MIKE COMPTON

At The Edge of the Cliff, With Passion

By Dick Bowden

For those who've followed bluegrass since at least the mid-1980s, it's nice to see Mike Compton returning to public acclaim. For those who came to the music since the 1990s, it might be a mystery who this fellow is who was nominated as IBMA Mandolinist Of The Year in 2001 and 2002; the mandolinist on the 2002 Grammys TV broadcast with the Soggy Bottom Boys; who is all over the "0 Brother" soundtrack and "Down From The Mountain" CD and tour; and who the New York Times called a "new bluegrass instrumental hero" when reviewing Ralph Stanley's CD debut in June 2002.

Mike Compton is the leading interpreter of Bill Monroe's mandolin style. He is a great composer of traditional mandolin tunes and a leading teacher of Monroe-style mandolin at camps around the country. But he’s done more than slavishly imitate Bill's licks. As pioneer New York mandolinist Artie Rose said, "This guy takes Monroe one step further." Compton has worked to understand what Monroe was feeling in his music. Today, if you want a session mandolin picker with the feel of Bill Monroe, you call Mike Compton.

As Blue Grass Boy/banjoist Butch Robins says, "Mike has reached the core essence of Monroe's style. Some mandolin players have learned a couple of books from Monroe, but Compton knows the entire encyclopedia. He uses the instrument almost vocally." Australian mandolin maker Steve Gilchrist adds, "Mike's playing is in the essence of Monroe's style, but so creative that he has extended it to an artistic equivalent of French Impressionistic painting. His playing is more emotional than technical. Without hitting every exact note like a fiddler, he conveys the broad impression of a tune." Guitarist David Grier says, "Mike is more than just traditional, although he is traditional. No one sounds like him. When he plays a tune you wrote it's like, 'Whoa YEAH! That sounds like a SONG!' Things you wouldn't have thought of that fit perfectly."

Mike Compton was born Feb. 29, 1956 in Meridian, Miss. At home, he heard popular music of the day like Eddy Arnold, Ray Charles, and Mitch Miller, but no bluegrass. The Moffett side of the family played string band music. Great-grandpa Galyean was an old-time fiddler. Mike had been playing trombone in the school band but gave it up to try guitar. At first he and cousin Jeffrey "Bodine" Moffett wanted to play Creedence Clearwater Revival. By their mid-teens, Bodine had inherited a fiddle, and Mike switched to a Sears mandolin, and they began playing old-time music standards. Working summers on farms hauling hay, and picking beans and watermelons, Mike rode with the old men in their trucks and heard their eight-track tapes playing string music. Sometimes after work, the farmers and the hands liked to play their guitars and mandolins a little to the old-time music of Gid Tanner and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith.

Mike soon found that the old-timers' sons were interested in bluegrass, and he followed them to local bluegrasser

Raymond Huffmaster. Raymond told Mike that all he needed to know about was Bill Monroe, and lent the teenager his entire collection of Bill Monroe LP's except "The High Lonesome Sound" which he said "was too valuable to lend." Up to this time, Compton had been listening to the "Deliverance" LP and trying to learn "Rawhide," which he didn't even know was a Bill Monroe tune. On hearing Monroe's records, he thought the playing was "simple" enough, with not too many

Notes, and would help build up his repertoire until he could eventually move on to something "better."

Looking back, Compton says he is honored to be considered a Monroe interpreter. He says he knows "some" of what Monroe's mandolin playing was about, but "like the Chinese alphabet, it would take two or three lifetimes to really understand it." After spending years learning Monroe's left-hand techniques, Mike reached the point of understanding that the real magic was in the right hand and "keeping the pick going" with the tremolo (or "tremble" as Monroe called it), managing rhythm and time, expressing feeling, and implying notes that the left hand never plays.

