Aly Bain's America

These wonderful fingers belong to an old friend of mine.

Aly Bain grew up in Shetland

and came here to Edinburgh

in his early 20s to try to make a living as a musician.

He's lived here ever since.

In a 50-year career,

he's travelled all over the world and won international recognition

as one of the finest fiddle players of his or any other generation.

In celebration of Aly's 70th birthday,

we're taking a look back at the ground-breaking TV programmes

he did in the 1980s,

which took him from Kentucky and North Carolina

to Texas, Louisiana and Nashville,

meeting and playing with some of the all-time greats

of American traditional music.

'It's easy to get sentimental and overstate the connection

'between American country music and Scotland.

'We've each of us, after all,

'got 16 great-great-grandparents,

'and each one of them has 16, too.

'An important part of the American tradition IS Scottish -

'The fiddle tunes, ballads and so on that Scottish emigrants

'took with them across the Atlantic -

'but that 3,000 miles of sea two or three hundred years ago

'was only the start of it.

'There was a long way to go.'

Aly, when did you first visit the States?

In about 1970.

It was an amazing experience. Aye.

We just drove around in this old Volvo all around the East Coast

and went up as far as Canada.

It was the experience of a lifetime, really.

And you played the college circuit, didn't you,

when you went with the Boys of the Lough?

We did, yeah.

And what...was that a deliberate choice?

I mean, did you kind of deliberately snub the St Andrews Society circuit?

Absolutely. We didn't want to get involved in the expat thing. Aye.

We wanted to play for Americans and so we played the college circuit

and folk clubs and not the St Andrews kind of things

that people would come in a kilt and say, "Guess my name".

I would say, "Is that the McBucket tartan?"

THEY LAUGH

Aly's decision to avoid tartan nostalgia brought opportunities

to explore and learn from the range and richness

of what we now call Americana.

From the Appalachian hill country,

JP Fraley was known as the dean of East Kentucky fiddle music.

Yeah, that's a beautiful tune.

The Wild Rose Of The Mountain. Thank you.

JP, you've been collecting music from around this part

for years, haven't you, off and on?

Well, I didn't actually realise it, Aly,

but when I started to play the fiddle,

that day I started collecting fiddle tunes,

which all fiddlers know, and I was lucky, I guess,

to grow up in a part of Kentucky

where that I grew up at that particular time,

cos there were several fiddlers around close

that was fiddling East Kentucky fiddle, we called it,

but it was fiddling, er, distinctly different styles.

Yeah, I was talking to Mike Seeger earlier on

and he was saying that around about the late '50s,

there wasn't much of this music being played around here.

In fact, he made a kind of a strange remark.

He said that actually, people were ashamed of it sometimes.

Why would that be?

Well, they were, because after World War II, the Kentucky...

the backwoods or backland part of Kentucky was opened up -

the roads were better and so forth and the advent of television,

better radio, better communications,

and the people, they begin to hear and see done, you know, other music,

other than what they grew up with - their heritage or tradition,

and they were ashamed of the music,

because, seemingly, some places that was well-known for country music,

or mountain music as we called it,

they satirised the fiddler as a drinking, fighting roustabout

and, er, you know, various things that wasn't...

didn't have too much character.

He became a person that was not very well educated,

played what I call gum-stop fiddle -

you know, a bunch of squeaks and cracks and carrying on

which we've heard on some of the old records that was... Yeah.

..actually some of the people thought

that that was really the way it all was.

And JP Fraley, what was his story?

JP was a miner.

He'd worked down the mines and educated himself

out of down the mines into selling equipment and so on

and he was a guy who loved old-time music.

Did he write these? No, he collected.

He just collected them?

But they're beautiful tunes and they would have been lost without JP.

Exactly. So, it was just great to meet him and play with him.

Aye, aye.

There was this revival of music,

of Americans finding out who they were... Uh-huh.

..and it was getting away from Doris Day into the new America.

Right. And boy, was it some revolution!

All this music - JP Fraley, all these people -

they came out of the folk revival.

They were almost forgotten.

People wanted to know who they were

and what their roots were and where they came from. Aye, aye.

And it wasn't just this house with a garage

and a TV and a washing machine.

It was something else. They wanted to find out who they really were.

BANJO PLAYS

Aly had one memorable encounter that took him almost beyond music

and right to the heart of the American South.

When Aly met her, Elizabeth Cotten was 92 years old.

