It was 1977 or so when I first heard Vassar Clements play. As a suburban Yankee teenager, I turned up my nose at "hillbilly" music, until I heard the eponymous debut of Old & In the Way, a short-lived bluegrass project featuring Jerry Garcia. It was a revelation, and, even to a novice like me, Clements stood out as the glue that connected the music to its roots.
Clements, who died last week at age 77, had a prolific career filled with countless high points, beginning with his induction into Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in 1949, all the way through his work on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 2005 Grammy-winning Best Country Instrumental, "Earl's Breakdown." But Clements' most enduring legacy may be his output from the early 1970s, when he played on three albums that forever changed the face of both bluegrass and the crowd who appreciated it—John Hartford's Aereo-Plain, the Dirt Band's Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Old & In the Way.
The least well-known of the three, 1971's Aereo-Plain was nonetheless groundbreaking, its free-spirited, improvisational approach laying the groundwork for what eventually would be called "newgrass." "I first saw the Aereo-Plain Band at Bill Monroe's Bean Blossom Festival in 1971," recalls mandolinist Sam Bush, a founding member of New Grass Revival who was a close friend of Clements' and frequent musical collaborator. "It was the first time Vassar was encouraged to step out and really improvise. He did a two- or three-minute solo at one point and just tore it up and ripped it apart. It was chilling, amazing."
The impact of the germinal Will the Circle Be Unbroken, which found the Dirt Band holding court with legends of bluegrass and country, has been well documented. But Old & In the Way, if less significant historically, also started a wave that is still rippling today—and in many ways best reflected Clements' musical ecumenism and unconventional spirit.
Already a recognized fiddle giant, Clements joined Old & In the Way in 1973. "We got to San Francisco, and we'd been out on the road I don't know how long," he recalled in the liner notes to Breakdown, a live recording of the group's October 1973 performance at The Boarding House (released in 1997). "I saw a billboard sign and said, 'Garcia, that looks like you up there.' It was a billboard of the Grateful Dead! They all cracked up over that. I was from a different world."
Indeed he was—a look at Breakdown's cover reveals four scraggly, longhaired freaks and a squeaky-clean Clements, with a shiny pompadour that would make Del McCoury proud.
"There he was with Old & In the Way, in his Sansabelt pants and white patent-leather shoes," Bush remembers. "That's just the way Vassar looked...and he looked perfect like that."
At the time, the boundary between square and hippie, particularly in the world of old-time music, was clearly drawn. But it didn't matter to Clem (as Garcia dubbed him), a fearless pioneer, comfortable in all surroundings, yet never ashamed of his roots.
According to the musicians who played with him, it was his big heart and constant desire to grow musically for which he'll be remembered most. "Vassar kept young by playing with young musicians with new ideas. He never got stuck playing the same old thing," Bush explains.
Fred Bogert produced and played keyboard with The Little Big Band—one of Clements' final projects, which fulfilled his dream of hearing his fiddle as part of a big-band sound. "You could never get anything insincere out of him," Bogert says, "because I don't think he was capable of it."
I never knew Clements personally, but as I sit here listening to "Kissimmee Kid," his instrumental tribute to his Florida hometown, I feel like I'm saying goodbye to an old friend. Judging by the hundreds of emotional farewells posted to his website's guestbook in the two days since he passed, I guess I'm not alone.
I never knew Clements personally, but as I sit here listening to "Kissimmee Kid," his instrumental tribute to his Florida hometown, I feel like I'm saying goodbye to an old friend. Judging by the hundreds of emotional farewells posted to his website's guestbook in the two days since he passed, I guess I'm not alone.
—Jack Silverman
