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Ozarks music Banjo picker Dick Hatfield releases first CD By R.D. Hohenfeldt Dick Hatfield always preferred big band and jazz music, but an Ozarks bluegrass music party changed his musical life. “The first jam session I went to was at Jean and Walt Henry’s house at Doolittle,” Hatfield says. “A co-worker asked me if I liked to listen to music and invited me to go along with him and his wife. I’ve been hooked on bluegrass music ever since.” That was in 1977, about a year after Hatfield moved to Rolla to take a job as a graphic artist with the University of Missouri-Rolla. “I went two years before I picked up an instrument,” Hatfield says. “Cecil Goforth was playing the banjo at that time. I heard that and decided if I ever played anything it was going to be a banjo.” He finally bought a banjo at a Rolla music store and took lessons there for three years. “I got really serious with the banjo. I have no idea how many hours I sat around playing the banjo. I probably practiced thousands of hours. Every evening, at lunch time, I went home and picked up the banjo,” he says. “It’s been an obsession.” Hatfield, 40 years old when he first picked up the banjo, has recently released a CD. “I’ve always wanted to make a CD,” says
Hatfield. “I got the best musicians I could, Richard Brown, Cecil
Goforth and Jerry Rosa.” Goforth and Brown were the first musicians he met when he started attending jam sessions. Goforth plays Dobro and fiddle, Brown guitar, on the CD. Rosa plays mandolin and produced the CD at Rosa String Works studio. “It never would have been as good without the help of the other musicians,” Hatfield says. “Jerry Rosa did a heckuva job on this CD.” Wayne Bledsoe, who returns to KUMR-FM 88.5 Nov. 11 as the station’s bluegrass host following a leave of absence to campaign for public office, also likes the sound of the CD and plans to play tunes from the CD on his “Bluegrass for a Saturday Night” show. “It’s an absolutely excellent CD,” says Bledsoe. “The banjo is very good. It’s a good mix of songs. There’s a good mix of vocals and instrumentals. It’s just a well-rounded project.” In fact, Bledsoe says, “It’s as good as anything I get” for airplay. The CD includes a couple of songs Hatfield wrote, title song “Dogwoods” and “Tick Creek.” Both are instrumentals. Hatfield wrote “Dogwoods” a couple of years ago. “I call it ‘Dogwoods’ because I like dogwood trees; we planted dogwoods here in the backyard.” The other song, “Tick Creek,” refers to the location of the first jam session Hatfield attended. The Henrys, to whom he dedicated the project, lived on Tick Creek. The jam session they hosted many years later moved to the Doolittle Rural Fire Department’s station. Putting out the CD proved a bit difficult. “We started the CD in first part of June. Then Richard Brown broke his arm and (bassist) Bessie Reeder got sick,” Hatfield says. “We finally went into the studio in late August. It took about six hours to record and we did it all in one day.” The group spent several evenings together rehearsing prior to going to the recording studio. Moreover, they also play together frequently at jam sessions. “I like jam sessions a lot better than playing in a band,” Hatfield says. He likes jam sessions so much that he and wife, Darla, travel to Mountain View, Ark., several times a year to participate in the folk music capital’s frequent jams. Hatfield, who grew up in Aberdeen, S.D., and then went to art school in Minneapolis, Minn., worked for the Army Security Agency and later the CIA as an illustrator and graphic artist in the analysis of photographs. Disliking urban life and traffic, Hatfield left his job with the CIA and went to the University of Vermont as head of the graphic arts department. “I drove six miles to work and it took 30 minutes on a sunny day,” Hatfield says of his life in the Washington, D.C., area. “It took an hour on a rainy day, and on a snowy day, you might not get there at all.” He moved to Rolla in 1976 to take a job with the University of Missouri-Rolla as a graphic artist and later worked as a writer for the campus public relations department, retiring in 2001. “My wife and I have a lot of other interests besides bluegrass,” he says. “We enjoy hunting and boating. We stay at Bull Shoals four weeks every summer, because we enjoy the lake.” Hatfield finds time almost daily to pick up the banjo and play it awhile. “Over all, music has been a lot of fun for me. I’ve enjoyed the heck out of it, and I’ve met a lot of nice people I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Music has made a difference in my life.” Headline: About the CD Title: Dogwoods Artist: Dick Hatfield and Friends The band: Dick Hatfield: Banjo Cecil Goforth: Fiddle and Dobro Richard Brown: Guitar, vocals Bessie Reeder: Upright acoustic bass, vocals Renee Caudill: Upright acoustic bass, vocals Jerry Rosa: Mandolin, vocals Emeri Rosa: Harmony vocals The songs: Tennessee Breakdown Dogwoods Catfish John Lonesome Road Bluesw Prairie Hollow Waltz Tick Creek Rain Please Go Away Foggy Mountain Breakdown Gold Rush Some Old Day Dear Old Dixie Little Cabin Home on the Hill Clinch Mountain Backstep Cripple Creek Recorded at Rosa String Works Recording Studio Engineered, mixed and digitally mastered by Jerry Rosa To order or schedule bookings: Dick Hatfield 208 Fox Creek Rolla, MO 65401 (573) 364-7762 E-mail: drlhatfield@yahoo.com |