That's Georgie Buck.

Yeah, that was lovely.

Where did you, um...

did you learn your music at home when you were growing up?

I learned my music in my home.

When I was 11 years old, I went to work and bought myself a guitar.

When my mother would leave home to go to work,

after mother was gone, I'd get up and put my dress on

and go down among where the white people lived,

and I'd knock on the door.

Someone would come to the door,

and I'd say, "Miss, would you like someone to work for you?"

And they sometimes said, "No, nothing."

I knocked on one lady's door, and when she opened the door, she says,

"What could a little girl like you do?" She hired me.

I said, "Miss, I can sweep your kitchen.

"I'll help with the vegetables. I can set your table."

I say, "You know, I can make a fire in your woodstove."

She cooked on a iron stove then.

Y'all know about them?

Yeah. No, you don't. You heard about them - but I did.

I knew how to make a fire in this iron stove,

to make it draw, so she could cook.

So she says to me, "Come in."

When I went into her house, I started to work for her that day.

And I worked for her until she left Chapel Hill.

And she paid me 75 cents a month.

Well, I didn't know 75 cents wasn't much money.

It was a lot of money to me. I'd never worked before.

So one morning, she came in the kitchen, she says,

"We're going to give you more money,"

and she gave me, then, after that, one dollar a month.

And I gave that to my mother, and I said, "Buy me this guitar."

So she bought it to her sorrow.

She didn't get no more rest. SHE STRUMS

See, I was just playing this all the time.

I couldn't play it - just making a noise.

She stormed to me, and tell me to...

She called me babe. "Babe, put that thing down and go to bed."

I said, "Momma, I'm learning a new song."

I weren't learning no song, cos I didn't know one then.

I didn't know no song then.

That was wonderful, wasn't it? Oh, something else.

I have to say, when I first watched the series back in the '80s,

I completely fell in love with her.

Yeah, she... It's not difficult. Cos one of the things I found

very moving about watching her was actually watching somebody

who had a physical connection back to the days of the slave trade.

Yeah, her grandmother was a slave.

Aye, so presumably, she would have been alive

when her grandmother was alive.

Yes, and known slavery.

I can't imagine what life must have been like,

the things that she saw growing up. No. I mean, her music,

she learned herself when she was young and then,

she got married and didn't play for years and years

and, really by accident, got a job as a housekeeper

for Pete Seeger's family,

cos she found a little child once,

it had run away one day and she found it,

and they liked her so much that they gave her a job.

But they didn't know that she was musical. No.

They had no idea and then, when they found out, of course,

that was the start of her new career.

If she is remembered for anything,

it's going to be one folk song in particular.

Yeah. Freight Train. Yeah, Freight Train.

I mean, most people who don't know much about folk music

will probably have heard Freight Train,

because it's been so widely recorded.

Oh, it's sold millions of records. Yeah.

Such a simple, beautiful, simple... Isn't it?

And she's a great guitar player. Lovely.

I mean, really beautiful guitar playing. Oh, yeah - the expression,

the hesitations, the little bluesy notes.

But she's written these songs and she was performing all over America.

She won a Grammy.

We got nominated for a Grammy and she won it.

Wow! We didn't mind that! Wow!

# Freight train, freight train run so fast

# Please don't tell what train I'm on

# They won't know what route I'm gone

# When I am dead and in my grave

# No more good times here I crave

# Place the stones at my head and feet

# Tell them all that I'm gone to sleep

# When I die, Lord, bury me deep

# Way down on old Chestnut Street

# Then I can't hear old Number Nine

# As she comes rolling by

# Freight train, freight train run so fast

# Please don't tell what train I'm on

# They won't know what route I'm gone. #

Largely thanks to you, it has to be said,

Appalachian music, or Americana, as it's now called,

is now hugely popular.

But its roots are Scottish and Irish.

How did that come about?

Well, the early settlers down in that part of the world

were Ulster Scots and Scots

and of course, the Ulster Scots were really Scots,

just slightly removed.

Uh-huh. The same music, the same...

They all ended up down in the southern states there

and the musical influence is there for everyone to hear.

Jean Ritchie there - her family were major collectors of music

in Kentucky and I think she moved to New York in the '40s,

and she knew Bob Dylan and all these guys

who were starting to revive music,

and she became a huge part of American music,

and they call her the mother of American folk song,

which she probably is.

