THE USES OF HUMOR BY BLUEGRASS MUSICIANS

By Thomas A. Adler
Published as: "The Uses of Humor By Bluegrass Musicians," Mid-America Folklore 10: 2-3 (Fall-Winter, 1982), 17-26.

Humor has been a part of hillbilly musical performance from before the earliest days of radio and recording. (1) While professional humor specialists like Minnie Pearl, Rodney Brasfield, Jerry Clower, Junior Samples, Benny "Whitey" Ford, and Speck Rhodes represent the mainstream or "Nashville" approach to country comedy, a rather different pattern has developed among bluegrass musicians as bluegrass and country music have evolved during the past forty years or so.

In the early years of bluegrass (roughly, from 1945 until about 1960) the differences between bluegrass humor and country humor were less impressive than the similarities. A number of bluegrass bands, including Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Don Reno and Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups, and Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and the Foggy Mountain Boys, did feature certain band members as comedy specialists. The old bluegrass comics, like pre-World War II country comics (and, to some degree, like the "hokum-comedy" Toby clowns and minstrel end-men before them) (2) dressed in exaggerated hillbilly costumes, wore absurd hats, blacked out some of their teeth on occasion, emphasized Southern rural speech patterns, were addressed as Cousin, Brother, Uncle, Pappy, or Grandpa, and typically dominated at least a few moments of the bands' formal shows.(3) 

Unlike most post-War mainstream country comics, the bluegrass comic had to be an instrumentalist as well, and was typically a bass player, dobroist, or rhythm guitarist. The role played by Southern bluegrass comedians before bluegrass spread beyond its cultural birthplace was not purely that of the rural simpleton, for in the varied and elaborate routines that were occasionally performed, a comic might alternate in the persona of fool and trickster. As the fool, he was just a friendly sap from the hills, and as a trickster he was never malicious. In either role, his image vis-a-vis the opposite sex was always that of a bashful observer or a ridiculously romantic and comically inept roué. Consider this exchange of wit, presented professionally in the vaudeville mode, but built upon a traditional narrative motif, the Dream Contest. The comic is Foggy Mountain Boy "Cousin Jake" Tullock, and the straight-man who begins this routine is "Uncle Josh" Graves:

Josh: Jake!

Jake: Yeah?

Josh: I got to tell you about a dream I had last night.

Jake: Dream you had last night?

Josh: Had one of the finest dreams you ever seen.

Jake: Awww, do tell. Well, tell me all about it.

Josh: I dreamed that I was out in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Jake: Las Vegas, Nevada!

Josh: You know where that's at?

Jake: 'fraid I do! [Chuckle] I learned the hard way.

Josh: You know, they got slot machines out there, you stick those silver dollars in there and pull that thing.

Jake: Yeah! Quarters, and half-a-dollars...

Josh: I dreamed that I was out there playin' those machines, and I won five thousand dollars.

Jake: Whoa! You never did no such a something, neither!

Josh: Yes I did tool

Jake: You dreamed you was out in Las Vegas, Nevada?

Josh: Las Vegas!

Jake: Last night?

Josh: Last night.

Jake: Plain' the slot machines?

Josh: Playing the slot machines.

Jake: And you won how much?

Josh: Five grand!

Jake: Five Grand. You call that a good dream?

Josh: I liked it.

Jake: [Chuckle] Wait'll you hear what ol' Jake dreamed last night.

Josh: Come on, what'd you dream?

Jake: Man, I was walkin' down the street here in Ithaca.

Josh: Here in Ithaca!

Jake: And a beautiful blonde came up and grabbed me by that arm.

Josh: Beautiful blonde.

Jake: And a beautiful brunette come up and grabbed me by that [other] arm.

Josh: Brunette on this side.

Jake: We were there walkin' down the street, arm in arm; I had two of 'em!

Josh: Blonde on that side, brunette on this side, two of ‘em?

Jake: Two of 'em!

Josh: Why didn't you call me?