Hanging out with Huffmaster's bluegrass crowd, like most young pickers, Mike desperately wanted to "fit in." He hunted for his own copy of "The High Lonesome Sound." Raymond took him to regional festivals. On a trip to Bean Blossom in 1975, Huffmaster introduced Compton to Bill Monroe, and Mike participated in a jam, knees knocking, with the jeans-clad Father Of Bluegrass.

Compton entered Meridian Junior College on an arts scholarship. Then Huffmaster took Mike to Nashville to do the rounds of the bluegrass clubs. At one club, Huffmaster was invited on stage and he brought Mike up with him. As was often the case, Monroe was in the audience, so Huffmaster suggested that Compton pick Monroe's tune "Watson Blues." After the set, Mike met Nashville musicians Pat Enright, J.T. Gray, and Art Malmin, who talked about starting up a band. Enright told Compton, "Monroe was watching what you were doing," and Mike was invited to join the new band. Mike went home and "pretended to go to college every day, but really I started working on my mandolin to go to Nashville."

By age 21, Mike Compton had moved to Nashville to play music. The band he had been invited to join never did form. Mike set a new goal of getting good enough and well known enough to pick in the Nashville clubs. Again with the help of Huffmaster, Compton met Hubert Davis, whose band, the Season Travelers, had a regular gig at the Bluegrass Inn. Mike sat in with the band occasionally. Eventually Hubert asked Compton to join permanently. From 1977 to 1981, this band

was Mike's musical base. Mike has huge admiration for Hubert's banjo playing. Davis had been a Blue Grass Boy, playing on the 1954 session that produced "Wheel Hoss." "Hubert was as close to Earl Scruggs as you'd ever want to hear," Mike says. Surprisingly, today's leading Monroe interpreter spent 1977 to 1981 playing Flatt & Scruggs tunes!

Later, through Blue Grass Boy Bob Fowler, Mike got hooked on old country blues music. Compton likes to translate DeFord Bailey pieces, getting those harmonica licks on his mandolin. Or he might sing in a startlingly intense tenor on an old jug band song, something from Charlie and “Kansas Joe” McCoy, the Mississippi Mudsteppers., or the Mississippi Sheiks. Mike began incorporating a very slippery blues approach to the mandolin in his left-hand playing.

In 1979, Compton acquired the first Gilchrist mandolin retailed in the U.S. Mike had been playing a Randy Wood mandolin that belonged to Huffmaster. Gruhn's, in Nashville, had two of the new Australian F-5 style mandolins. Mike was quite taken with #7953, and this red Gilchrist mandolin helped Compton "make his mark" in bluegrass in the 1980s.

In the early '80s, Mike continued playing gigs around Nashville but worked mainly as a cook, or as a printer at the Hatch Show Print Company. Compton occasionally performed with Pat Enright, Alan O'Bryant, and David Sebring at regional festivals. He joined the Blue-grass Band for the last six or seven gigs of their existence, with Butch Robins, O'Bryant, Sebring, and Ed Dye. By 1984 Compton, Enright, and O'Bryant were booked on a five week Grand Ole Country Music package tour with rockabilly bands, Steve Young, Minnie Pearl, a western swing band, etc. Blue Grass Boy Mark Hembree gave Monroe his notice and joined the new band on bass. Needing a name to identify their role in the package show, they decided that the "Nashville Bluegrass Band" was as clear an explanation as any. The group was quickly noticed and signed to Rounder. Fiddler Blaine Sprouse assisted the four-piece group on their first album. Shortly thereafter, "NBB," as they came to be called, met fiddler Stuart Duncan playing with Larry Sparks at that time. Stuart was soon lured to the Nashville scene, and he joined NBB.

By this time, Compton had realized that the Monroe style of mandolin wasn't as "simple" as he once thought. "The longer I played it, the more I realized how hard it was." It had enough depth and versatility to do anything he cared to do, in spite of the feeling that it had "fewer notes." He committed to the style that would make his mark in the music. Huffmaster's advice was bolstered by Hembree, fresh from the Blue Grass Boys, who told Mike, "Play the style, it works everywhere."