# Yes, I want to go to heaven just the same as any man

# I want to go to heaven just the same as any man

# I want to go to heaven just the same as any man

# but I can't go to heaven with a possum in my hand

# Hop up, my ladies, three in a row Hop up, my ladies, three in a row

# Hop up, my ladies, three in a row

# Don't mind the weather when the wind don't blow. #

That was a great old tune called - Uncle Joe, you call it?

Uncle Joe, in the mountains here. Yeah, we call it McLeod's reel.

I suppose it's had a long journey over here. Yeah.

Found a home in the mountains here in Kentucky.

You're the only one of us here today

that's from this area, from Perry County. Mm.

You were born and raised here, weren't you?

Yes, I always tell people I live in Viper, seven miles north of Hazard.

It's a dangerous country!

Your family and yourself have been collecting songs here

and, you know, ballads from around this area for many years.

Yes, we saved them, actually, from when we...

when the ancestors used to live in Britain.

They just came over with the great-grandfathers,

the great-great-grandfathers, I guess,

and they've been in the family since, most of them.

Now, the banjo player there, was Mike Seeger. Yeah.

Why is he important? Well, he's Pete Seeger's brother, if you like.

The Seeger family are, of course, huge in American folk music,

and Mike Seeger played the banjo,

he played the fiddle, he played guitar,

a singer and they were involved in all kinds,

all kinds of American folk music.

Very important people, if you like, in the revival.

Mike, I was going to talk to you about...

I suppose, the revival of old-time music,

which you are instrumental in.

My parents, well, they were trained, classically trained musicians,

but they...discovered, I guess you'd say,

this kind of music in the '30s

and they brought me and Peggy and Barbara and Penny up

on this kind of music.

Got Pete interested, too. Yeah.

You formed the New Lost City Ramblers - when, in the late '50s?

Yeah, there was a bunch of people from the cities, like myself,

mostly in the north,

who got interested in this kind of music in the '50s

and started playing the music then,

and just it widened out and widened out

to where there was thousands of people playing fiddles and banjos.

# Wake up, wake up, darling Corey

# What makes you sleep so sound

# The revenue officer coming

# They're going to take your stillhouse down

# Well, the last time I seen darling Corey

# Was on the banks of the deep blue sea

# A few pistols around her body

# And a banjo on her knee

# Wake up, wake up, darling Corey

# And go get me my gun

# I ain't no man for trouble

# But I'll die before I run

# Oh, dig a hole in the meadow

# Go and dig a hole in the ground

# Go dig a hole in the meadow

# Gonna lay darling Corey down. #

That's a lovely song. Oh, yeah. I love it - I love the banjo. Yeah.

And I love the thing that Mike Seeger was doing there,

when they play it up the neck,

because it gives it a very, very soft tone. Yeah.

Not that kind of plunky thing, but a really soft, mellow tone.

Yeah, I know. But all that came out of the same revival.

It all flourished after that. Aye, aye, aye.

Why is the fiddle so important?

How did it become so important in Appalachian music?

Well, I think, first of all, it was portable. Right.

You could stick it under your arm -

and when people emigrated, they took fiddles with them.

They played on the boats on the way over... Right.

..which took weeks.

They had ceilidhs and there was fiddle...

You always see on these old emigration boats,

you could see guys...there's always somebody playing the fiddle.

One of the grand old men of the American folk revival

when Aly got to know him, North Carolina's Tommy Jarrell

was a master of the clawhammer banjo style as well as the fiddle

and he had a voice that came straight out of the backwoods.

# Can't stay here if you can't shuck corn

# Susannah

# Can't stay here if you can't shuck corn

# Susannah gal

# It rained all night the day I left the weather it was dry

# The sun so hot I froze to death

# Susannah, don't you cry. #

That's fabulous!

I think it's safe to say that as far as Americana music goes,

Tommy Jarrell's the real deal.

Would you agree? Oh, he's the man.

Aye. There's no question about it. Tommy is the real thing.

I'd met him in, I think, Asheville, North Carolina.

We played down there many years before and they told me this fiddler

was going to play for the dance after, a guy called Tommy Jarrell.

We heard him then, and he was a lot younger then,

and, boy, when he was in his 40s,

I would have loved to have heard him playing then, cos he was a natural.

That's great, Tommy. The Arkansas Traveller.

You've been playing the fiddle around here all your life, then?

Well, ever since I was 13 years old.