Jake: I did call you, you was in Las Vegas playin' the slot machines! (4)

Jake Tullock's reference to Ithaca, New York, was important, for the occasion was a 1965 Cornell University concert in Ithaca; local references almost always were worked into the professional comedian's jokes, insuring audience identification and big laughs. Cousin Jake continued to use local references in a formulaic way during his comedic monologue at the same concert:

“Thank you for that hand, I deserved it. I'd like to say that it's a real pleasure to be back up here at good old Cornell University. I always told Mom I'd be in college one of these days. We always wanted to come back up here since the last time we's up here, we wanted to come back in the worst way. Sure enough that's the way we come, right through Pennsylvania.”

The well-planned comedy show that Jake and Josh put on filled about a half-hour of the Flatt and Scruggs concert, giving the other musicians a chance to rest and relax, yet keeping an audience interested and entertained all the time. The comedic interlude also meant that the show as a whole was more enjoyable and acceptable to general audiences; to use a phrase familiar to most bluegrass and country musicians, it was "good family entertainment."

Yet in order to fill the comedy slot, as well as to offer a change from the musical fare, many of the jokes and routines had nothing to do with bluegrass music, or nothing to do with the musicians' actual identities, or nothing to do with the social dynamics of membership in a cooperating band of musical equals. Cousin Jake's most famous routine, the "Little Red Truck" joke, took over two minutes to perform and was embedded within a longer sequence which only resolved after about five minutes. The sequence as a whole has little to do with bluegrass music; it portrays Jake as absurdly stingy, absurdly ignorant of modern ways, yet the resolution, which incorporates and parodies an Anglo-American comic motif,(5) turns the entire sequence into a demonstration of Jake's verbal wit.

Flatt and Scruggs broke up as a performing team in 1969, and since that time, no professional bluegrass bands have employed a costumed comedian to perform an interlude of sketches, jokes and humorous songs. (6) As the bluegrass musical style diffused beyond the Southeast in the 1960s and early 1970s, the costumed rube comic was left behind, perhaps because the image of the Southern "hick" was simply irrelevant to the cultural styles of bluegrass's new urban and non-Southern constituencies. Though the costume and the comedic interlude generally disappeared, on-stage humor continued to be of great significance in bluegrass shows. It has been transformed, however, into a property shared by emcees, front-men (or "stars"), sidemen, and bluegrass audiences. Through that transformation a body of humor has been preserved, albeit refocused on music and music-making, and an extremely varied set of rhetorical performance functions (7) continues to be fulfilled. The remainder of this paper is a partial classification and examination of some of these specific functions as they are realized in contemporary bluegrass, among both amateur and professional bands.

It seems important, first of all, to discriminate between two types of bluegrass humor that relate to my topic, but are still distinguishable from it. First, the unintentional humor that results from musical performance errors may promote laughter, but it is the laughter of a performer's embarrassment and of sympathetic identification with his momentary plight. Likewise unintentional is the kind of verbal error in which, for example, Birch Monroe once introduced banjoist Alan Munde, who is from Norman, Oklahoma, as "Norman, from Oklahoma."

While unintentional errors can result in some good-natured in-joking and humorous memories for those involved, they are not the same as purposeful comedy, except insofar as they become traditional off-stage narratives.

Second, the humor that is invoked by bluegrass musicians off-stage includes parodies that will not wash as "good family entertainment." Some parodies cannot be used because they express contempt for the general audience's musical tastes, mocking songs which have achieved widespread commercial success beyond the usual bluegrass markets. For example, two young and earnest pickers I met at a bluegrass show near Lexington, Kentucky, displayed an initial reluctance when I asked for the words to the parody of "Fox On The Run" they had been singing in a backstage room. All they knew was a chorus:

She walks through the Cornflakes, out in the kitchen Sneaks under the table, and gets my bubble gum.

She took all the spray that a poor boy could give her, And left me to die like a roach on the run.