The band worked very hard on vocals. Mike hadn't sung much before, but he could "hear" the baritone part in his head and he learned to match "voicings" with Pat, Alan, and Mark. This was completely new to Compton—a group learning process. The a cappella standout, "Blind Bartemus," took enormous amounts of practice, sometimes repeatedly voicing just one line, one word, or one syllable to get the best result. Mike’s baritone singing and slippery, bluesy Monroe-style mandolin were among the many features of the NBB that one day earned them “the best review I ever read,” as Mike recalls. A rock critic wrote, “They are steeped in the traditions of the music, but they refuse to kiss the music’s ass!”

Compton was a member of NBB from 1984 to 1988, performing on three albums, plus two more where NBB backed Peter Rowan and guested with David Grisman.

Compton had made his mark as a Monroe stylist with something to add. Fans crowded the front row at festivals to try to figure out "how he does it." His bluesy playing was analyzed, discussed and wondered at—it mystified pickers. His left hand never seemed to hit the strings or the frets "clean." One of Mike's students, John "Chubby" Conine of New Jersey describes Mike's left-hand movement as "wipes 'em off, wipe 'em off, as if he were always cleaning his strings. Stuart Duncan was known to preface the kickoff to a featured fiddle tune to urge the audience to “be sure to listen to what Mike Compton does in his break." For traditional mandolin lovers who could recite the Monroe disciples from Pee Wee Lambert to David McLaughlin, Compton’s performances were "must-see." Mike's mandolin vocabulary also included a bouncy double-stomp rhythm for backup dark blues double-stops in languorous tremolo passages, and mashing down with abandon on Monrovian downstrokes.

Of this period with the NBB, Compton says, "It was everything I had always dreamed of—being in a world-class band, traveling the world, playing the Opry," making albums. And the personalities just worked great together." However, by 1988, Mike felt like he'd achieved everything he'd ever dreamed of as a "youthful fling," and that it was probably time to settle down to a real job while he was still young enough to learn a serious trade. He was also tired and disillusioned after one more overseas tour. Then, on a rainy stretch of highway in Virginia, NBB's bus rear-ended a tractor trailer. Mike suffered cuts, scrapes and bruises, and a broken mandolin. But the mental picture of that trailer filling the windshield, and the agonizing wait as rescuers pried the seriously injured Mark Hembree from the front of the bus, were Mike's cues to check out. For the next couple of years, Mike drifted about and did only a little picking at the Station Inn.

By 1991, Mike had left Nashville. He got a job as a cottage caretaker in the Catskill Mountains of New York. For most

of a year, Mike and a companion handled the chores around a woodland cottage and minded the place through a snowy winter. He drove the shuttle bus at a Catskills ski mountain. Except for a few local pickers who got him to jam occasionally, he was out of the music world. Local mandolinist, Gibson Case, was as impressed with Mike's cooking as he already was impressed by his picking, saying, "His most memorable creation was an incredibly hot black bean dish. Case adds "If George Jones is the country singer's singer, Compton is the mandolin player's mandolinist. Like Ralph Stanley, his playing is immediately recognizable and unique."

But soon, Mike learned that he was miserable not playing music. He was back in Nashville by 1992. At first, he found that since Ronnie McCoury had moved to Nashville and had become the new Monroe-guy in town, there wasn't much session work left for him. Mike recorded a collaboration with David Grier titled "Climbing The Walls," and they toured together based on this album. During this period, Mike began giving mandolin lessons in Nashville and at various music camps around the country and returned to work as a printer.