I've been trying!

And you learned it from your father?

That's right.

And you had an uncle? Uncle Charlie. Yeah.

Well, I've learned a few tunes from other fellas, you know,

but I started out with them.

And what did your daddy do around here?

Well, he was a farmer and a moonshiner and a store owner and...

HE LAUGHS

There seems to be a lot of moonshine down here. Is that right?

Well, the land was so poor up where I was raised

that you had to do something besides trying to farm to make a living.

I made a crop of tobacco and it, like,

two dollars and a half pound to fertilise, and I said,

"Well, I'll never make no more tobacco,"

and I went to moonshining there.

And my daddy, he got a contract to go out to South Dakota

to make some whisky and he backed out

and he asked me if I wanted to go do the job.

I said, "Yeah, I'll go." Was it good stuff? Yeah!

As good a whisky as you ever drinked. Yeah.

But it was right after World War I,

Them folks was all broke out there.

I made 600 gallons of whisky out there.

Of course, I got the most of it stole. Our partner stole it!

THEY LAUGH

I had his brother-in-law, too.

I, like, never got enough money to get home on.

THEY LAUGH

And I stopped out in West Virginia and made some out there -

before I got home!

You were leaving a trail of whisky all across this country! Oh, Lord!

I left home with 100 dollars and a ticket and I got off the train

with 16 dollars and a half

and I was gone, like, in eight days, six months.

That's how good I done at moonshinin'!

I was thinking, you know, to go from tobacco, supplying tobacco,

to moonshine, to playing the fiddle as a career,

d'you think there's a connection there somehow,

do you think there's a link?

It's all bad for you, that's it!

Fiddlers always... Illicit pleasure!

Aye, bad for you! Aye, aye!

But Tommy, well, as you saw, he was in his 80s there

and he's full of beans and we had a great day with him.

Just a great day and he's just a pleasure to be with,

and to play with.

Away 1,000 miles to the west of the Appalachians is Texas,

home of a very different style of fiddle playing.

They call it Texas swing.

In Austin, Aly had a session

with one of its greatest swingers - Johnny Gimble.

Now, I like the kind of back porch,

down homey stuff we've been watching up to now.

You're in a room where the walls are covered

in silver, gold, platinum discs.

Yes. Tell me about Johnny Gimble.

Johnny Gimble is a Texas swing fiddler who played with Bob Wills.

To play with Bob Wills, that's Texas swing.

And they toured all over America in a bus, these guys,

and played for dances.

They didn't play concerts. They played for...

Thousands of people would come and they would play these massive dances

and that's how they made their money -

but Texas swing and that kind of fiddle playing

meant that he was in huge demand in Nashville,

so he played sessions with everybody,

from George Jones to whoever he wanted.

They would have Johnny Gimble on their album.

And he never stopped smiling. Really?

He just smiled all the time we were there. He would just smile.

He just loves the music.

That's beautiful. Did you write that?

I made it up. You made it up?

Yes. I can't write music but I can make it up.

I'd like to talk to you a little bit about I suppose your forte in music,

which is swing music on the fiddle.

Would I be right in saying that that's what you like?

Well, I guess so - I like all of it,

but I grew up listening to Texas dance music, I think you'd call it.

I couldn't...

My mother didn't believe in going to dances

but we got the records and listened to them.

Cliff Bruner was an old hero of mine

and then JR Chatwell was a fiddle player with Adolph Hofner.

Then about 1940, I think Bob Wills really turned me on

with the fiddle players he had.

As much as anything else was the beat for dance music.

It swings, you know?

And you actually played with Bob Wills for a while?

'49 and '50 and then '51. I played about two and a half years with him.

It must have been quite an experience.

Mm-hm. On the road...

They used to say, "Join the Navy and see the world,"

and they used to say, "Join Bob Wills

"and see the world through a windshield!"

# Right or wrong I'll always love you

# Though you're gone I can't forget

# Right or wrong I'll keep on dreaming

# Still I wake with that same old regret

# All along I knew I'd lose you

# Still I prayed that you'd be true

# In your heart girl just remember

# Right or wrong I'm still in love with you. #

Look, now!

Oh, Johnny!

I love the guy who's doing the singing. What's his name?

Alvin Crow. Alvin Crow.

Yes, he's a...pretty redneck outfit.

But...

You know, all this dance hall stuff

with a bottle of beer in the back pocket smooching around.