A bluegrass band's perception of the audience, and more generally of the whole performance context will limit the employment of risqué' or off-color parodies. In the early 1960's, the Country Gentlemen could perform Shell Silverstein's homosexual parody "Big Bruce" (8) to boozy, appreciative, late-night crowds in suburban Washington, D.C. bars, but even now might find it unusable at a family-oriented rural festival. Even less likely to be used on stage are obscene song-title parodies. I recall a regular game played in Chicago by a female banjo player, her musician boyfriend, and others in their immediate bluegrass network; they would insert the word "dildo" into bluegrass song-titles and try to break each other up by recalling the names of numbers in which the substitution was especially striking, e.g., "Bluegrass Dildo," "Earl's Dildo," "The Little Girl and the Dreadful Dildo ... .. I'm Using My Bible for a Dildo," (alternatively, "I'm Using My Dildo for a Roadmap"), or "Nine Pound Dildo."

Song-title parodies that will not offend are frequently used on stage, though, probably because both musicians and audiences are always ready for a change from the conventional, almost formulaic manner of introducing each song that is used by hillbilly, country, and bluegrass bands alike. Typical song title humor might show up as emcee's announcements:

• The next number will be "Paddy On The Turnpike" or "Turny On The Pancake," whichever you like.

• Some people call this song "Windy Night in the Outhouse," but we call it "Stoney Creek."

Though band members need only be introduced once in any show, and songs cannot all be introduced humorously, modern bands confront a number of other on-stage situations where short funny lines can contribute to the overall management of their artistic image.

For one thing, the management of a show centrally involves a concern with time. Bluegrass emcees do advance the show with serious but cliched phrases like "We got time now for just one more, 'cause we need to get out of here to make room for some more great talent," or, in the manner of the live-radio bands, "Well, the old clock on the wall says we've got time for just one more." These well-worn phrases are particularly suitable for parody, e.g., "Well, the old clock on the wall says 'Tick-Tock,"' or "My God, the old clock on the wall has stopped" The concept of "show time" itself is often divided into smaller, specialized times -"gospel song time," or "instrumental time" -which can be parodied too, as when Sam Bush would rhetorically question the audience, "What time is it?" and answer "Eastern Standard Dobro Time, and we brought Doctor Dobro with us today! "

Short funny lines, whether based on puns, absurd imagery, or the momentary assumption or assignment of a fool or trickster persona, also serve to divert the audience's attention from tuning or string-replacement, which must be done on stage, yet do not constitute entertainment. An emcee may try to mask the tuning or repair activities with a distracting, unrelated joke, or he can use the time to sell records, to announce future appearances of the band, or to seriously dedicate or introduce an upcoming song. But the uncertainty and anxiety of the interval in which an on-stage band is unprepared to play is often converted into a positive feature of the show through tuning jokes. Frank Godbey, who plays mandolin and emcees shows for a local Lexington band, "The Next of Kin,'. intentionally avoids public use of those tuning jokes which have become clinches:

• Here's an old Chinese number: TU-NING!

• When I get it right, I'm going to spot-weld this tuning peg.

• Well, that's close enough for bluegrass.

Yet when chided for playing on old, hard-to-tune strings, Godbey assumed the "fool" role himself, momentarily, by quipping: "Oh, well, they'll tune it up for me at the factory when I send it in for a restringing."

Many of the humorous lines already introduced represent a single technique of bluegrass humor which might be called the "anti-apology." The band which triumphantly returns to the state for a demanded encore may thank the audience with grins and a statement like, "We were gonna come back up here anyway". or "If we'd done it right the first time, we wouldn't have to come back up here to finish the job I" An anti-apology wittily expiates any small error or problem that may occur on stage; that is, it can be used in a genuinely apologetic way, but it always overdoes the job. It can be used for a singer's lapse of memory, which results in mumbled words, as for instance when Keith Whitley says, "Wendy Miller accidentally put his tongue over his eye-tooth on that last number, and he couldn't see what he was saying." (11) Or an anti-apology may serve notice of a vocal problem: "Sorry about this voice, folks, I'm hoarse enough to ride."

