Norman Blake

Norman Blake is an old-time and bluegrass guitarist who also plays mandolin, dobro, fiddle and more. He worked in Nashville with Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan before building a long solo career rooted in Southern traditional music.

Career

Blake left school at sixteen to play music. Drafted in 1961, he served as an Army radio operator in the Panama Canal Zone, where he led a band called the Kobbe Mountaineers. Back in Nashville he became a studio musician, toured and recorded with Johnny Cash for ten years, joined the house band of Cash's television show, and played on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline.

In 1971 he joined John Hartford's Aereo-Plain band with Vassar Clements. In 1972 he played dobro on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Will the Circle Be Unbroken and released his first solo album. He recorded The Fields of November with Nancy Blake, married her in 1975, and they performed together for twenty years. He later played on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and on Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

Songs and tunes

• "Ginseng Sullivan"
• "Slow Train through Georgia"
• "Church Street Blues"
• "Fiddler's Dream/Whiskey Before Breakfast"

Selected albums

Another great flatpicker: Doc Watson.