Do you think it's harmed his career,

the fact he looks a wee bit like Jerry Lewis?

Yes, he does! He does, doesn't he?!

# Well, right or wrong I'll always love you

# Though you're gone I can't forget it

# Right or wrong I'll keep on dreaming

# Still I wake with that same old regret

# All along I knew I'd lose you

# Still I prayed that you'd be true

# Oh, Lord, in your heart please just remember

# Right or wrong I'm still in love with you. #

Woohoo!

That was fantastic. Great.

I mean, he's from Austin, and Austin was a hotbed of music.

I mean, music shows all over Austin. Why is that?

Why did that happen in Austin in particular? I don't know.

Willie Nelson was there, Waylon Jennings, all these guys.

Austin was the sort of centre of that whole musical thing.

That's where we filmed this.

There was an amazing amount of musicians down there.

Was it a style you admired? Yes, I just love it.

There's a lot of improvisation in it

and that's what these guys are good at.

They never played a tune for very long.

They would sort of leave and go off and do their own thing,

which is a very jazz thing.

Yeah!

Part Irish and part Cherokee,

Junior Daugherty had come to music relatively late in life

as a safer option to working the rodeos.

Wow! That's hot!

That was real toe-tapping stuff.

How would you describe Junior Daugherty's style of playing?

He's from New Mexico, close to Texas.

Very much influenced by the Texas swing music -

but a bit old-timey in there, as well.

Junior played all kinds of music. He's a good singer, as well.

Junior used to be in the rodeos and had some kind of an accident

and took up fiddle music seriously.

He made his living playing in competitions.

Junior, I was going to talk to you about...

You're the expert here on competitions.

You've been playing in competitions for years and years.

Yeah, I've been... Well, seriously since about 1970, I guess.

I went to Nashville in 1970.

And these competitions are all over the place?

Right. They've got a bundle of them here in Texas

but I don't come down here very often.

They've got too many good fiddlers down here!

You're from New Mexico which is pretty close to the Texas border.

It is. I'm about 45 miles north of El Paso.

You're a real cowboy because you did all the rodeo stuff way back.

At one time, yes. How did you do that?

Just sort of move around different rodeos

like you move around fiddle competitions?

Yes. Only I didn't make as much money!

I finally had a horse fall on me and crushed my foot and I quit.

You quit? I said, "That's it."

# As I look at the letters

# That you wrote to me

# It was you that I'm thinking of

# As I read the lines

# That to me were so dear

# I remember our faded love

# I miss you darling

# More and more every day

# As heaven would miss the stars above

# With every heartbeat

# I still think of you

# And remember our faded love. #

Back east from Texas into Louisiana, home of Cajun music,

Aly got together with Marc Savoy

and renewed his friendship with Dewey Balfa.

Dewey was the man who at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival

had first brought the Cajun sound to a world audience.

You were quite unique in that you had a whole family playing music.

That was what was really wonderful about your band, wasn't it?

Yes, Aly. You see, we were brought up on a farm as a sharecropper.

My Daddy was a sharecropper.

And, erm... We were very close.

There was a family of nine and we only had one fiddle in the family

so we would kind of switch it from one to the other

and that's why there were so many fiddlers in the Balfa family.

Personally, I liked the accordion.

But the fiddle talks,

the fiddle cries, the fiddle turns the key.

What made you choose Dewey Balfa for the series?

It was Dewey and his brothers who took Cajun music out of Louisiana

and into the rest of America -

and, of course, it took off, because it's infectious.

They were really sincere about what they were doing.

They loved Cajun music.

They wanted to share it with people

and they wanted to revive it in Louisiana itself.

They wanted to make the local population proud of what they had.

And we were trying to do exactly the same thing.

When Britain took over Canada,

they got dumped out and then went to Louisiana because it was French.

An incredible place to end up.

To make a living in the swamps if you weren't born there

and you just got transported there,

and everything that can kill you that's down there -

the alligators and snakes.

But what it made was great people.

They are really down-to-earth. I just loved them.

We spent almost a month there and it was just a big party.

Really? Yes. How did you find the food?

The food, I just loved it.

This is supposed to be good?

It's good.

That's brilliant. Hooves from all the pigs.

That's really good.

Take more. You're not supposed to quit on a little bit!

So the whole pig's gone? Everything? The whole pig's gone.

The only thing the Cajuns lose when they kill a pig is the squeak!

