loss of life in an area railyard when Frank was 13. Several of his sisters moved 300 miles north to Dayton, Ohio, as a part of a Depression-era migration. Frank and his brother, Ralph, have been left to maneuver between orphanages till Frank lastly ran away to hitch his sisters in Dayton, the place a brother-in-law launched him to the mandolin.
Billing themselves because the Wakefield Brothers, Frank and Ralph, who performed guitar, made their first public appearances at home events and on native radio in 1960. Two years later, Frank joined Red Allen’s band, and his path as a musician was set.
However, his tenure with Mr. Allen was fraught with battle, a lot of it introduced on by Mr. Allen’s abusive conduct, particularly when he was ingesting. Nevertheless, aside from a interval with the Detroit-based Chain Mountain Boys within the mid-Fifties, Mr. Wakefield persevered with him till 1965, when he joined the Greenbriar Boys to interchange Ralph Rinzler, who had left the band to grow to be Bill Monroe’s manager.
After recovering from a near-fatal car accident within the late Sixties, Mr. Wakefield moved to Saratoga Springs and launched into a solo profession. Over the subsequent 5 a long time, he launched albums for quite a lot of bluegrass-aligned document labels, together with Takoma, Flying Fish and Patuxent Music. His 1972 Rounder album, known as merely “Frank Wakefield” and that includes the New York bluegrass band Country Cooking, is broadly considered a touchstone of the motion often called newgrass, which included parts of rock, jazz and classical music into conventional bluegrass.
Despite affected by emphysema for years, Mr. Wakefield continued to tour nationally and to document nicely into the 2000s.
Besides Ms. Sprintz, Mr. Wakefield’s survivors embrace a sister, Susie Norton; a son, Greg Wakefield; and quite a few grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Despite his musically omnivorous appetites, Mr. Wakefield was unfamiliar with Mr. Garcia, who would later produce the 1976 album “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” a string-band collaboration between Mr. Wakefield and others, after they began taking part in reveals collectively.
“Whenever Garcia performed with me and David,” Mr. Wakefield defined, referring to David Nelson of New Riders of the Purple Sage in a 2006 interview with candlewater.com, “we’d at all times have a full home. I assumed it was due to me.”
“It took me some time,” he added, “to understand that individuals have been coming to the reveals as a result of Jerry was taking part in with us.”
