My Hero and Mentor

West R Lee

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Some of you may recall my now 83 year old great friend, and the man I look up to the most. Here he is tonight with his D55 at the Gladewater Opry Hall. Gosh, I feel guilty anymore when I feel a bit too tired to do something I need to do. :oops:

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And a brief clip:



West
 

Scratch

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I can see why he means so much to you Jim. I'd love to meet him... Did you go up on stage?
 

West R Lee

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Actually, even though I've known most of the folks playing for years, it may not seem like it, but this venue is pretty formal. What you can't see is that there about 500 people sitting out there in the audience. B.F. was invited to sit in with the "East Mountain Bluegrass and Gospel Band" because his son plays with them normally, and couldn't be there....B.F. took his place, and quite well I might ad. The band has just made a CD, and plays all over East Texas. They're way out of my league.

http://www.eastmountainbluegrass.com/

The guy on the right, with the mando, is B.F.'s son Randall. The bands sound man, is one of the best guitarist around, and doesn't play with them. He and I work directly together now at work. Tucker, and his wife Julie, both work for the same company I work for also. That's Julie playing bass for the band.

Tucker, the guy playing banjo, and I used to play together around the house 25 years ago. A great guitarist, I was playing with Tucker one night when he said, "I think I'll get a banjo, I've always wanted to try it." About a month later, he was playing the thing. He's incredible. This short clip doesn't convey how good these folks are.

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West R Lee

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Scratch said:
I can see why he means so much to you Jim. I'd love to meet him... Did you go up on stage?

I might be able to talk B.F. into coming to Arlington this year. I tried last year, but he had plans to go to an annual Mountain Home, Arkansas get together that weekend. He said he wished he had come to Arlington last year. I'll try again.

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West R Lee

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An interesting thing I discovered last night, and some of you may have heard of them, but the acoustic the man is playing in the clip, and the bass the lady is playing, were both hand made by a guy here in Texas. They are called "Mossman", any of you ever heard of them? This was the first I had heard or seen one, they sound pretty good, not as good as B.F.'s D55, but good. The bass really sounded nice.

Mossman is located in Sulphur Springs, which is about a 2 hour drive west of here. When I heard that, all I could think about was that Sulphur Springs was nothing but dairy farms. I went to their website to discover that the Mossman shop was built in a converted dairy farm structure. :D Lotsa bluegrassers around here play them.

http://www.mossman-guitars.com/welcome.htm

West
 

The Guilds of Grot

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From the Mossman History page.

A New Beginning

Scott Baxendale's ownership of the Mossman company was short lived. At some point in the late 1980s he moved the company to Dallas, Texas and also built a series of high-end one-off guitars including the Mossman Superlative, pictured in Gruhn and Carter's "Acoustic Guitars and Other Fretted Instruments." This guitar is as superlative as the name implies with incredibly ornate and detailed inlay work covering much of the body and head. But Baxendale sold the company to John Kinsey and Bob Casey in 1989. 'We bought the company because of the history and reputation that Mossman had established and because we felt it was a real opportunity," Kinsey says. In 1991 Mossman Guitars was moved to Sulphur Springs, Texas where it continues to this day. The current catalog lists these models:
 

West R Lee

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Well thank you very much sir. Y'all wouldn't believe Sulphur Springs......it stinks to high heavens, not from sulphur as the name would imply, but from the scores of dairy farms around the town. Sheewee!

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West R Lee

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I think it's the white stuff that comes from the teats they call money Mark, the stuff I'm talking about is called sh-t! :shock:

West
 
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