It's just a tradition that we try and keep alive

so it's an annual event.

We do it to have a party, it's just an excuse to have a party,

but what it represents is a way of life

for the old people many years ago.

The way they survived and preparing all their food during a boucherie.

The killing of a steer, or a pig, like today.

We just try to keep that practice alive.

Maybe one of these days, who knows, the world might make a big circle

and come back and we'll have to learn that way of life again.

What is it they say down there? "Laissez les bons temps rouler".

And none better to get the good times rolling than Michael Doucet.

Jongle a moi by Michael Doucet

It's always evolving.

What really matters to me is why are people doing this, you know.

I mean, I like the old songs.

You have to be able to play the old songs the way they should be played

because there's nothing like sitting with an older musician

who just perfectly dissects time.

In that he plays a song just at the right rhythm it should be played,

the right notes, no more than is needed

and just does everything the way it should be done.

There's something you can really learn about there.

Michael, there, he was then one of the young ambassadors for the music.

A great singer. You can tell he's a real Cajun. He loves it.

He loves the music, he sings beautifully. Aye.

That high voice that he always had. I love that.

MUSIC: Midland Two-Step by Michael Doucet

In America, it can seem that all musical roads lead to Nashville.

There, Aly met with the father of bluegrass himself - Bill Monroe.

Monroe started recording in the 1930s

and went on to become a living legend.

I love that. Bill Monroe, yes. Bill Monroe.

Would it be right to call him the father of bluegrass music?

Undoubtedly, yes. Why?

He invented it. He really invented it.

He literally invented it? Yes. He made it popular.

He kind of moulded it into what it is today. He's revered.

Every bluegrass musician thinks that he's the best.

He's the father of everything.

When you were playing with him

did you have a sense that you were playing with a living legend?

Absolutely. Really? I was really scared.

It was 90 degrees and to be honest I had a kind of a hangover that day!

Should you be telling me this?!

And he was getting about deaf. Was he?

And I kept asking him questions and he kept saying, "What did you say?"

And I had to shout again and the heat was overcoming

and Kenny Baker was playing with us that day, the great fiddler.

That's a great tune.

Bill, your family came over here from Scotland,

didn't they, originally?

The Monroes come from Scotland.

And is it because your link with Scotland that you named that tune?

I always loved the way the Scottish music was played

and the sound and going way on back

and the way the tones hundreds of years ago, I loved that part of it.

And I'd heard some Scottish bagpiping over in this country

and I just wanted to make a number like that and call it Scotland.

How did you get started in the music?

To start with, my mother she liked to play the fiddle

and my uncle Pen Vandiver on my mother's side of the family

was a wonderful fiddler,

and he would come and visit us once in a while

and I would get to listen to him play the fiddle.

And you learnt lots of tunes from him.

He did a really nice album called Uncle Pen.

Would you like to play one or two of his tunes?

Yeah, that would be fine. Why don't you do that?

Pick out one, Kenny.

Yeah. Let's do Jenny Lynn. Jenny Lynn, that's fine, yeah.

You hear the word legacy bandied about an awful lot these days.

What do you think is the legacy that Bill Monroe will leave?

It's changing all the time and in many different directions.

It's into country music, it's into old-time music.

Bluegrass music infects everything.

It's like a virus. It goes through all music.

You can see what has all been put in there like the feeling of the music

and the sound and the drive to it.

There's a lot of different ideas been put in bluegrass music.

Like the blues, the jazz, the timing of it matters.

The whole singing in it.

The sound of old-time fiddlers coming out of Scotland...

..built on how many years ago.

And that's in this music.

I think it's the greatest music in the world.

It's here to stay, I think. I just think it's wonderful.

Did you get the impression that he was very much aware of his status?

Oh, yeah. That he was musical royalty?

Absolutely. He knew exactly who he was.

I remember when we did 20 years of Boys of the Lough

we played at Carnegie Hall in New York

and he came and opened for us.

He opened for you? Yes, our concert.

Garrison Keillor was the compere.

But if we went one minute over, we had to pay $13,000 to the union.

And Bill Monroe...

I've gone a bit quiet thinking about that!

Bill Monroe wouldn't come off once he got going!

We were literally going on the stage and dragging him off

so as we could finish on time!

We're glad to have all you folks with us here today.

We have a number here that I hope you folks have heard it

and will like here tonight.

The title is Blue Moon of Kentucky.