Another cluster of witticisms is associated with requests for songs. Funny lines are particularly helpful in managing the interaction with the audience which is central here, for a band must either honor a request, tactfully dismiss it, or otherwise divert attention from it. A written request note may be read aloud by the emcee as if it were a romantic invitation directed at the band's fool. Requests may be dismissed or solicited with such lines as:

• We tend to answer your requests a lot quicker when they come up by certified check.

• Write your requests on a five-dollar bill, wrap 'em around a fifty-cent piece, and throw 'em up here!

The band may bring the whole notion of requests to an audience's awareness by using anti-apologetic or fool-baiting lines:

• We got a sincere request just before the show, but came on anyway.

• Ed, here, got a request to do something with the bass, it but he says it won't fit!

The genuine and reasonable concern of professional bands with making money from their audiences forms the foundation for many jokes, not only in handling requests, but also in the more direct references that must be made about selling records, arranging bookings for future shows, and offering to sell fan-club materials and souvenirs. The "Next of Kin" has a running joke going with Lexington bluegrass audiences in which the banjoist apologizes, "We don't have any records yet, but we'll be selling Frank Godbey key-chains [non-existent] right after the show." Bands which do have records, tapes, or real key-chains (or stationery or letter-openers or T-shirts) for sale must try to promote sales from the stage, but they may leaven their commercials with humor, as Melvin Goins does so artfully when he says, "We don't need the money, but the folks we owe it to does. " A.L. Wood announced at a large Indiana festival that he and his band, the Smoky Ridge Boys, put their first record out ". . on the Feen-A-Mint [laxative] label. . because we thought it might move." Wood went on to add, anti-apologetically, that the first record wasn't much. It was a eight-inch record with a twelve-inch hole in it!"

Another element that may be commented on or managed with humor is applause. Bands may use a few ready-made phrases to joke with an audience while thanking them for their applause - like Cousin Jake's "Thanks for that great hand, I deserved it," or Roger Bush's reminder to the crowd that "Applauding is like making love to a widder-woman, you can't overdo it. " A favorite line which signals the acceptance of applause is the Wellerism, "As the old cow said on a cold morning, thanks for the warm hand! "

Most performing bands today, whether full-time touring professionals or local amateurs, use such humorous lines as have been illustrated to manage and control the critical situations summarized above: introductions, announcements, apologies, tuning, commercials, and applause. Despite the general movement away from non-musical humor, away from humor that is not rhetorical in the context of modern state performances, audiences are still quite prepared to accept the skillful intermittent telling of jokes which do not relate to the music or the performance. Professional bands, particularly, still seem to perform complicated humorous routines which are framed by routine on-stage talk. That is, an ordinary song introduction may be suddenly side-tracked and converted into a funny situation that sets up a punch-line. Two moderately famous routines of this type, both done by the Kentucky Colonels in the mid-1960s, illustrate the type:

Roger Bush: [as audience applause for the preceding number dies away] Thank you! Thank you very much! You know, a lot of times you find that a brother team is - is - What are you doin', Scott?

Scott Stoneman: [addressing a woman in the audience] Bureau, honey, don't go nowhere, I'll be right back there just as soon as the show's over...

RB: Who?

SS: Bureau.

RB: Bureau?

SS: Yeah, she's sittin' right back there, my girlfriend.

RB: Bureau? You mean Beulah?

SS: No, I mean Bureau, B-U-R-R-O, she's sittin' right back there.

RB: There's - There's no such name as "Bureau." You must mean "Beulah."

SS: No, I oughta know her name; I been goin' with her for- For- For, uh- Let's see, what the devil have I been goin' with her for?

RB: No, you must mean Beulah, Scott.

SS: No, I mean Bureau.

RB: No, a bureau is a thing, it's about so high [indicates chest height] and so wide [holds hands about three or four feet apart] and got great big drawers I

SS: [Pointing into the audience] That's her, she's sittin' right back there!

