5. Blake & RiceBlake & Rice II
Norman Blake was one the hippies that moved to San Francisco and ended up becoming a virtuoso mandolin player and songwriter, as well as an acoustic guitar player who performed with the Grateful Dead. He appears on so many of the great albums of the 1970s. Tony Rice is one of the great virtuoso guitar players, and who singing voice borders on bluegrass. So these two guys got together and obviously made Blake & Rice 1 but the album that was given to me by my uncle was Blake & Rice II, which is the album that has ‘Lincoln’s Funeral Train’ on it, which I perform on Millport. Norman Rice also became a songwriter, which is very difficult to do in the old-time genre. To be well known as an old-time musician but still be a songwriter is not usual, because there’s such a vast body of work of old-time songs that you can choose from. But he decided to write some of his own. ‘Lincoln’s Funeral Train’ is the only song on Millport that I didn’t write myself.