Mike worked occasionally with John Hartford, whom he first met at the Appalachian Homecoming in Norris, Tenn. Eventually John asked Mike to join full time. Mike's most important learning during this period was "finding out that the Monroe style works great, playing between the dots, in keys like E , C#, A ,etc.," which John often preferred. Also, Hartford's unscripted shows kept Mike on his toes—he never knew when he would be called on to take a break. Through Hartford’s pursuit of old-time fiddle sources like Blind Ed Haley, Compton began to hear and play ancient music that he was convinced had been in the air influencing the young Bill Monroe. Mike frequently adapted his mandolin playing to the very un-bluegrassy guitar strum rhythm used by mandolinist Mrs. Ella Haley. Hartford also played old-time music venues that Compton had never experienced, and Mike got to meet sophisticated old-time pickers. And Mike says, he never saw anyone "practice as diligently as John Hartford, and some of that fanaticism about playing rubbed off on him. Compton recorded several albums with Hartford.

Since Hartford didn't maintain a busy schedule, Mike grabbed every opportunity to add to his income. John paid extra for bus driving, setting up mikes, hauling out mercantile goods, finding a good local restaurant, etc. Mike did all these "$25 jobs," as he calls them. He maintained his teaching, took all the session work he could get, and toured with David Grier as opportunities arose. He became one of the main mandolinists in the Nashville band The Sidemen at the Station Inn. Mike took on the mandolin and producer role for banjoist Bill Evans' 1995 CD "Native And Fine." (David Grier says "Mike can make a solo out of two notes," which he in fact did on the cut "Jump Jesse" from this album, holding two notes for a long time!) But it wasn't coming easy and Mike realized that he wasn't going to make it just picking his mandolin on festival stages. He continued his day job as a printer, practicing mandolin while the presses ran.

Butch Robins selected Compton to work on his 1995 CD "Grounded, Centered, Focused." Robins wanted to "get as close to Monroe power as possible" and was very taken with Mike's "approach to the instrument, particularly his constant use of tremolo. Mike was the only player I knew of who could work on that record. He could get the feel of the melody, not just play scales." For instance, on the complex and unfamiliar B tune "Jamboree," Butch says Mike "found the melody quickly and had his instrument speak that melody," using Monroe-style licks almost exclusively. As it turned out. Bill Monroe also played on two sessions for this project. Mike helped the aged Monroe focus on rare tunes from his past such as "Tanyards," as Butch says "with no weirdness between them. Monroe was at ease with Mike—and the Old Man never was afraid to comment unfavorably on other pickers if they were overdoing it or not doing it right." Several of the cuts on this CD feature breathtaking duets by Monroe and Compton.

Mike got to know Bill Monroe fairly well the last few years of his life and spent time at Bill's home in Goodlettsville. Monroe studied Compton too and took special pleasure in teasing the young man about his love of blues. He delighted in querying Mike in front of others, "Why do you want to be a black man anyway?" Mike spent the afternoon of Bill's 55^th anniversary on the Grand Ole Opry at Bill's cabin home on Long Hollow Pike with a few friends, drinking coffee, talking about Bill's new pullets and "the old days," shining up Bill's dress shoes and helping him into the blue suit and white Stetson for the drive to the Opry.

David Grier relates that once he and Mike were backstage at a festival while Bill Monroe was performing. While Monroe was picking some new and curious instrumental, off-stage Compton stood alone with a blank stare, playing along in harmony with his right hand hitting stroke for stroke with Bill—he just felt what Monroe was going to do.

Compton reprised as mandolin duet partner with Monroe on what is thought to be Bill's final recording, the 1996 CD, "Pieces Of Time," by ex-Blue Grass Boy fiddler Jimmy Campbell.

To the disappointment of everyone in Compton's circle, by 1996 he gave in to years of increasing substance abuse and found it easier to stay "numbed out and messed up." Some of Mike's closest friends and companions became estranged. Even John Hartford's tolerance was exceeded—Mike wasn't reliable about coming to work. Compton was suspended from Hartford's show until he could get it back together. But thankfully, as it sometimes works out for the lucky ones, Mike recognized his substance abuse and “got tired of it—of being a slave to it." As soon as he reached that point, he says “good things started to happen." Cousin Bodine encouraged him from afar. A good counselor kept him working on recovery. He met old-time Cajun fiddler Sadie Johnson from Birmingham, Ala., at the Station Inn and was inspired by her "love of life." Mike knew that he now had a “reputation to live down" and a hard job ahead to get clean. It took several attempts, but over the years, he's gotten it under control.