---------

Roger Bush: Thank you! On our World-Pacific --

Billy Ray Lathum: Aaaaa-choooo! [Sneezes]

RB: Gee whiz! On our World-Pacific album, we got a lot of songs on there that we did instrumentally, and one of 'em -

BRL: Aaaaaa-choooooo!

RB: [looking askance at BRL, he pauses, then continues] One of 'em that we did is an old country song, and we just took the words out of it, played it instrumentally, and kind of pat-

BRL: Aaaaaa-choooooo!

RB: Bill, what's the matter with you?

BRL: [to another band member] Give me a napkin [for a handkerchief].

RB: What's the matter with you? 

BRL: I got the sneezes.

RB: How long you had the sneezes, anyhow?

BRL: I've had 'em the last . . . couple . . . Aaaaaachoooooo! ... days.

RB: Last couple days?

BRL: Yeah.

RB: 'Bout time you was gettin' rid of 'em, isn't it?

BRL: Yeah.

RB: Don't you know how to get rid of the sneezes?

BRL: No. No, how?

RB: Don't you know how? It's really easy to get rid of the sneezes, Bill. All you got to do is drink lots of prune juice. Every mornin'-

BRL: Will that get rid of the sneezes?

RB: Well, no, but it'll make you think twice before you sneeze.

A master of such brief routines who also cracks jokes and plays both the fool and trickster roles to the hilt in his shows is "Little Roy" Lewis, banjoist for the bluegrass gospel group, The Lewis Family. (12) Little Roy constantly rattles off such lines as' "It's never too far to come see a good Lewis Family program; if it is, just put yo' money in an envelope and send it to the Lewis Family, Route 1, Lincolnton, Georgia!"

When Wallace Lewis asks Little Roy if he's ready to stop clowning and play the next tune, he may respond, "Well, it's just like Grandma said when she got her big toenail caught in the sheet." Wallace asks, "What's that?" and Little Roy yells, "Let it rip!" Such an exchange is more than just a line; it is a routine, requiring Wallace's active cooperation as straightman. A partly-musical routine that Little Roy has used begins with his playing a commonplace cue-and-tag ending to a song, at which "Pop" Lewis, the patriarch of the Family objects, "You gonna put a 'shave-and-a-haircut' on a gospel tune, Little Roy?" And Little Roy responds: "Ain't gonna hurt none to trim 'em all up!" Little Roy even takes his comedy act beyond the performance frame of the Lewis Family's shows by engaging with banjoist Sonny Osborne in a chronic "war" of humorous competition and on-stage sabotage. The Osborne Brothers, who use little or no pre-planned humor in their own shows, may be on stage at a festival where each act has plenty of time, and Little Roy will sneak onto the stage, mimic Sonny and Bobby Osborne behind their backs, and try to make Sonny laugh hard enough to lose control while playing. All this humor, like that of the "Bureau" and "Sneezes" routines, is very broad and visual, in the manner of slapstick, as when Little Roy puts a giant cowboy hat or a wastebasket over Sonny's head during a banjo break; but Sonny gets back at Little Roy at times, and the open pranking is hugely enjoyed by the audiences and the principals alike.

Several professional bands have added to their fame with special humorous routines they have developed, which seem most effective when they involve both musical control and verbal humor. To this group belongs the Country Gentlemen's incredible slow-motion introduction to "Cripple Creek," based on an earlier arrangement by Flatt & Scruggs; and likewise the Gentlemen’s hilarious skit built around "Duelin' Banjos." (13) Moreover, much on-stage humor arises from skilled imitations of Bill Monroe's distinctive singing and talking style, or that of Lester Flatt, Ralph Stanley, (14) Mac Wiseman, or John Duffy.

A humorous technique which is the formal antithesis of the anti-apology is the pretense of incompetence, or the commission of intentional mock-errors. In a 1965 Kentucky Colonels performance, the showy "bell-ringing" left-hand pull-off or pizzicato technique often used by fiddlers on "Orange Blossom Special" momentarily seemed to pose a problem; the note was played flat, then sharp, then sharper yet, then flat again, and finally corrected through the apparent aid of another musician's running commentary: "That's wrong. That's wrong. That’s wrong, Scotty! That's still wrong. That's it!"