That song, Blue Moon of Kentucky, Elvis Presley recorded that.

That was Bill made for life, I guess.

# Blue Moon of Kentucky

# Keep on shining

# Shine on the one that's gone

# And proved untrue. #

He had, like, three careers.

1946 or '47 he started a band with Flatt and Scruggs

and Chubby Wise on fiddle.

Chubby Wise was a great fiddler.

That was his first band - and what a band. Absolutely. It's mind-blowing.

# The stars were shining bright

# And they whispered from on high

# Your love has said goodbye

# Blue Moon of Kentucky

# Keep on shining. #

In the end, he died a hugely popular man.

But almost every great bluegrass player came up through his band.

The Grand Ole Opry is maybe Nashville's showcase

but it's in places like The Station Inn

where you'll find musicians' musicians.

Aly went along there on a night when Mark O'Connor was playing.

It was to turn into a bit of challenge.

Mark O'Connor is rightly regarded

as one of the greatest American musicians living.

Is that something you would agree with?

I absolutely agree with you, yes.

I ran into him in 1976.

I was at the Bicentennial in America

and we were playing there in Washington.

I went into this hotel and I was going up the stairs

and I heard this guy playing the fiddle.

And I said, I have to find out who that is.

I got my way through the crowd and here's Mark O'Connor

at about 15 years old standing in there playing to these people

and it just blew me away.

I thought, "Wow, this is going to be something else."

And you knew immediately.

I knew on my way up the stairs, really,

that this guy could play the fiddle.

Mark's from Seattle and by some chance Benny Thomasson,

a great Texas swing fiddler, was living in Seattle

and Mark went to him for lessons.

So that's where he learnt the Texas swing and the jazz in his playing.

And of course, he has the technique to play anything -

classical music or any kind of music he wants.

He's just a genius. Aye.

I watch him play and his fingers just fall down the fiddle.

I have to reach for things. His just fall down.

Right, right, right. He's in a different league.

He's the kind of guy that makes you sick if you're a fiddle player,

really, what he can do. Aye.

I was going to say,

traditional fiddle and classical violin seem worlds apart.

How unusual is it for somebody to have a foot in both camps

and be successful at both?

It is very unusual -

but he can do that, and he has the technique to do it.

He developed that himself.

It all flows from inside him and he can play what he wants.

He's a remarkable guy. Aye.

And you duelled with him on the stage?

No. We did... It was like the usual thing.

We arrived and he was there and, "What are we going to play?"

I said, "Play Old Molly Hare",

because that's what they called the Fairy Dance

and he knew it and I knew it and so we just got up and started to play

and it just went where it went.

No rehearsal? No.

It just went where it went. Uh-huh.

And I did this little bit of dancing bow that I made up.

It's kind of my own bow thing. It's not a classical thing.

He can see I'm looking at my bow and smiling because he couldn't do that.

Is that right?

It's one of the only things in the world he couldn't do.

But five minutes later he could do it!

He was great -

and he's so big, you know, and I'm so small. Aye, aye.

I almost had to stand on a stool!

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Aly, it's been absolutely wonderful talking to you, as always.

Nice to talk to you.

Just watching yourself, your younger self on that, what do you think?

I thought I was actually quite good looking, you know.

When I look at that I realise what a great life I've had. Aye.

What an absolute privilege it's been to meet all those people

and to play with them.

And to have a life and 48 years on the road

playing music - and still doing it.

Did you always think you would make a living as a musician?

No. Not for a moment when I was young. Really?

It was a pure accident.

But it's the best accident that ever happened to me.

No, I've had a great life, a really great life.

I've lived lots of lives in one.

Aye. And how would you sum it up?

I was looking in a record shop window one day in Chicago

and I saw a CD and I thought the name of it suits me just fine.

It was called 'The Older I Get The Better I Used To Be'.

That's pretty much it!

I'll drink to that! OK. Cheers, Aly. Good, Alex. Cheers.

All right, can I get everybody's attention just for a second?

This is a fiddle that I've played since I was 11 and 12 years old.

A great fiddle player from America, Benny Thomasson, gave it to me.

It's not playable any more,

but through the years

I've got famous fiddle players

to sign it -

and a few of them have passed on, like Joe Venuti.

And people like this.

Yehudi Menuhin signed it and Stephane Grappelli.

And I would like to get the great Aly Bain to sign it tonight.

APPLAUSE