In 1998, Mike Compton married Sadie Johnson. They live in Dickson, Tenn., with four-year-old daughter Hallie and two-year-old son Eli. Also in 1998, Steve Gilchrist showed his appreciation to Mike for taking a risk on an unknown mandolin, presenting Compton with the brand new #436. Mike played the new mandolin for a while and shared critical feedback with Gilchrist. Steve says that he is honored to have such good players as Compton (and others) use his instruments professionally and push them to their limits and their faults. The quality of feedback that Steve receives has helped him become a better luthier and "take greater risks within the window of performance. Our careers seem to have paralleled and complemented each other. Music has become such an important part of making my instruments; I'm much more into the musical aspect of building now." As Mike’s fortunes improved, he eventually decided to sell the old red #7953 "to pay my income taxes and you can print that!"

In November 2000, Mike got the call he had long hoped for. Alan O'Bryant called to announce that mandolinist Roland White, who had taken Mike's place in NBB back in 1988, was leaving the band to work on his own music, and would Compton rejoin NBB? With eagerness, yet also some concern about his role and fitting in after so many years, Mike got back to "the place I want to be." The old gang, plus new bass player Dennis Crouch, works very well together. Mike admires every member of the band, saying, "They are some of the best musicians I know."

Simultaneously, Mike's musical world broadened unexpectedly. Producer T-Bone Burnett asked John Hartford to record dozens of old-time fiddle pieces as raw material for a potential soundtrack to the Coen Brothers' movie 0 Brother Where Art Thou? Hartford brought Compton and guitarist Chris Sharp as accompanists. Although they had no idea what they were getting into, Hartford always philosophized, "Just go in, and whatever's going on, do whatever's going-on, and do what they ask you. If they're hanging out, you hang out!" As the movie and the soundtrack evolved, T-Bone

called Compton and Sharp back for more recording. In the end, Compton was heard more often in the soundtrack than Hartford, or almost anyone else! Mike says, "I guess T-Bone just liked what I was doing."

2001 was a big year. Mike returned to the full schedule with NBB. His icicle-cracking first two notes in the kickoff to "Man Of Constant Sorrow" electrified the television and radio advertising campaign for 0 Brother. Before the movie opened, Mike was one of the workhorse sidemen in the Down From The Mountain concert at the Ryman in Nashville that spawned a documentary film and two nationwide tours. As the fame of 0 Brother and Down From The Mountain grew, fans could see Mike on national TV in natty vintage suits or his preferred formal overalls, white shirt, and bow tie. Emphasizing his Monroe roots, Compton’s distinctive mandolin break appeared on the bluegrass charts for several months on "Heavy Traffic Ahead" from the CD "Bill Evans Plays Banjo." To top it off, Steve Gilchrist brought his #500 mandolin on a visit to the States, and Mike instantly knew it was the greatest mandolin he had ever played. Accordingly, Gilchrist took #436 back home and plays it himself to this day, while Mike transmits his feelings on #500. And finally, IBMA nominated Mike Compton, for the first time, as Mandolinist of the Year.

In May 2002, Mike was honored for career achievements by resolution of the Mississippi House Of Representatives. After sitting through a long rant on another topic by one of the legislators prior to the ceremony, Mike felt moved to play "Old Ebenezer Scrooge" for the Representatives. He also got the solons to sing "I'll Fly Away."