Several general points can be made about the body of bluegrass humor reviewed here, in ways that cross-cut the various categories and functions I have outlined. First of all, though modern professional bands have abandoned long comedic interludes done by costumed comedians, they still recognize the value of humor as a complement to their principal mode of expression, instrumental music. Since professional bands' humor is publicly displayed, but rarely copyrighted or even included on their records, amateur and semi-professional "weekend" bands feel free to re-enact or adapt much of the same material for their own use. This process is not exactly one of "gesunkenes Kulturgut," and anyway it is countered by the constant emergence of witty lines from family tradition and from face-to-face oral tradition centered on the amateur bands. When I asked Keith Whitley about that line of his, ". . putting your tongue over your eye-tooth and not being able to see what you're saying" - he first said, "Oh, that's an old line that musicians use a lot," and then admitted that he really had learned the line from his grandfather, who used it frequently and publicly "years ago." Borrowed lines are rife, but problematic, since humor may be regarded as private property. One of Frank Godbey's own jokes (i.e., one he had made up) was used onstage by the emcee for another local band, and now Godbey will not use it.

Second, a lot of goal-directed bluegrass humor — the jokes which help to manage the show's flow directly —is seen by all to be humorous precisely because it is all so necessary and familiar. If a musician tunes for a moment on the stage and then says with a smile, "Well, that's close enough for a Bach chorale," he and the audience both recognize the several layers of wit that have been associated.(15) The humor of comfortable, corny, bluegrass cliches makes it clear to an audience that the band members have put in their time in the audience, too. Such humor links the band strongly to the crowd, and implies through subject matter, dialect, and musical content that it is a link, that the band and audience share an esoteric tradition. The corpus of familiar humor that is invoked by bluegrass bands includes items that have endured since the early days of professional country music, though it has clearly developed a stronger focus on musicality and continues to evolve in its own way. New bluegrass witticisms emerge with new bluegrass musicians from the amateur ranks, but they are often really old lines that may have been passed on locally. Those expressions that are repeated too often by a single group may lose their initial appeal, but they will be remembered and eventually employed again. New witticisms therefore frequently build on old ones.

Third, the rise of "newgrass," "dawg music," "boogie grass, " and other progressive syntheses reflects the diffusion of bluegrass music as a style system beyond its original Southeastern cultural niche, and underlies a comparatively newer body of humorous parodies done from exoteric or outsiders points-of-view. Progressive bluegrass musicians may use humor, both verbal and musical, that is non-regional, openly urban, and mass-cultural or even counter-cultural in orientation. Think about Sam Bush's great line, grounded in a thoroughly urban worldview, that the Newgrass Revival's newest member, former rock'n'roll bassist John Cowan, had just learned his first bluegrass solo at "bluegrass summer camp." Or consider the Seldom Scene's description of 1950s bluegrass as ". . the days of negative stage presence," which they then hyperbolically illustrated on "Hit Parade of Love." (16) Even when the stage presence and style of progressive musicians seem to mock the corny conventions of "oldgrass," (17) they do so with a kind of reflective awareness of musical history; a hip or mocking style may postulate a differential identity, but it ends up indicating a sense of genetically shared identity. (18)

Even so, to the old humorous oppositions between the sexes, between the wise and the foolish, between the hillbilly and the city slicker must now be added the opposition between old and new musical styles, between old and new cultural proclivities. Bluegrass jokes and routines certainly vary in their effectiveness, and clearly reflect a changing constituency's conceptions of bluegrass as a musical style; but however problematic the analysis of their meanings, they are worthy of more collection and consideration. The onstage humor of bluegrass musicians transforms and projects their worries and worldviews while controlling, entertaining, and perhaps even instructing audiences. The body of humor that accomplishes all these ends reflects the dynamism and vitality of the folks whose sense of music and sense of humor sustain it.

