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In 1966 Marshall Brickman collaborated with Eric Weissberg to produce a banjo instrumental album called "New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass." Where most bluegrass banjo work up to that point (with the notable exception of Bill Keith) was built around arpeggios and short melody runs, Brickman and Weissberg worked out melodic scores for quite a number of well-known bluegrass tunes, plus some not-so-well-known tunes and also some original material. To a player, some of the result was startling to say the least, and it became a common pastime for banjo players during the mid 1960s to spend significant time working out those scores. With full respect to Weissberg's playing, Brickman proved to be the more adventurous and creative of the two, and it's likely that many players still struggle with some of his work. The album also introduced the great Clarence White's peerless guitar work to a much wider audience than he had enjoyed in his LA-based bluegrass band The Kentucky Colonels. It's true that the album would likely have faded into relative obscurity over the years, but for a serendipitous event--when the film "Deliverance" was made and the producers decided to feature "Dueling Banjos" prominently (resulting in legal action from the songwriter Arthur Smith, who was not credited), they recorded Eric Weissberg on banjo, with Steve Mandell on guitar, and that duo became part of the soul of the film. As was customary, an album was proposed featuring other banjo material, and rather than record an entirely new disc, Weissberg arranged for them to re-release "New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass" with Duelin Banjos added and a couple of the original tunes removed, and with a new title "Duelin Banjos." That album went platinum and beyond, and whether or not they knew it, millions of people got to hear Marshall Brickman's and Eric Weissberg's banjo work. Happily, this was part of why bluegrass has become so popular, but sadly, the film also contributed to the notion that the banjo is an instrument played by backwoods uneducated hillbillies. That attitude is slowly dying nowadays, but it has certainly taken a long time. As a player myself of several instruments, all I can say is that no instrument requires more devotion and time to learn to play credibly than the five string banjo. Sierrafrogs (talk) 03:42, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