Mike repeated as a member of the Down from the Mountain 2002 summer tour. He says, "I'm as dazzled by this as the public is. It's a great big friendly bunch without much pretension. I'm getting to work with a lot of people I never would have thought of working with and learning stuff from so much exposure to so many people playing music all around me." Compton was selected for T-Bone Burnett's country chamber music group to back Ralph Stanley on his critically acclaimed Columbia release. "It was hard work figuring out how to play what T-Bone had in his mind for a high concept, but it was a hell of a good time and I gained a great appreciation for Ralph Stanley and how he gets his feelings across in his singing." Mike and Stuart Duncan recorded more for T-Bone as he prepared the sound track for the upcoming film "Cold

Mountain." A new NBB album is under construction. During the DFTM tour, Ralph Stanley recorded an Austin City Limits program with Mike and the pickers from Ralph's new CD. Mike helped record an album of bluegrass warhorses with fellow Nashville traditionalists under the name the Little Grasscals, and his playing is simply stunning. He's also the cover art! And Mike is hoping to record his own

album of original tunes by year-end.

To learn better methods to express himself through music, Mike has been taking lessons from a classical violinist to brush up his ability to read music at speed, learn to play some fiddle, and learn more about the effect of body awareness and the physical art of performance. Mike also reads about artists, notably great painters like Van Gogh, and how they struggled to express emotion through their art. He continues to teach at camps in the U.S. and England. When time permits, he works with intermediate Monroe students. He's exploring the old fiddle tune books and pursuing old-time music. A particular focus right now is old-time tunings for mandolin. And Compton knows that he should sing more, so he's always looking for vocals that suit him. But lest this all sound too high-falutin', Mike Compton remains country as a stick. To borrow an exquisitely artistic term from Hank Williams, there's mule sh*t in Compton's music.

David Grier provides a good summing up. "He’s not just some guy from Mississippi in overalls playing an old-time

style. Even his choice of food and cooking is unique. He'd be easy to pigeonhole by appearance, but that's wrong. It's a dream to play with him. He's powerful without banging, and it's great to play quietly. Even if I ask him for advice, he's always nice, leaving it up to me. He's cool that way, but he'll still give you a good idea, like convincing me to play and compose waltzes. He brings a lot to a gig or recording session. Every great musician is about looseness, and when I find myself getting tight, I try to think of Mike. Look how he holds the pick. Why doesn't he drop it?"

Butch Robins adds, "Mike is conscious of his role as a musician, not a technician. He is a neat, interesting, thoughtful person. Monroe felt that every tune has a unique rhythm pattern, and Mike is very in tune with this nature of music. Mike is amongst the greats like Sam Bush, Buck White, Bill Monroe, and Jethro Bums. He thinks on a higher plane than just day-to-day living, and it comes out in his music—it blends into the artistic effort. Musically, he has reached and exceeded his physical limits and taken the music to where the unconscious takes over, very much like Monroe's playing in later years with the A modal family of tunes like "Ebenezer," "Dangerfield," etc. As Monroe said, the music is in the air, you just pull it out. I'm delighted for all of Mike's success."

In conclusion, since Mike Compton rejoined NBB, he's thought a lot about his "place" and his role. After years as a sideman, he's had to make a deliberate effort to express himself with confidence. In his playing now, say in the key of F, if he strikes some flint and steel sparks with dissonant open E notes, it just happens, and it sounds like it was meant to be. Mike's followers marvel at his increased forwardness. Of his angry, dark breaks on "Man Of Constant Sorrow," he says, "Well, I thought a guy who could sing about being in constant sorrow might be kind of mad, too." Sharing a metaphor with Steve Gilchrist, he says, "Now I feel like I can stand on the edge of the cliff with my playing, and enjoy the risk. Yeah, the cliff is there, but if I fall I'll just climb back up. No risk—no gain, no passion."

Dick Bowden is a traditional bluegrasser from

Maine, now living in Connecticut. His previous

articles were about Blue Grass baseball and the

first Loar Fest.

Reprinted by permission copyright Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine. 1-800-BLU-GRAS.