Thomas A. Adler
University of Kentucky, 1982

NOTES

(1) An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1981 American Folklore Society meeting in San Antonio, Texas. I am most grateful to Robert J. Cogswell, Brian Lappin, and Frank and Marty Godbey for lending me tapes of bluegrass shows that included much humorous talk, as well as for their insightful comments on this subject. I would also particularly like to thank Bill McNeil for his critical reading of the early draft and suggestions for its improvement.

(2) Cf. "The Last of the Toby Shows," in Tristram P. Coffin and Hennig Cohen, Folklore: From The Working Folk of America (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1973), pp. 357-60; Jere Mickel, "The Genesis of Toby: A Folk Hero of the American Theater," Journal of American Folklore 80 (1967), 334-40; and Bill C. Malone, Southern Music - American Music (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1979), pp. 24-5.

(3) A summary account of an early Bill Monroe show which indicates the broader concept then held of bluegrass "entertainment" appears in Neil V. Rosenberg, "Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs," Stars of Country Music, Uncle Dave Macon to Johnny Rodriguez, ed. by Bill C. Malone and Judith Mcculloh (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), p. 259.

(4) This excerpt, like the other quotations of Jake Tullock, Josh Graves, and Lester Flaft, was transcribed from a 1965 Cornell University concert tape. Most of the other quoted jokes and lines are also verbatim transcriptions from live-show tapes made by attending fans. It is regrettable that comparatively few commercial bluegrass albums - even those recorded "live in concert" - incorporate on-stage humor.

(5) Motif Z 13.4*(b)., in Ernest W. Baughman, Type and Motif-Index of the Folktales of England and North America (The Hague: Mouton & Company, 1966), p. 602.

(6) William K. "Bill" McNeil has pointed out two partial exceptions: "Red" Murphy in Carl Tipton's Nashville-based group, and DeWitt "Snuffy" Jenkins in the "Pappy" Sherrill band from South Carolina both act as costumed comics, although neither group is in the main current of the contemporary bluegrass stream.

(7) Roger D. Abrahams, in his "Introductory Remarks to a Rhetorical Theory of Folklore," Journal of American Folklore 81 (1968), 143-58, says that the "atmosphere of control is the primary tool of the rhetoric of a performance ... " (p. 148)

(8) "Big Bruce" is included, with introductory remarks, on Country Gentlemen: Live From the State of the Roanoke Festival (Zap Records ZLP-101).

(9) The Ozark-based group, The Dillards, did include a good deal of funny introductory material on their album recorded in a Los Angeles nightclub: The Dillards: Live ... Almost (Elektra Records EKL-265).

(10) A fine in-costume photo of Reno (with Red Smiley and the aptly-named Tennessee Cut-Ups) appears in Bob Artis, Bluegrass (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1975), between pp. 14-15. See also pp. 64-5 for a description of Reno and Smiley's "great country comedy."

(11) The same line appears on Lew Childre: On The Air - 1946, Vol. I (Old Homestead Records OH-132). [It was also frequently used by vaudeville and medicine-show comics.]

(12) Artis, Bluegrass, p. 100, gives three more examples of Little Roy's nonstop comedy lines, of which I have heard two used repeatedly by amateur bands.

(13) A photo of the denouement of the "Duelin' Banjos" skit is in Artis, Bluegrass, between pp. 78-79, and a short description of the skit on pp. 116-17.

(14) Ibid., pp. 142-43.

(15) A more appropriate term, perhaps, is "bisociated." Arthur Koestler suggests that laughter is one of three possible affective responses to the "bisociation of contexts," in "The Three Domains of Creativity," in James F.T. Bugental, Challenges of Humanistic Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1%7), pp. 30-40.

(16) Seldom Scene: Live At The Cellar Door (Rebel SLP-1547).

(17) William H. Koon, "Newgrass, Oldgrass, and Bluegrass," John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 10 (1974), 15-18.

(18) Richard Bauman, "Differential Identity and the Social Base of Folklore," Journal of American Folklore 84 (1971)9-38.