This book will be of interest to fans and scholars of bluegrass music. Roland White was a well-known and well-respected bluegrass musician. Hailing from a musical family, Roland performed with some of the most important bands in bluegrass music history. Mandolin Man is filled with stories and reminiscences that provide nuanced perspectives about the life and career of its subject, Roland White. In the process of telling the story of Roland White, Mandolin Man also reflects changes in the musical cultures associated with bluegrass music.
The cultural heritage of the White family, originally LeBlanck, was French Canadian. When Roland was born in 1938, the family was living in Madawaska, Maine. Later, the family moved to other Maine locations. Finally, sensing greater opportunity 3,000+ miles away, in 1954 it made a big move to California.
In the White household, Roland’s mother, Mildred, tuned to country music broadcast on radio, and also played items from her collection of records. Roland’s father, Eric Sr., played traditional fiddle tunes around the house. Visits to Roland’s grandparents’ homes were often music-performing occasions. Bob Black provides many telling examples of how music was woven into the lives of family members. For one, in chapter 2, “Birth of a Dream,” readers learn how Roland would ask his mother, Mildred, about the performers heard over the radio (17). Finally, Roland asserted that he wanted to sing on radio, and Mildred responded that with diligent practice, he would be successful.
The music-rich home environment, which included mother and father encouraging the kids to sing and play, stimulated Roland and his brothers Eric, Jr. and Clarence, as well as sister Jo Ann, to casually sing and play around the house. Black describes Roland’s brother Clarence’s first music playing: Roland fingered the neck of a guitar while Clarence moved the pick (19). These sorts of details illustrate how intertwined were musical performance and personal relationships within the White family. Later, in varying degrees, the White kids participated in performing bands. Clarence became a major reference point in the stylistic development of bluegrass lead-guitar playing.
Chapter 2, “Birth of a Dream,” relates how family members and neighbors helped Roland and his siblings get started on good musical paths. For a while, Roland’s focus was the banjo. A banjo-playing neighbor named Sam Tester heard Roland’s struggles with the banjo and invited himself into the White household to help. Tester gave Roland some hands-on banjo instruction as well as encouragement. Tester would also invite the White family over to the Tester house on Sundays, and the White kids and Tester would sing and play. The Sunday sessions must have made it seem to the boys that they were on their way to playing on stage, and the milk and cookies served as inducements to attend the Sunday sessions.
Beginning with chapter 3, the book devotes single chapters to bands of which Roland was a member: The Country Boys, the Original Kentucky Colonels, The Blue Grass Boys, The Nashville Grass, The New Kentucky Colonels, Country Gazette, and the Roland White Band. Each chapter recounts a band’s highlights, aesthetics, personnel, and business practices. Also, each chapter maintains the book’s focus on the personal relationships that form the foundations of a bluegrass performing career.
According to a narrative in the book (68), Roland White’s first time playing the guitar in the Blue Grass Boys, the band led by the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe, was almost an accident. In 1967, Monroe’s bus had broken down in Dallas, Texas. He left the bus and band members there, and came to Los Angeles looking for musicians to form a band to fulfill his contract to play at the Ash Grove. Monroe called Ed Pearl, owner of the Ash Grove for help. Pearl knew that Monroe had responded well to a guest set played by the White Brothers, and determined to call Roland. But since Roland’s main instrument was the mandolin, he asked his guitarist brother, Clarence, if he’d like the job. Clarence was getting a lot of attention for his lead-guitar playing. However, Roland was an accomplished lead singer, and the guitarist with the Blue Grass Boys was expected to sing leads. As a result, Clarence told Roland that Roland should take the job. The band assembled to play at the Ash Grove included Roland White on the guitar.
The situation described in the preceding paragraph is a typical one in Mandolin Man. The reader learns details regarding bands forming and re-forming, dissolving, and in general about how decisions are made in the bluegrass-band business.
Roland’s ability to move from mandolin to guitar to play with Monroe illustrates one of Roland White’s traits referenced in various places in Mandolin Man: he was extremely adaptable. Best known as a mandolin player, Roland was also familiar with the guitar, and adjusted his rhythm-guitar style to play the way preferred by Monroe, “with a forward lean” (72).
A few years after the Ash Grove performance, when Roland talked about performing with the Blue Grass Boys, the stakes were higher. This time, he was looking for a job as the regular guitarist for the Blue Grass Boys. Again, Bob Black frames the story through the personal connections made by Roland with others. Black tells us that banjoist Lamar Grier tipped off Roland about an opening for a guitarist in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys (70). Grier also provided a tip about how to address Bill Monroe: Bill preferred “Bill” and not “Mr. Monroe.” The book then provides a detailed account of Roland fitting in with the Blue Grass Boys. Monroe liked that Roland had U.S. Army experience, and that Roland had been in a position of responsibility in a previous band, the Kentucky Colonels.
When Roland was a member of the Blue Grass Boys, and later as a member of Lester Flatt’s Nashville Grass, Roland was working for iconic bluegrass figures. For the most part, band leaders Monroe and Flatt chose repertoire, and players had to accept that they were serving the bandleaders. On the other hand, Black presents the Nashville Bluegrass Band in chapter 9 as a kind of band more in tune with the ethos of the generation that grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. Players in the Nashville Bluegrass Band viewed the ensemble as “a group of musicians working together as equal partners” (161). The players respected bluegrass tradition, but granted each other space to explore lyrics, song types, and playing techniques that expanded conventional bluegrass stylistic envelopes.
In chapter 9, dealing with Roland’s work with the Nashville Bluegrass Band, as well as in other places in Mandolin Man, there are many quotes relating to the subtleties of Roland White’s musicianship, and many quotes about his kindness towards others.
While Bob Black is the author of Mandolin Man, Bob’s wife Christie is mentioned in various places in the book as helping with the overall effort. In the acknowledgements, Bob gives Christie credit for “editing, her love and her support throughout the writing process, especially during the latter stages when things got really tough” (ix). Including chapter 12 is a nice touch--it is based on a transcript of a visit between Bob and Christie and Roland and Roland’s second wife and musical partner in the Roland White band, Diane Boushka.
Readers who wish to dive more deeply into the subject will be helped by the appendices at the end of the text in Mandolin Man. Appendix A, “People, Places and Venues,” is twenty-two pages in length, and provides background information about many of those mentioned in the book. Appendix B gives names of Roland White’s family members; and Appendix C lists Roland White Instructional Materials. Notes contain details and sources a-plenty.
Roland White was not best known as a bandleader, but possessed qualities that made him valuable to performing bands. Mandolin Man: The Bluegrass Life of Roland White tells of Roland White’s musical life, from his youth as a member of a musical family through his days as a bluegrass band performer. The book successfully weaves together family, friendship, the bluegrass business and culture. The depiction of the life of Roland White and the descriptions of bluegrass players’ constructed world combine to make Mandolin Man an important contribution to writing about bluegrass music.
--------
[Review length: 1375 words • Review posted on February 16, 2023]